Who Is the Chinese National Connected to 2 Unauthorized Labs in the US?

According to the FBI and local law-enforcement accounts, early this year a tip from a house cleaner prompted federal agents and local officers to search a Las Vegas property. 

The authorities reported finding thousands of pieces of evidence, including containers of unknown substances.

Court documents identify the property as registered to a company owned by Jia Bei Zhu, a Chinese national who has also used the names Jesse Zhu and Qiang “David” He. Zhu was in U.S. custody at the time. The laboratories and Zhu are the subject of a new Epoch Times documentary, “The 2nd Lab,” premiering on Sept. 23.

Zhu, who has been in U.S. custody since his arrest in 2023, was initially set to be sentenced on Aug. 24 after a jury found him guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, eight counts of substantive wire fraud, two counts of distributing adulterated and misbranded medical devices, and one count of making a false statement to the Food and Drug Administration.

U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd, at the request of defense attorney Anthony Capozzi, who represented Zhu during the trial, has postponed the sentencing to Oct. 26, according to court documents. Capozzi said he had a trial in another federal case scheduled, and pre-planned leave in September.

Court documents say Zhu conspired to import low-quality COVID-19 tests from China and then rebrand and sell them as products that were made in a certified medical laboratory in the United States, under the FDA’s authorization.

From about August 2020 through March 2023, Zhu and his partners sold more than 1.4 million COVID-19 tests for more than $3.8 million to approximately 12 companies, according to court documents.

Zhaoyan “Joanne” Wang was also charged, according to court documents. The documents state that she left the United States with their child for China before Zhu was arrested on Oct. 19, 2023.

The Justice Department said that, after a court-ordered inspection of Universal Meditech Inc.—the California-based company through which Zhu sold the COVID-19 tests—Zhu changed the company’s name to Prestige Biotech and moved it to a warehouse in nearby Reedley while a civil lawsuit filed by a Louisiana-based healthcare company in mid-2022 was pending.

The inspection of Universal Meditech Inc. in Fresno, which was conducted in July 2022, revealed an unsanitary warehouse that was “far below established quality standards for facilities that house medical devices,” the Department of Justice said.

A vivarium that is usually used to house animals for experimentation or production was not sealed off from the rest of the facility, and multiple fridges contained pathogens and toxins in inappropriate containers, the department said.

In late 2022, Reedley Code Enforcement Officer Jesalyn Harper discovered Universal Meditech Inc’s new warehouse, now operating under Prestige Biotech.

When she knocked on the door, a person wearing personal protective equipment opened it.

“I was hit with this odor, severe odor that I didn’t identify right away. It just smelled badly. And my first thought was, ‘Wow, I’m surprised we haven’t gotten a complaint for the odor,’” Harper told The Epoch Times for the documentary “The 2nd Lab.”

The Department of Justice said that authorities found roughly 1,000 genetically modified mice inside the Reedley warehouse, along with thousands of vials and biological samples labeled malaria, hepatitis, HIV, COVID-19, and Ebola.

“Those are all very serious infectious diseases, some of which are up to containment level four and should not be anywhere near a home laboratory,” said Louisa Messenger, director of the Parasitology and Vector Biology Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“There has definitely been, I’d say, a lack of transparency, but that may be because at this point, the authorities are not aware of what is in those specimens and they are being actively tested,” Messenger told The Epoch Times.

The Department of Justice said that several federal agencies “determined that the vivarium and fridges with pathogens and toxins in inappropriate containers were part of a failed effort by [Universal Meditech Inc.] to manufacture the COVID tests at its Fresno facility.”

Zhu obtained various vials and pathogens long before the COVID-19 outbreak and some of these infectious materials may have been brought to the United States from companies he previously operated in Canada, according to an initial report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on June 6, 2023.

Neither Zhu nor his employees provided proper import documentation, according to court documents.

In making the documentary, The Epoch Times reached out to Zhu through his attorney to ask why he obtained the pathogens, biological samples, and genetically engineered mice, but received no reply as of publication time.

Harper said Reedley “got very lucky.”

“We didn’t have an outbreak. No one was exposed. Nobody got sick. That doesn’t mean we dodged that bullet. … Because the next time, there’s a good chance that we’re not going to make it out,” she said.

“We don’t have the regulations that would prevent anyone, including other government agencies from other countries to prevent them from coming here and doing this.”

The House Select Committee on the CCP released a report in 2023 examining the investigation of the Reedley laboratory. The report stated that it found “no clear purpose” for the presence of the samples, pathogens, and mice.

“There is little to no market for test kits that would test the majority of the pathogens that the Reedley Biolab appeared to contain, let alone test kits created in an unlicensed laboratory,” the report said.

Universal Meditech Inc. had been selling other test kits imported from China via Zhu-owned Ai De Diagnostic, even before COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, according to court documents. The sales of these products—COVID-19 tests excluded—increased from a little more than $215,000 in 2019 to almost $350,000 in 2022, according to court documents.

The FDA announced recalls of test kits manufactured by Universal Meditech Inc. beginning in August 2023. Additional tests were added to the recall in October that year.

