A vaccine researcher extradited to the United States from Europe after being a fugitive for more than a decade pleaded guilty to wire fraud on Sept. 1.
Poul Thorsen, 65, from Denmark, admitted to operating a wire fraud scheme that stole more than $1 million in grant money from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was meant to fund research into autism, prosecutors said.
“Poul Thorsen ran a multi-year fraud scheme to cheat the CDC, diverting valuable federal grant money to service his greed and inflated lifestyle,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Theodore S. Hertzberg said in a statement.
“His fraud was especially reprehensible because he stole public funds that had been earmarked for research related to infant disabilities and birth defects. After evading justice for more than 14 years, Thorsen will finally be held accountable in a federal prison cell and ordered to pay full restitution to the CDC.”
Kelly Blackmon, a special agent in charge for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, said that the plea “represents an important step toward holding accountable those who steal taxpayer dollars intended to advance critical public health research.”
A lawyer representing Thorsen did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
A plea agreement has not been made public.
Thorsen was originally charged in 2011 with 13 counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering. He was extradited from Germany this year to face nine counts of money laundering and two counts of wire fraud. He has been in custody without bail since arriving in the United States in May.
Wire fraud can land a person up to 20 years in prison per count.
From 2000 to 2009, the CDC awarded two Danish government agencies more than $11 million to study whether vaccines led to the development of autism, among other health questions.
Thorsen, who solicited the money while working as a visiting scientist at the CDC, submitted fraudulent invoices and received more than $1 million, which he used to buy a house in Atlanta, a motorcycle, and other vehicles, prosecutors said.
Thorsen has coauthored multiple papers, including a 2002 paper that reported no association between the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine and autism, based on an analysis of data in Denmark.
Thorsen will be sentenced on Dec. 1 in federal court in Georgia.
Aarhus University and Odense University Hospital, the two Danish agencies, and the CDC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.