TFTC@TFTC21
Vials of COVID-19. Freezers labeled "Ebola." A thousand lab mice. All hidden inside a supposedly empty warehouse in a California farming town, and discovered by accident.
Jesalyn Harper, a code enforcement officer in Reedley, California, a town of 25,000 known as "The World's Fruit Basket", followed a bad smell and a garden hose sticking out of a building that was supposed to be vacant. Inside she found vials marked "Malaria," "COVID-19," and "HIV." Refrigerators lined along the walls were labeled "blood" and "Ebola." Workers were filling pregnancy test kits. When she started asking questions, the mood shifted fast. "I realized I'm in trouble," she told the LA Times, "and I need to get out of this building without tipping them off that I'm scared."
The CDC confirmed at least 20 infectious agents were present, dengue, hepatitis B and C, herpes, rubella, and SARS coronavirus among them. Bags in the freezers were labeled "MDMA," "Coca," "Met," "THC," and "Amp."
The man behind it is Jia Bei Zhu, a Chinese national who also goes by David He. The scheme: importing Chinese-made COVID tests and passing them off as American-made, disguising them as pregnancy test shipments to get past customs. A congressional committee found over $1 million in payments from banks in the People's Republic of China flowing to his operation.
His background reads like a spy novel. He was vice chairman of a Chinese state-controlled biological engineering company. He fled to Canada, where his business was hit with a $330 million judgment for stealing cattle technology from a U.S. company. In court records, he emailed a colleague: "The law is strong, but the outlaws are 10 times stronger." He then fled Canada to California.
Days after the warehouse was raided, his girlfriend took a one-way flight to China with their newborn. She hasn't come back.
The story didn't end in Reedley. In January, law enforcement in armored vehicles with drones and a robot dog raided a Las Vegas home Zhu had called 400 times from jail. Inside the garage, investigators in respirators pulled out lab equipment and over 1,000 samples of unknown liquid, materials "consistent with what was found in Reedley." An Israeli citizen managing the property was arrested on federal weapons charges. The FBI sent everything to a lab in Maryland. Nearly a month later, they still haven't said what was in those vials.
The vials found in the original Reedley warehouse were never tested. Zhu has not been charged with running an illegal biolab. And a House Select Committee report concluded that "at worst, this investigation revealed significant gaps in our nation's defenses that present a grave national security risk that could be exploited in the future."
