A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a confessed participant to five years of probation in a plot that diverted millions of dollars in biomedical drugs, toxins and research materials from the University of Florida to China over seven years.

During the hearing, the prosecutor in the case said others may face federal criminal charges, including a person identified in court records only as a UF research employee who worked in the warehouse of one of the university’s research labs. The prosecutor said that someone from abroad could also be charged.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Barber sentenced Jonathan Rok Thyng, 48, to probation and 100 hours of community service. In that case, Thyng pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in July. He faces up to five years in federal prison. Prosecutors recommended clemency for Thyng because he agreed to cooperate with investigators.

“I deeply regret my actions and fully understand the gravity of my behavior as well as the trust I have broken as a citizen,” Thyng wrote in a letter to the judge. “My actions were inexcusable and I recognize that they are a serious violation of federal law.”

In the same letter, Thyng said he previously worked as an intelligence operations analyst in the US Air Force.

Prosecutors said the smuggling ring, which was active from July 2016 to May 2023, was strictly financial. The plot had no national security implications, US Attorney Daniel Marcet said.

“If there was a national security component to this, we’d be talking about much closer to five years,” Barber said.

In the plot, the UF research employee and students ordered drugs and toxins from a major pharmaceutical company known as MilliporeSigma, according to court filings. The conspirators used their UF affiliation to order small quantities of highly purified research chemicals. Then, court records showed, they were secretly shipped from UF to China, often disguised as “dilution agents.”

The substances cannot be legally exported to China.

The UF students were recruited in late 2022, prosecutors said, once the pharmaceutical company began soliciting University of Florida email addresses to order the compounds.

At least one student involved has been identified as Nongnong “Leticia” Zheng, president of UF’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association. Zheng, a Chinese citizen, confirmed in an interview in May that she was the target of a grand jury investigation and that the Justice Department was preparing to seek criminal charges against her.

Zheng has not been charged and her whereabouts are unknown. She dropped out of UF this semester, and the university banned her from campus for three years after her role in the plot was revealed. Zheng said she was cheated and victimized by the scheme’s organizers, who she said sought help in finding paid interns from the Chinese student organization.

Thyng ordered biomedical substances and shipped some of the packages to China. He said he joined the illicit procurement ring as a personal favor to his friend Pen “Ben” Yu, described as the ringleader behind the operation. Thyng said he made between $3,000 and $5,000 for the two years he was involved, which he said was not significant. He made more money working for Uber, he said.

“It was a very significant criminal conspiracy with some very high-level players,” Marcet said.

In August, U.S. District Judge William F. Jung sentenced Yu to nearly four years in federal prison plus three years of supervised release. Yu was also ordered to pay the equivalent of $100,000. He faces up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

In response to a question from the judge Wednesday, Marcet said other co-conspirators will likely face a new round of criminal charges. He said the government was still “looking at an international target” as well as another person he did not identify in court who worked in the university warehouse and facilitated Yu’s access to the packages.

Marcet declined to elaborate outside the courtroom on who might face criminal charges or when.

Among the substances sent overseas were fentanyl, morphine, MDMA, cocaine, ketamine, codeine, methamphetamine, amphetamine, acetylmorphine and methadone. Such small samples would generally be used to calibrate scientific or medical devices.

The conspirators also delivered what the government described as purified, non-contagious proteins of cholera toxin and pertussis toxin, which causes whooping cough.

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This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at [email protected].

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