She uncovered a terrifying lab hidden in California, with alleged ties to China

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Code enforcement officer Jesalyn Harper discovered a clandestine biolab in a Reedley, Calif., warehouse containing dangerous pathogens including HIV, malaria, COVID-19 and Ebola.

The facility was allegedly operated by a Chinese national involved in smuggling counterfeit COVID tests while receiving millions in unexplained payments from China.

A congressional investigation revealed critical gaps in U.S. regulations governing unlicensed biolabs, raising major national security and public health concerns.

The case of a lifetime started with a putrid smell and a green garden hose sticking out of the side of a supposedly vacant warehouse in California farm country.

Inside the sprawling building on I Street in Reedley, code enforcement officer Jesalyn Harper found vials filled with liquid — some marked in English or Mandarin, others with just a code — that bore frightening labels such as "Malaria," "COVID-19" and "HIV." Refrigerators, lined up in columns along a wall, had labels that read "blood" and "Ebola."

As she walked deeper into the warehouse, passing lab workers filling pregnancy test kits, she located the source of the smell that had brought her there — droppings from 1,000 lab-tested mice, she told The Times during a recent interview. The workers were nice enough, she said, but when she started asking questions she could feel the mood change.

"I realized I'm in trouble, and I need to get out of this building without tipping them off that I'm scared," Harper said.

Her discovery blew open an elaborate criminal case with ties to California, Las Vegas and China. The investigation in Reedley found that the lab was part of an elaborate scheme to import COVID tests from China and pass them off as American made.

But there are some who fear the operation was much more complex than that. A congressional committee uncovered payments topping $1 million made to the operator of the Reedley business from banks in the People's Republic of China.

The defendant in the case, Jia Bei Zhu, a Chinese national, has not been charged with running an illicit biolab and his attorney has denied it. The vials discovered in Reedley were never tested.

But for some officials, the questions left unanswered from that lab in Reedley, then Nevada, underscores America's vulnerability to unregulated biohazards that could be used by bad actors for criminal behavior and even terrorism.

The case has become a rallying cry for lawmakers and others to try to close loopholes that they say underregulate the world of invisible biolabs across the country. A report published by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said that "at a minimum, the Reedley Biolab shows the profound threat that unlicensed and unknown biolabs pose to our country."

"At worst, this investigation revealed significant gaps in our nation's defenses and pathogen-related regulations that present a grave national security risk that could be exploited in the future," the report concluded.

***

Reedley, lovingly known as "The World's Fruit Basket," is a town of about 25,000 on the eastern banks of the Kings River, about 30 minutes outside of Fresno. It is not known as a hub of biomedical research.

Harper had seen hoarding, human trafficking and meth labs in her role as a code enforcement officer in the San Joaquin Valley, but nothing came remotely close to what was inside that warehouse.

The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention determined that at least 20 potential infectious bacterial and viral agents including dengue, hepatitis B and C, herpes simplex virus, rubella virus, and SARS coronavirus were present in the warehouse, according to a Fresno County Department of Public Health application for an abatement warrant filed in civil court.

In October 2023, federal prosecutors charged Zhu with manufacturing and distributing misbranded medical devices and making false statements to the Food and Drug Administration. He was later charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Prosecutors allege he was selling Chinese-manufactured COVID tests and passing them off as American-made.

Days after the warehouse was searched, Zhu's girlfriend, Zhaoyan Wang, and their newborn son took one-way flights to China, saying in court documents it was for a family trip though they haven't returned. In August 2024, Wang was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and distribution of adulterated and misbranded medical devices in connection to the case, according to federal court records.

Zhu has pleaded not guilty. Wang has not entered a plea and could not be reached for comment.

And that's where the story of what was found in the Reedley warehouse could have ended. Except, the longer Zhu sat in jail, the bigger the case became.

***

It was still dark on Jan. 31 when law enforcement descended on a five-bedroom tract home in northeast Las Vegas that Zhu had listed as collateral for bail and called some 400 times in the past year. They rolled onto the 900 block of Sugar Springs Drive in armored vehicles, operating drones and a robot dog.

By the end, police had arrested a man named Ori Solomon, a 55-year-old Israeli citizen who authorities say managed the home and another that was also searched. While nothing was found in the second home, the search on Sugar Springs Drive proved fruitful, police said at a news conference.

Investigators found a cache of weapons and arrested Solomon on federal weapons charges, saying he was barred from having them due to his immigration status. They also accused him of improperly disposing of hazardous waste. An attorney representing Solomon did not respond to a request for comment.

Video from news outlets at the scene also showed investigators spending a great deal of time in the home's garage, where they donned respirators, protective clothing and removed lab equipment and more than 1,000 samples of an unknown liquid. The substances were sent to an FBI lab in Maryland for testing, officials said.

The materials, according to Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill, were consistent with what was found in Reedley.

