A federal grand jury handed up a five-page indictment on Wednesday charging Kseniia Petrova with three felony crimes: concealment of a material fact; false statement; and smuggling.
Petrova is a Harvard computational biology researcher who was charged and arrested through a criminal complaint (written by prosecutors and without a grand jury) in May for bringing frog embryos-in-formaldehyde through Logan Airport in February and was held in immigration detention until May. She is a Russian citizen who fears being returned to her home country. She has been on pretrial release since June 12.
Petrova appeared for a probable cause hearing last Wednesday in federal court. Cambridge Day obtained the audio recording of the hearing and is making it available: youtu.be/8ZoQ_dgNHto
The grand jury indictment, which is legally necessary for her prosecution to continue, adds two crimes beyond the smuggling charge in the May criminal complaint.
For the concealment of a material fact charge, the indictment says “she imported and brought into the United States multiple fixed and embedded frog embryos, which are required to be declared pursuant to 19 C.F.R. § 148.11, without declaring such items to a Customs and Border Protection (’CBP’) Agent of the United States Department of Homeland Security.”
She “knowingly and willfully falsified, concealed, and covered up by trick, scheme, and device, a material fact,” the indictment says.
For the false statement charge, the indictment says that “when asked by a CBP Agricultural Specialist if she had any biological material in her possession, she stated no.”
And for the smuggling charge, the indictment says that she “fraudulently and knowingly imported and brought into the United States, merchandise, defined at 19 U.S.C. §1401(c), as ‘goods, wares, and chattel of every description,’ including multiple fixed and embedded frog embryos, contrary to law, specifically 19 C.F.R. §148.11, which requires that ’[a]II articles brought into the United States by any individual must be declared to a CBP officer at the port of first arrival in the United States.’”
At the probable cause hearing, the false statement and smuggling issues were discussed.
Defense attorney William Fick addressed the issue of the “No” answer to questions about biological materials at the June 18 hearing: “The officer at secondary inaccurately tells Miss Petrova that she falsely answered a question at primary when in fact that did not occur. … And so the assumption embedded in this question asked at secondary – that the officer got Miss Petrova to agree to – is wrong.”
Fick also addressed the smuggling charge last week: “The smuggling statute only covers merchandise that hasn’t been invoiced. It’s not any object in the world that hasn’t been declared. Those are different words.”
Because the grand jury indictment was handed up, the briefing ordered by the magistrate judge last week (due Wednesday and July 2) will no longer be expected to occur in that form; instead those issues will likely be raised during the course of the criminal case.
Fick declined to comment Wednesday on the grand jury indictment.
The government sent out a press release Wednesday announcing the indictment reiterating the facts of the case. It quoted Petrova’s “No plan yet 😊. I won’t be able to swallow them 😊” text message to her lab supervisor about transporting the embryos, but the press release omitted the emojis.
A stronger
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The professor who asked her to bring in the frog embryos should be ashamed. What in the world was he thinking? This young woman’s life is in ruins.