Federal prosecutors arraigned Danish researcher Poul Thorsen on wire fraud and money laundering charges tied to the alleged theft of CDC grant money for autism research after his extradition from Germany.
Here are three things to know:
- Prosecutors allege Mr. Thorsen stole more than $1 million in federal grant money awarded to fund studies examining the relationship between autism and exposure to vaccines, cerebral palsy and infection during pregnancy, and childhood development and fetal alcohol exposure, according to a May 12 Justice Department news release.
- Mr. Thorsen submitted over a dozen fraudulent invoices between February 2004 and June 2008 that included a forged CDC laboratory section chief’s signature, the Justice Department said. Aarhus University in Denmark then “transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to CDC Federal Credit Union accounts the university believed belonged to the CDC.” The accounts were allegedly controlled by Mr. Thorsen.
- A federal grand jury indicted Mr. Thorsen on April 13, 2011. He remained in Denmark for nearly 14 years before his arrest on June 4, 2025, in Passau, Germany, pursuant to an INTERPOL Red Notice. He currently faces two counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering.
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