With the demand for COVID-19 tests throughout the pandemic, Universal Meditech Inc.’s annual sales of its COVID-19 tests increased from nearly $628,000 in 2020 to nearly $1.3 million in 2022, according to the court filing.

Another Name

Zhu entered the United States in 2020 as Qiang “David” He, prosecutors said, shortly before he began selling tests that they alleged were fraudulent.

Joanna Zhong, who purchased COVID-19 tests from Zhu through her cosmetics business, testified at the trial earlier this year that Zhu opened a P.O. box in the name of Qiang He at her place of business in Southern California and used it to apply for asylum in the United States in late 2020.

Zhu’s asylum application form and statement were admitted as evidence on May 1, day eight of the jury trial.

According to the criminal complaint, Zhu met with FDA officials as they conducted an inspection at PBI’s Reedley warehouse in early May 2023 and identified himself as David He, a consultant hired by Universal Meditech Inc. and Prestige Biotech to handle the Reedley warehouse issue.

According to the criminal complaint, weeks before meeting with the FDA officials, Zhu—using the name David He—met with Reedley officials.

Harper said when she met David He in the lobby of the city hall, “I knew immediately that he wasn’t David He. He was Jesse Zhu.”

Zhu later filed a lawsuit against the city of Reedley, alleging that it unlawfully searched the warehouse, destroyed company property, and falsely portrayed Universal Meditech Inc. as “operating an illegal laboratory.” Harper later said city officials contacted Zhu about the lawsuit.

“We reached out to him and said, do you want to meet about this?” Harper said, referring to the lawsuit. “And we got the answer back. ‘Yes.’”

According to Harper, Reedley officials notified the FDA, which arranged what she called a “sting operation” that resulted in Zhu’s arrest at the Reedley warehouse on Oct. 19, 2023.

“The entire situation has probably been the most challenging issue I have ever had in my 25-year career,” Zieba said. “What mattered most to me was the public health and safety of the community that I am hired to serve—the 26,000 people—their lives that rest on my shoulders.”

The Vegas Lab

According to an FBI affidavit, another unauthorized laboratory allegedly linked to Zhu was discovered in a Las Vegas neighborhood early this year. The affidavit states that David Destiny Discovery, a company registered under the name David He, owned a home on Sugar Springs Drive, where two people who worked at the property reportedly fell ill after entering the garage.

A house cleaner who asked to be identified only as Kelly, told law enforcement that property manager Ori Solomon had instructed her repeatedly to keep the garage locked, not enter it, and notify him immediately if the power went out.

Solomon also told Kelly that Zhu called every day to check on the property, court documents state. According to court documents obtained by The Epoch Times, Zhu made or attempted an average of 18 phone calls per day from a low-security prison in Kern County, California, between Jan. 1, 2025, and Jan. 23, 2026.

According to Kelly’s account, in April 2025 she noticed that a side door to the garage had been left open and went to close it after alerting Solomon. She described a smell that hit her like foul, stale, stagnant air that had been trapped too long.

Kelly told investigators that about five days later she became seriously ill and experienced breathing problems, fatigue, and muscle aches that kept her in bed. Court documents later stated that several other people who lived at the house also became ill and that one was hospitalized.

In an interview on Jan. 9 with the FBI agents, Kelly informed them about the equipment and containers she saw in the garage. Kelly also warned agents that if they contacted the property manager, she believed “he would have the lab moved out of the garage immediately.”

According to the FBI affidavit, the FBI and local law enforcement searched the property on Jan. 31 and reported finding more than 1,000 pieces of evidence in the garage, including vials and containers of unknown substances and liquids.

A resident who lives near the property agreed to speak to The Epoch Times on condition of using only her first name, Carol. 

“It does make you wonder what kinds of things are going on that you have no idea about,” she said. 

Zieba, remarking on the Vegas lab discovery, said, “If Vegas is anything like what we walked into in Reedley, it doesn’t surprise me if people did get sick.”

The Epoch Times contacted the Las Vegas Metro Police Department for an update in its investigation, whether they expect charges to be laid, and when initial test results of the biological samples are available. No response was received.

Canada Cases

Before facing charges in the United States, Zhu and his Canada-based company, JingJing Genetics, were named in lawsuits in which U.S.-based company XY, LLC alleged that they had misappropriated proprietary intellectual property that XY said enabled selection of the sex of cattle offspring.

XY sought to enforce and renew a court ruling called the “original judgement” via a new civil lawsuit launched at the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver on March 1, 2023.

The original judgement refers to Judge Stephen Kelleher’s 2012 ruling that found JingJing Genetics and its three executives—Zhu, Selen Cui Feng Zhou, and Jin Tang—liable for “civil fraud and conspiracy to cause economic injury” and were ordered to pay CA$8.5 million ($6.2 million) to XY.

XY has collected just over CA$2 million from six payments made between 2014 and 2018, the most significant of which was collected on July 28, 2016—more than CA$1.3 million—through foreclosure proceedings from the sale of Zhu’s property in Richmond, British Columbia, according to court documents obtained by The Epoch Times.