Early Saturday morning the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department SWAT team, assisted by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, executed a search warrant at a home in northeast Las Vegas owned by Jia Bei Zhu, the CCP-linked Chinese citizen who ran an illegal biolab in Reedley, California. After finding multiple refrigerators and freezers containing vials, bottles, and jugs of unknown liquid substances, and laboratory equipment in the garage of the home, FBI scientists and a specialized investigation team collected over 1,000 samples from the garage; that evidence has been transported to the National Bio-forensic Analysis Center in Maryland for examination.
As you might recall, Zhu was arrested in 2023 and remains in federal custody after a judge determined him to be an extreme flight risk. He was indicted on charges of of wire fraud, conspiracy, making false statements to federal agents, and for distributing adulterated and misbranded COVID-19 test kits in violation of the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and is set to go to trial on March 10, 2026. His business partner and girlfriend, Zhaoyan Wang, also a Chinese citizen, was charged with wire fraud and distribution of adulterated and misbranded medical devices. Wang is believed to be in China.
DIVE DEEPER: Illegal Chinese Biolab Operator Pleads Not Guilty, Claims Feds Destroyed His ‘Revolutionary’ Work
What Most Media Outlets Missed From the Congressional Report About the Illegal CA Biolab
On Sunday morning, federal agents again searched the location of the Reedley biolab, but no information was given during Monday afternoon’s press conference about the results of that search warrant.
Authorities said that three individuals were residing in the Las Vegas home at the time the search warrant was executed, and that all three had individually rented rooms from the property manager, Ori Solomon. Solomon was arrested on charges of improperly disposing of and discharging hazardous waste. Since Zhu has been jailed since 2023, and Wang is… in the wind somewhere, it will be interesting to find out who hired Solomon and when, and where/to whom he sent the rent proceeds. When I visited the scene Monday morning a local ABC reporter was going door-to-door to talk to neighbors; perhaps they will have more information on timelines. One neighbor told 8 News Now that the home was “under surveillance” before the raid.
That the FBI sent a specialized evidence collection team to the scene is of extreme importance, because while the material at the lab in Reedley was labeled as containing various pathogens like Ebola, COVID, HIV, and more, the CDC refused to test the contents of various vials and containers to definitively determine whether the labels were correct or not. That means that Zhu and Wang cannot be charged with any type of bioterrorism crime given the current evidence. Investigators in Las Vegas say that the refrigerators and freezer were all plugged in and operational at the time of the raid, and the evidence samples have been kept in temperature-controlled containers since, and a chain of custody has been established. So, now that Joe Biden’s FBI is no longer in charge, we might see upgraded charges against these two.
Nellis Air Force Base
Zhu’s home, located at 979 Sugar Springs Road in northeast Las Vegas, is less than three miles from the runways of Nellis Air Force base, home to the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center. Whether he and Wang intended to target personnel there or simply moved a bunch of equipment to that home when things started getting too hot in California is a matter of speculation at this point, but that’s not the only national security danger. From their perch overlooking the base they certainly could have used the home to keep an eye on what was happening at the base and as a signals intelligence gathering station.
And … Look how close that place is to Nellis! Just like Reedley and Lemoore. No coincidences. @KATYSaccitizen pic.twitter.com/hodfauBkN6
— Jennifer Van Laar (@jenvanlaar) February 2, 2026
A Refresher on What Went Down in Reedley
Back in 2023, Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley (CA-3) requested an investigation into the Reedley lab by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (RedState’s coverage of that report is linked above). On Monday Kiley demanded that Congress pass legislation he authored with fellow Republican Rep. David Valadao (CA-22) to find any such labs nationwide and shut them down. He hit some of the highlights from that report in this social media post.
The illegal bio lab just raided in Las Vegas was operated by the same LLC and Chinese nationals as the one discovered in Reedley, CA. Here’s what we know about the Reedley lab from a highly disturbing report I requested by the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
It… pic.twitter.com/kbkCuUpmvv
— Kevin Kiley (@KevinKileyCA) February 2, 2026
The highlights, according to the committee:
- The illegal biolab was run by a PRC citizen, Jia Bei Zhu, a wanted fugitive from Canada with a $330 million Canadian dollar judgment against him for stealing American intellectual property (which RedState reported on here).
- Jia Bei Zhu was a top official at a PRC-state-controlled company and had links to military-civil fusion entities (as RedState reported on here).
- The illegal biolab received millions of dollars in unexplained payments from PRC banks.
- The illegal biolab contained thousands of samples of labeled, unlabeled, and encoded potential pathogens, including HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and Covid.
- The illegal biolab also contained a freezer labeled “Ebola,” which contained unlabeled, sealed silver bags consistent with how the lab stored high risk biological materials.
- The biolab contained nearly a thousand transgenic mice, genetically engineered to mimic the human immune system.
- After local officials who discovered the lab sought help from the CDC and others, the CDC refused to test any of the samples – so we don’t truly know what all was stored there.
More on that CCP Connection
Far from being simply an unlicensed laboratory, the facility didn’t seem to meet any type of sanitation requirements. Zhu and his business partners (which include CCP-owned companies; more on that below) failed to contract with any type of medical waste disposal company, and when local public health officials finally gained access to the facility they found “biologicals” such as “jars of urine and peed-on pregnancy tests,” stuffed in desk drawers, as Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba told the Fresno County Board of Supervisors.
The lab in Reedley was purportedly being run by Prestige Biotech Incorporated, which allegedly took over the assets of Universal Meditech, Inc. (UMI), of Fresno, when UMI went out of business. Federal investigators believe that Zhu ran both companies, though, through aliases. UMI sold and distributed in-vitro diagnostic test kits that seem to have been manufactured in China by another of Zhu’s companies, Ai De Diagnostic, which operates in China and Canada, but whose registered agent in the United States is Vivian Li with, you guessed it, Universal Meditech.
Ai De Diagnostic’s headquarters are in the Qingdao High-Tech Industrial Park, which was established and is overseen by the Chinese Communist Party.
There is much, much more to this story, and it’s heartening to see continued follow-up by federal investigators and prosecutors instead of what we’ve been used to over the years.
Editor’s Note: Help us continue to bring you the in-depth reporting you deserve on the CCP infiltration of our country and efforts to fight it.
Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
