Foreign ‘Fauci acolyte’ and his African crony charged with smuggling monkeypox onto American soil

A pair of foreigners employed at a controversial U.S. biolab were charged on Tuesday with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox onto American soil and giving false statements to federal law enforcement.

Vincent Munster — a 53-year-old Dutch citizen who is the chief of the virus ecology section at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a National Institutes of Health Biosafety Level 4 research facility in Hamilton, Montana — and one of his underlings, a 38-year-old Cameroonian national named Claude Kwe, were caught by Customs and Border Patrol officials with a black case allegedly full of viral materials at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Jan. 25.

‘This is bigger than a customs charge.’

The duo allegedly told CBP agents that the case — which they had traveled with from the Congo, where a major monkeypox outbreak was underway — contained diagnostics and testing equipment. Federal agents discovered, however, that the case actually contained 113 vials in Styrofoam containers, the Justice Department said in a release.

According to the DOJ, an FBI analysis of 20 of the 113 vials showed that 17 contained deactivated monkeypox virus, one contained the chickenpox virus, and two contained human DNA.

Monkeypox is a disease caused by a virus in the same genus as the virus that causes smallpox. While endemic in various African regions, monkeypox made a global play in early 2022. In nearly all Western cases, the disease affects and is spread by homosexuals.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine noted that of the 528 infections diagnosed between April 27 and June 24, 2022, 98% of those infected were homosexuals and that “transmission was suspected to have occurred through sexual activity in 95% of the persons with infection.”

Individuals infected with monkeypox often experience a painful rash that can look like pimples or blisters, respiratory problems, exhaustion, fever, swollen lymph nodes, and chills. The disease can be spread via respiratory droplets, through “direct contact with a rash or sores of someone who has the virus,” and through “contact with clothing, bedding, and other items used by a person” with the virus.

RELATED: Gain-of-function experiments on hantaviruses? Yes, but virus threat is still MASSIVELY overblown.

Vincent Munster. NIAID.

Emily Hilliard, a senior Health and Human Services press secretary, told Blaze News that the NIH, which owns Rocky Mountain Laboratories, is cooperating fully with law enforcement and the relevant authorities regarding the case against Munster and Kwe.

Hilliard noted further that the NIH was made aware of the incident at the Detroit airport in January, and agency leaders “immediately activated established agency protocols to safeguard related laboratory facilities, research materials, and biological samples.”

These measures apparently included “securing relevant laboratory spaces, restricting access to affected areas, and conducting a comprehensive audit and inventory assessment to verify that all materials were appropriately accounted for, documented, and maintained in accordance with all relevant biosafety policies, requirements, and procedures.”

U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon Jr. of the Eastern District of Michigan said of the alleged monkeypox smuggling attempt, “These NIH experts apparently broke our laws by smuggling viral pathogens on a packed commercial airplane from an outbreak in the Republic of Congo. Let that sink in.”

“Any deliberate effort to conceal and smuggle biological materials into the United States without proper authorization is a breach of the public’s trust and could have placed the public at risk,” stated Marcus Sykes, special agent in charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.

Munster and Kwe each face a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Neither the researchers nor the HHS responded to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University alleged of the suspect, “Munster exemplifies the dishonesty, the disregard for biosafety, the disdain for law, and the contempt for the public interest that — after four decades of Anthony Fauci having treated virology as his personal fief and power base — have become pervasive in virology.”

Dr. Robert Malone, a biochemist who recently served on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, emphasized that “this is bigger than a customs charge.”

“Why does Munster’s name matter? In April 2024, Sen. Rand Paul released documents showing Rocky Mountain Laboratories — Munster’s facility — was listed as a participant in EcoHealth Alliance’s DEFUSE proposal. The same proposal DARPA rejected for posing unacceptable biosafety risks,” wrote Malone. “DEFUSE contemplated experiments on novel bat coronaviruses, spike protein manipulation, and insertion of furin cleavage sites. DARPA said no. But NIAID kept funding the same research ecosystem — EcoHealth, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the same scientific objectives. Then COVID emerged in Wuhan.”

Munster is currently listed as a senior investigator with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ virus ecology section. In recent years, he has worked on and researched numerous viruses, including SARS-COV-2, the virus behind COVID-19.

Kwe is a research fellow with the NIH’s intramural research program.

The two of them have worked together on monkeypox research and are listed as co-authors of a February 2026 study assessing “the risk of clade Ib mpox and our preparedness.”

RELATED: ‘NIAID cannot be trusted’: Fauci’s agency planned to make monkeypox more deadly, says congressional report

Monkeypox. NIH-NIAID/Image Point FR/BSIP/Universal Images Group/Getty Images.

They concluded in their study that “the emergence and current co-circulation of clade Ia, Ib, and clade IIb in Africa, and recent spread of clade Ib mpox in the U.S, Europe, and Asia is a reminder that emerging infectious diseases are global issues that require timely coordinated response.”

The foreign researchers noted further that “the global spread of clade IIb and Ib should also be recognized as sentinel events, highlighting essential gaps in pandemic preparedness.”

The criminal charges against Munster and Kwe come just weeks after White Coat Waste Project — a watchdog that helped expose EcoHealth Alliance’s and former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci’s ties to the gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — obtained and published a damning whistleblower report detailing Munster and Kwe’s alleged attempt to smuggle foreign viruses onto American soil.

The whistleblower characterized Munster as a “Fauci acolyte and all around egotistical, arrogant foreigner that joined his research project (to aerosolize covid virus) to Ralph Baric’s project (to weaponize it).”

Baric, a professor in the departments of epidemiology and microbiology at the University of North Carolina, is a leading proponent of gain-of-function research who successfully fought for an exemption from the Obama administration’s moratorium on the dangerous practice in order to keep manufacturing artificial SARS-like viruses.

In response to a request for comment, Baric directed Blaze News to UNC, which did not immediately respond.

The whistleblower went on to claim that after Detroit authorities “found dozens of vials” in Munster’s baggage in January, the NIH “went into full cover-up mode.”

Rocky Mountain Laboratories has also been home to additional scandals in recent months.

The NIH recently confirmed to the Ravalli Republic that in November 2025, the facility was exposed to Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, which has a fatality rate of 30% or higher.

“At no time was there any evidence of disease transmission or infection, nor was there ever any risk to staff, caregivers, or the public,” said the NIH.

According to the whistleblower, that “exposure” was the result of an infected monkey “that was being tortured (infected and sickened with no pain mitigation) as an experiment for Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic fever.”

The NIH did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment about the whistleblower’s allegations.

On Feb. 18, RML also filed a federal “release/loss/theft” form. An NIH spokesman said it was done “in response to a potential exposure to Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus due to a hole in a glove that occurred while changing cages of laboratory mice.”

“There was no release outside of the lab and at no time was there any risk to the public,” said the spokesman.

Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana, citing the whistleblower complaint, asked HHS Inspector General March Bell in a May 26 letter to launch a formal investigation “into the safety, security, and personnel practices at RML” and raised alarm about Munster’s souvenirs from the Congo.

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