The FBI said Wednesday that a reported terrorist threat in the City of Boston had “no credibility.” In a statement issued by its National Press Office, the FBI withdrew its request for information on 13 individuals, most of them Chinese.

The announcement came after Mexican authorities held and questioned Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinones, a man thought to be involved in human smuggling into the US from Mexico, and who was among those listed in the January 20 FBI press release.

One woman among the 14 earlier sought for questioning was found Saturday at a US Customs and Border Protection detention facility in San Diego. Mei Xia Dong had been detained since November 2004, when she was arrested for an immigration violation. The FBI said Mei had apparently entered the US for “economic reasons” and had paid human smugglers to enter the US.

News media reported that Qinones had provided the false tip to the California Highway Patrol in retaliation for not being paid by Chinese migrants he had agreed to help cross the US border.

FBI Boston spokesperson Gail Marcinkiewicz said that the scare was not unusual, and the FBI receives numerous unconfirmed tips. She said what made this case stick out was that news leaked to the press, which prompted the FBI to issue a statement clarifying that the threat was uncorroborated.

Marcinkiewicz said the FBI did not know how the news was leaked. “We’ll probably never know,” she said.