Virginia executive pleads guilty to mislabeling monkey blood as human

The owner of a Winchester, Va., biological products company has admitted to mislabeling squirrel monkey and rabbit blood as human when shipping it around the world to avoid screening requirements.

Philip Lloyd, who founded and managed BioChemed Services, pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria on Tuesday to violating laws governing endangered species and wildlife exportation.

Both animal and human blood is sold for use in medical research. But animal blood must be handled far more carefully, prosecutors said, because of the potential to spread viruses and disease to humans. Animal blood also must be properly labeled to ensure compliance with laws protecting endangered species.

When mailing blood to biomedical research companies over the past two years, BioChemed employees labeled animal blood as human, Lloyd acknowledged in his plea agreement. Labels accurately describing the animal blood were sent in separate FedEx envelopes that were not inspected by officials.

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A form that must be filed with the Department of the Interior before any wildlife export was never filled out by anyone at the company. Nor was any of the animal blood made available for inspection by U.S. customs agency or U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials as required by law. Squirrel monkeys are protected under a convention regulating international trade in endangered species; Lloyd never got a permit necessary to traffic in their blood.

Lloyd was targeted by the Fish and Wildlife Service in a sting operation that began nearly three years ago. An official contacted him by phone in January 2014, posing as an employee of a Canadian company called “Tropicus Research.”

Lloyd sent to Canada a package of squirrel monkey blood, for which he charged $3,090, that was labeled as human blood worth $100. He asked Tropicus Research whether it would be okay to mislabel the order. When he got an affirmative reply, he wrote in an email to the company, “Thank you! I did not know who knew our plan.”

Between March and May of this year, Lloyd also sent dog, rabbit, mice and rat blood to a biomedical company in Korea labeled as human. Again, the packages also gave a value for the contents far below what Lloyd had actually charged.

Lloyd could face a maximum of five years in prison when he is sentenced Jan. 27. An attorney for Lloyd declined to comment.

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