Who Is “Jesse” Zhu, the Chinese National behind a Dangerous Biolab in California?

By Nikos Biggs-Chiropolos and Adam Garrie, The Kennedy Beacon

Finding Chinese nationals working in an abandoned warehouse turned illegal biolab raised serious alarms for Code Enforcement Officer Jesalyn Harper in the center of Reedley, California. But could this dangerous lab be part of an operation that reached far beyond the quiet agricultural community? 

Local investigators subsequently discovered that the lab was run by Jia Bei Zhu, aka Jesse Zhu (who has also used the aliases Qiang He and David He), a 62-year-old Chinese citizen who entered the US illegally after becoming a fugitive from Canadian justice. 

On March 13, 2024, counsels representing the United States of America (plaintiff) and Jia Bei Zhu aka Jesse Zhu, Qiang He, and David He (defendant) appeared before the Honorable Barbara A. McAuliffe, United States District Court, Eastern District of California in Fresno. According to the court records, the hearing was continued to April because “the government has produced initial discovery and supplemental discovery to defense counsel.” The defense was not yet ready to proceed.

An Illicit Business History

Zhu was wanted in Canada for contempt of court due to an unpaid $330 million (CAD) judgment for stealing intellectual property belonging to XY, LLC, a Colorado-based company that controls the worldwide market for male/female sperm-sorting technology for livestock, as reported by Daniel Gligich in The San Joaquin Valley Sun. As Canadian court documents reveal, that stolen technology has now been reverse-engineered for use in China. Zhu fled to the United States using a false identity, David He, ostensibly to evade authorities. 

When Zhu lived in China in the early 2000s, he was in charge of multiple companies experimenting with infectious disease agents. These companies, like all large pharmaceutical companies in China, had close ties to China’s military. It is not clear when Zhu moved to Canada, but he continued these activities there, setting up IND Diagnostic Incorporated – a group of five companies engaged in diagnostics and medical technology. IND was an umbrella for a shell game of companies that were tied to various family members and overseen by Zhu.

Legal documents also reveal that bank accounts belonging to Zhu, registered in Hong Kong, were frozen by the court. While it is relatively common for Chinese businessmen to hold bank accounts in Hong Kong due to the special administrative region’s greater connectivity to the global financial system than mainland China, these revelations additionally demonstrate the complexity and sophistication of Zhu’s multinational business dealings, which seemed designed to evade detection.

Zhu ran the Reedley lab through another American-incorporated company, Universal Meditech Incorporated (UMI), and later through another company, known as Prestige Biotech Incorporated (Prestige Biotech). According to Gateway Pundit, following UMI’s bankruptcy, Prestige Biotech became the legal successor of UMI. 

The Epoch Times released a video in March detailing possible associations between Zhu and the Chinese Communist Party during his time in the US. 

The Biolab That Busted Him

The Reedley lab was operating without a California business license. Its parent company, Prestige, an entity incorporated in Nevada, did not own any licenses for business operations in California.  

The Reedley biolab still appears on Google Maps as “PRESTIGE Biological Lab” in the center of Reedley.

As described in part 3 of this series (the full video and written transcript of our interview with Officer Harper), Zhu was authorized (under the alias David He) to work in California. In his affidavit submitted with the criminal complaint filed in California, Special Agent Jeffrey Maurice of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Office of Criminal Investigations, stated that Zhu had an authentic employment authorization card, issued in 2021 by United States Citizen and Immigration Services, in the name of Qiang “David” He, with the same fingerprints that Zhu used to travel in Canada from China between 2003 and 2008.

Zhu finally was detained by US law enforcement in October 2023 due to his sale of counterfeit and mislabeled pregnancy and COVID-19 test kits, as well as consequent false statements to authorities (the latter of which carries a longer sentence) about his identity and business practices. He was indicted in November on two counts of distributing misbranded medical devices and one count of making false statements to the FDA.

Nevertheless, Zhu has a long history of working with biological agents.

Zhu in California

A US Congressional Select Committee investigation of this biolab found that the Reedley location was not the first illegal facility that Zhu operated on US soil. He had previously operated another illegal biolab in the nearby city of Fresno, before suspected faulty wiring caused a fire that, along with the threat of eviction and a pending investigation by authorities, led him to flee to Reedley. As described in part 2 of this series, the Select Committee’s report blasted the CDC for taking no action against Zhu and failing to fully investigate or help to decontaminate the facility, leaving the burden on Reedley local officials.

During his time in California, Zhu engaged in many illegal activities, including financial fraud (often involving the receipt of funds originating from China) and the illegal sale of counterfeit medical testing kits imported from China, according to the Select Committee’s report. 

Amid all of his ongoing nefarious activities, Zhu’s company UMI was given a $360,000 tax credit, as described in documentation from the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. The tax credit, which effectively functions as a taxpayer-funded subsidy, was granted in the summer of 2019.

The document from California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office indicates that the credit was given to UMI, described only as a “medical device manufacturer,” in order to create jobs in Fresno. However, the Select Committee’s report gives no indication that any US citizen, let alone a person local to Fresno County, was ever employed at the facility. Documents from Zhu’s eventual 2023 indictment in the US state that his companies made “millions of dollars” from the sales of the fake test kits.

While his precise residency remains unknown, Zhu purchased a house valued at approximately $850,000 in Las Vegas in 2022. Curiously, property assessment records show that Zhu registered the house under “David Destiny Discovery LLC.” This same name was listed as the registered owner of a $770,000 property in Clovis, California, as reported by David Taub of GV Wire. According to the Nevada Secretary of State, David Destiny Discovery, LLC, is registered to “David He” and the Managing Member is Zhu’s wife, Zhaoyang Wang – who, according to reports, recently fled to China on a one-way ticket with their infant son and her mother.  

Following the aforementioned arrest and indictment, Zhu remains in custody after a November 22, 2023, detention hearing. According to Brianna Willis, reporting for ABC News, no bail was set for the former fugitive, as he was determined to be a flight risk.

According to the United States Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of California, Zhu faces up to three to five years in prison for medical fraud and misstatement charges and $500,000 in fines.

Although Zhu’s actions ultimately did land him in the custody of law enforcement, outstanding questions remain about why and how he was allowed to enter the country, why he seems to have escaped punishment in Canada, and why he was charged with distribution of fake medical tests rather than potentially more serious charges related to the illegal, and very dangerous, nature of the activities he directed in the Reedley biolab.

It should also be noted that a Canadian national intelligence operation discovered in March 2024 that two Chinese researchers who worked in Canada’s top microbiology lab passed on secrets to the Chinese government that presented a “realistic and credible threat to Canada’s economic security,” as explained by The New York Times. Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government attempted to block the parliamentary inquiry and conceal this information, leading them to be found in contempt of Parliament in 2021. 

Whether Zhu was involved with Chinese nationals in that case is unknown, but the troubling lack of transparency in this years-long investigation makes it seem unlikely that such findings would be shared with the public.

It is possible that the answers to these questions could be revealed during the course of the legal proceedings against Zhu in the California courts. However, the Department of Justice’s lack of interest in the dangerous pathogens at the illegal biolab in Reedley remains the biggest and most concerning question of all.

Adam Garrie is a writer, speaker, and consultant on a wide range of current affairs as well as political risk. He is also the cofounder of HiCyrus, a data-driven tech startup that aims to fully democratize information access. 

Nikos Biggs-Chiropolos studied government at Georgetown University and interned for several Democratic elected officials and their campaigns, and other affiliated groups. He then earned a master’s degree in urban studies in France, where extremely strict COVID-19 lockdowns led to his political reawakening and inspired him to try to help fix the broken two-party system.