On Wednesday, a Harvard University researcher who was charged with importing clawed frog embryos into the US was indicted on other counts.
A federal grand jury in Boston on Wednesday charged Kseniia Petrova, a Russian-born scientist working at Harvard Medical School on cancer research, on one count of concealing a material fact, one count of making a false statement, and one count of smuggling items into the United States. In May, she had been accused of smuggling.
Petrova will continue to be on pretrial release in spite of the new charges.
Petrova’s attorney was not available for comment.
In February, U.S. Customs and Border Protection questioned her at Boston Logan International Airport while she was returning from a trip in France.
The 30-year-old Petrova had gone by a lab that specialized in splicing extremely thin frog embryo slices and picked up a bundle of samples for study. She was accused by federal authorities on the social media platform X of lying about “carrying substances” into the nation and of smuggling the embryos through customs without disclosing them.
In an interview with The Associated Press in April, she stated that she was not attempting to smuggle anything into the nation and was unaware that the things required to be declared.
After her initial arrest, immigration officials in Vermont informed Petrova that her visa was being revoked and that she was being held. A judge declared the immigration agents’ conduct illegal after she petitioned for her release and was temporarily detained in an ICE prison in Louisiana. She was accused on one count of smuggling in May.
Petrova could be sentenced to up to 20 years in jail and fined up to $250,000 if found guilty of the smuggling charge. In addition, she might be fined up to $250,000 and imprisoned for up to five years for making false statements and concealing material facts.