Zhu's attorney, Anthony Capozzi, said in a statement to news outlets that his client is "not involved in any kind of a biolab being conducted in a home in Las Vegas."

"What went on in that residence we are unaware of," he said. Capozzi did not return an email and phone call seeking additional comment from The Times.

Nearly a month after the search, it's still not clear what was inside the Las Vegas home and what the plan was for the materials.

"We recognize that the public is seeking clarity. What were they testing for? What possibilities are being considered?" Christopher Delzotto, special agent in charge of the FBI in Las Vegas, said during a February news conference. "In cases like this, our process relies on being slow and methodical."

Zhu, who also goes by the name David He, has been in custody since 2023 awaiting trial. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Years before his arrest, officials say, he was deeply involved in enterprises controlled by the People's Republic of China.

***

"Zhu is a wanted fugitive in Canada and a serial fraudster," a 2023 report by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party states.

Prosecutors said in court records that Zhu would attempt to obfuscate his identity to government officials and, when pressed, pretend he didn't speak English.

Capozzi, Zhu's attorney, told reporters outside a federal courtroom in 2023 that the allegation in the congressional report that his client is an agent of the Chinese government is inaccurate.

"That's the furthest thing from the truth," he said at the time. "He's applied for asylum here in the United States because of the Chinese government."

While living in China in the early 2000s, Zhu served as the vice chairman of the state-controlled enterprise, Henan Pioneer Aide Biological Engineering Co., and board chairman and general manager of Aide Modern Cattle Industry China Co., which was the primary shareholder of 11 cattle companies in China, according to the congressional report.

Zhu then moved to Canada and started doing business there, focusing on the cattle industry. In 2016, one of his businesses was ordered by a Canadian court to pay $330 million for allegedly stealing cattle-related technology from a U.S.-based company. It is not clear whether the business ever paid the judgment.

Amid the litigation, Canadian court records show, Zhu emailed a colleague: "The law is strong, but the outlaws are 10 times stronger."

He was ordered to serve six months in jail after being found in contempt of court, a conviction that he appealed, but court records don't make clear whether he served any time.

The House Select Committee report says that Zhu fled Canada and landed in California.

By 2020, federal prosecutors say, Zhu and his partner Wang were operating two companies — Universal Meditech Inc. and Prestige Biotech Inc. — that sold COVID-19, pregnancy and other types of test kits.

Zhu and Wang imported hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 test kits from a Chinese company they controlled and falsely represented to customers that the test kits were made in the United States, according to their indictment. They illegally imported the COVID test kits disguised as pregnancy tests, which they had been approved to import, prosecutors said.

The couple netted about $1.7 million in the alleged scheme, according to prosecutors.

While Zhu ran the operation in Reedley, he was also receiving "unexplained" payments from banks in the People's Republic of China, according to the House Select Committee report. Those payments amounted to more than $1.3 million over a few years, the report said.

"These payments do not accord with Zhu's fraudulent activity, as he should have been paying money to PRC firms for the test kits and receiving payments from American individuals or companies who purchased the counterfeit test kits," the report states, adding that the payments "deserve continued scrutiny."

The full scope of what was inside the Reedley lab will probably never be known. Harper, the code enforcement officer, said the CDC declined to test any of the material in the warehouse because the vials were not "directly labeled as a select agent" such as Ebola or anthrax. A refrigerator labeled Ebola wasn't enough, Harper said; the vials themselves must be labeled.

***

In a 2024 civil lawsuit filed against the city of Reedley, Zhu played down the situation saying that the warehouse was only being used for storage while his company waited for a new facility in Fresno to be ready.

The city's search of the warehouse "resulted in a wave of extremely negative publicity, fueled by a combination of xenophobia, discrimination, ignorance and the motivations of public officials seeking to capitalize on those sentiments," according to the civil complaint.

Zhu's attorney wrote in the document that the characterization of Zhu's company operating an "illegal Chinese lab and of engaging in bioterrorism" doesn't have "even a scintilla of factual support."

Members of Congress who have introduced legislation to better regulate small, independent labs have pushed the issue with increasing urgency in recent weeks.

It isn't known how many biolabs are operating in the United States because there's no monitoring system in place, said Sam Howell, an associate fellow with the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security.

A day after the Las Vegas raid in January, the case once again returned to central California, where the FBI executed a search warrant on the warehouse, Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba said during a news conference in February.

Zieba assured the public that all biological materials were removed from the site years ago and only pallets of COVID-19 tests, pregnancy tests and boxes of paperwork remain. Ultimately, Zieba said, officials in Reedley were "not surprised there was a Vegas connection."

For two years Harper had warned federal agencies that there could be additional materials at the home in Las Vegas based on details she learned during the investigation in Reedley.

"I couldn't get them to move on it," she said. "The attitude really has been, well, we caught the guy. We did our part."