Chinese Bio Lab in Reedley: Fake COVID Tests and Sentencing

The Chinese bio lab in Reedley, California, was an unlicensed warehouse laboratory run by a Chinese national named Jia Bei Zhu, discovered by a city code enforcement officer in December 2022 and later linked to a scheme that sold hundreds of thousands of faulty COVID-19 tests across the United States. Inside investigators found thousands of vials of biological material, nearly 1,000 genetically engineered mice, and a freezer labeled “Ebola.” Zhu was convicted on all 12 federal counts in May 2026 and is scheduled for sentencing on August 24, 2026.

How the Lab Was Found

Jesalyn Harper, a code enforcement officer for the city of Reedley in Fresno County, spotted a green garden hose poking through the wall of a warehouse at 850 I Street that was supposed to be empty. What began as a routine building code check turned into a years-long federal investigation.¹

Inside, officials found a sprawling, unlicensed operation. Thousands of vials carried labels in English, Mandarin, or an undeciphered code. Based on those labels, the CDC identified at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis B and C, dengue virus, and SARS-CoV-2.²

What Was Inside the Warehouse

A freezer labeled “Ebola” held unlabeled silver bags that matched how the lab stored its highest-risk materials.¹ Investigators also found nearly 1,000 transgenic mice engineered to mimic the human immune system. Workers told officials the animals were designed “to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus.”³

Beyond the biological material, the site held containers labeled with the names of narcotics, including MDMA, cocaine, methamphetamine, and THC, alongside highly flammable and corrosive industrial chemicals.³

Who Was Running It

The operator was Jia Bei Zhu, a 64-year-old Chinese national who used several aliases, including Jesse Zhu, David He, and Qiang He.⁴ He ran the site through two companies he controlled, Universal Meditech Incorporated and Prestige Biotech Incorporated. Neither company was registered as a licensed laboratory, and neither held the FDA authorizations needed to make or distribute medical tests.⁵

Zhu arrived in the United States with a serious record already behind him. He was a wanted fugitive from Canada, where a judge described his intellectual property theft as fraud on an “epic scale” and imposed a CAD $330 million judgment against him.⁶ The House Select Committee on the CCP later reported that Zhu had held positions at PRC government-controlled companies tied to China’s military-civil fusion ecosystem and had received millions of dollars in unexplained wire transfers from Chinese banks while operating the Reedley lab.¹ His first U.S. laboratory was in Fresno; he moved to the Reedley warehouse after a fire and the threat of eviction at that earlier site.⁷

The Fake COVID-19 Test Scheme

The criminal case against Zhu centered on a scheme to sell faulty COVID-19 tests. Prosecutors alleged that between August 2020 and March 2023, Zhu and his partner Zhaoyan Wang imported hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 test kits from a Chinese company they controlled, Ai De Ltd., falsely declaring the shipments as pregnancy tests to bypass import rules.⁸ They then sold the kits nationwide while claiming they were made in the U.S., FDA-approved, and CDC-certified. None of that was true. The FDA had previously denied UMI’s application for Emergency Use Authorization because of major deficiencies in its test studies.⁴

Prosecutors said the pair made over $1.7 million from the fraud and blocked buyers from inspecting their facilities using fabricated excuses about construction or proprietary technology.⁸ When FDA officials confronted Zhu, he assumed the identity of “David He” and lied about his role in both companies.⁹

Wang, a 38-year-old Chinese citizen described as Zhu’s romantic and business partner, was named in a superseding indictment in August 2024. She faces conspiracy, wire fraud, and medical device distribution charges carrying a maximum of 20 years in prison. As of the latest available reporting, she was not in custody and had not entered a plea.¹⁰

Why the Federal Response Was Slow

Local officials asked the CDC and other federal agencies for help almost immediately, and got little of it. Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba and others reached out repeatedly; according to the congressional investigation, CDC staff hung up on local officials during phone calls, and the agency refused to test any of the samples, relying only on the labels stuck to the vials. The CDC’s rationale was that the labeled pathogens were not “select agents” like anthrax, so they fell outside its regulatory authority. Local officials offered to pay the full cost of testing. The CDC still refused.³

The FBI opened an initial investigation and closed it after concluding the site did not contain weapons of mass destruction. Federal help arrived only after U.S. Representative Jim Costa intervened on behalf of local officials.² The FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations eventually led the enforcement action that resulted in Zhu’s arrest in October 2023.⁵

The freezer labeled “Ebola” and its contents were destroyed without ever being tested, along with thousands of unlabeled or coded vials. The Select Committee’s November 2023 report called the CDC’s response “unacceptable” and said the full scope of health risk to the surrounding community was “unknown and, at this point, unknowable.”³

Cleanup and Who Paid

Cleanup fell largely to local officials with limited budgets. Over the course of 2023, crews removed more than 103 tons of general waste and lab equipment and 448 gallons of medical and biological waste.³ The EPA completed a hazardous material removal at the site in January 2024, taking out more than 800 containers of laboratory chemicals.¹¹ Under a court order, 773 living transgenic mice were euthanized and incinerated in April 2023.

The property owner, AY-NC LP, later settled to cover cleanup costs, paying nearly $135,600 to the city of Reedley and about $125,000 to Fresno County.¹² One worker who had tended the transgenic mice reported that he and his children became sick during that period, but Fresno County officials said publicly there was no evidence of a direct threat to the broader community.¹³

The Las Vegas Lab Connection

On January 31, 2026, the FBI and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police raided a home on Sugar Springs Drive in Las Vegas. Authorities described it as another unauthorized biological laboratory connected to Zhu.¹⁴ The property was owned by an LLC whose registered agent was David He, one of Zhu’s known aliases, meaning the site had continued to store materials while Zhu was in federal custody awaiting the Reedley trial.⁷

Agents found residential refrigerators with vials of unknown liquids, glass beakers of reddish liquid, a biological safety cabinet, hydrochloric acid on open shelves, and a centrifuge.¹⁵ The FBI collected more than 1,000 samples for testing. Results showed the materials were mostly components for medical diagnostic test kits, along with influenza vaccine compounds and older flu samples that had significantly degraded due to improper storage. The FBI said the materials were not engineered or novel pathogens and there was “no indication of an ongoing threat to public health,” but added there were “no legitimate reasons for maintaining these types of biological materials within a private residence.”¹⁶

Several people who had entered the home’s garage reported becoming ill, including a cleaning employee, a handyman, and a female resident who was hospitalized with severe respiratory issues.¹⁵

Ori Solomon, the 55-year-old property manager, was arrested during the raid. He was charged with felony disposal of hazardous waste under Nevada law and initially faced federal firearms charges over six weapons found at the residence, which he was prohibited from possessing as a non-immigrant visa holder. The federal firearms charge was dismissed without prejudice in May 2026.¹⁷ Solomon was released on a personal recognizance bond and was scheduled to appear in Las Vegas Justice Court on June 4, 2026, on the hazardous waste charge.¹⁸

Conviction and Sentencing

Zhu went to trial in federal court in Fresno in April 2026. After a two-week trial, a jury found him guilty on all 12 counts on May 6, 2026: one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, eight counts of wire fraud, two counts of distributing adulterated and misbranded medical devices, and one count of making a false statement to the FDA.⁹ He faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years for the conspiracy and each wire fraud count, three years for each distribution count, and five years for the false statement count.¹⁹ Sentencing before U.S. District Judge Dale A. Drozd is scheduled for August 24, 2026.

What Congress Is Doing About the Gaps

The Reedley case exposed a basic fact about U.S. biosecurity: there is no centralized federal system to identify or track unauthorized labs, and existing biosafety rules largely apply only to government-funded research or to “select agents” like anthrax and ricin.⁷ An estimated one-quarter of human pathogen research in the United States happens in the private sector, and roughly a quarter of those organizations operate with no federal oversight at all.²⁰

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced the Preventing Illegal Laboratories and Protecting Public Health Act of 2025 (H.R. 5747), co-sponsored by California Representatives David Valadao, Jim Costa, and Kevin Kiley along with Nevada Representatives Susie Lee and Dina Titus. The bill would require distributors of highly pathogenic agents to keep federally reviewable logbooks of all transfers, mandate periodic federal reviews of high-containment laboratories, create a dedicated federal biosafety response team, and commission a feasibility study on a centralized national database of such facilities.²¹ As of early 2026, the bill was awaiting a hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.²²

1
House Select Committee on the CCP. Investigation: Reedley Biolab Findings
2
KVPR. Congressional Committee Completes Report Into Illegal Reedley Medical Lab
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House Select Committee on the CCP. Reedley Biolab Investigation Report
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U.S. Department of Justice. Arrest Made in Central California Bio Lab Investigation
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U.S. Department of Justice. Operator of Central California Bio Lab Indicted
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The Bureau. New Details on Reedley Lab Operator
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Lawfare. Two Illegal Biolabs Reveal Gaps in U.S. Biosecurity
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Conspiracy and Fraud Charges Added Against Operator of Central California Bio Lab and His Partner
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U.S. Department of Justice. Guilty Verdict for California Biolab Operator
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Your Central Valley. Romantic and Business Partner Charged Alongside Reedley Lab Operator
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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA Completes Hazardous Material Removal at Illegal Lab in Reedley, California
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Fresno Bee. Reedley Biolab Cleanup Settlement
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ABC30. Reedley Illegal Lab New Details
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8 News Now. Las Vegas Bio Lab Raid Possibly Tied to California Case
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ABC News. Housecleaner Reports Multiple Illnesses Tied to Las Vegas House Bio Lab
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Fox 5 Vegas. FBI: Materials Found in Las Vegas Home Bio Lab Consistent With Medical Test Kit Components
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8 News Now. Federal Charge Filed Against Las Vegas Bio Lab Suspect Dismissed
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KTNV. Federal Charges for Property Manager Connected to Las Vegas Illegal Biolab Dropped
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Los Angeles Times. Reedley Biolab Operator Convicted in Scheme to Sell Millions of Faulty COVID Tests
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Time. Invisible Biolabs
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Office of Rep. David Valadao. Preventing Illegal Laboratories and Protecting Public Health Act
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Office of Rep. Kevin Kiley. Rep. Kiley Urges House Leadership to Advance Bipartisan Bill