The alarming discovery last week of a biological laboratory in a Las Vegas garage, owned by a Chinese national and suspected of housing deadly pathogens, has been linked to a disturbing case in Reedley, California, where a similar but larger unlicensed facility was discovered in 2023.

The Reedley lab contained 32 refrigerators and freezers filled with thousands of vials of biological material, including pathogens such as HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, Covid-19, and Ebola, police and congressional reports state.

It also contained a thousand mice packed together, many of them dead or dying, exuding a nauseating odor. According to some reports, cited at a House committee meeting, the mice were genetically engineered to carry the Covid-19 virus.

Police say the Las Vegas and California labs are closely connected. Both properties are registered to a 62-year-old Chinese national, Jesse Zhu, who also goes by the name of David He. He is currently in federal custody awaiting trial for running an unauthorized research facility with harmful substances.

Zhu is also accused of manufacturing and distributing falsely labeled medical devices, including fake tests for Covid-19, pregnancy and HIV, all without proper permits. He has also been charged with lying to the Food and Drug Administration, the NY Post reported.

Over the weekend, the FBI and local police arrested the Las Vegas property’s manager, Ori Solomon, an Israeli citizen, for being “an agent and conspirator in the running of the lab and in disposing of and discharging hazardous waste,” the article said.

Employee Tipped Off Police

According to police reports, a cleaning employee at the Las Vegas biolab referred to as “Kelly” tipped off the police about her suspicions at the property, after several people who spent time inside the home fell seriously ill.

The report quoted Kelly as saying she and Solomon’s handyman both got “’deathly ill’ after going into the garage.

“Approximately five days after entering the garage, she was left with breathing issues, fatigue, ‘could not get out of bed,’ and muscle aches,” the police report states. “The handyman had the same symptoms, and Solomon’s own wife also got sick after entering the garage.”

A SWAT team wearing protective equipment searched the property on Jan. 31, and brought with them robots that tested air samples as well as monitoring drones. Investigators focused on the garage where they found “potential biological and hazardous materials.”

The items were consistent with the setup found in the 2023 California investigation, Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Police Department said at a news conference. The police found a “significant volume of material, including a vast array of vials and storage containers with liquids of different colors and compositions,” the sheriff said.

He noted that four bottles of hydrochloric acid were also found in an “apparently abandoned and open box, stored haphazardly on an open shelf.” Hydrochloric acid can “cause substantial permanent injuries to the human body if exposed to the skin, inhaled or ingested,” the police report said, adding that the abandoned bottles alone “could potentially imperil the lives of anyone in or near the garage.”

The report also alleges that Ori Solomon, now in federal custody, had “direct knowledge of the biolab being owned and operated by Zhu,” and that the two men had been in “constant communication” since his 2023 arrest. Solomon “is known to execute the business dealings for Zhu, and then would transfer funds to Zhu’s wife and business partner,” according to the report.

While incarcerated, the Chinese inmate had more than 460 calls with Solomon in the past year alone, the report said, based on information gathered from the prison.

Kelly told police that calls came for Solomon “almost every day” from Zhu, instructing him to check up on the garage, and to move the lab “out of the garage immediately” if he was ever contacted by investigators. The Chinese owner of the lab thus managed to keep it running even from prison.

An International Fugitive with Close Ties to Beijing
Had the FBI heeded appeals from multiple congressmen for a full-scale investigation after the Reedley, California biolab was exposed in 2023, Zhu would have been stopped in his tracks. But Reedley never became the focus of a full federal probe under the Biden administration, a House Select Committee report stated.

The report described Zhu as a Chinese citizen and “an international fugitive” from Canada with close ties to Beijing. He was involved in a transnational criminal enterprise that stole hundreds of millions of dollars in intellectual property from US companies, the committee said.

When a Canadian court issued a $330 million judgment for stealing American intellectual property, Zhu fled the country and entered the United States, assuming the false identity of “David He.”

The Chinese fugitive then set up a network of companies that dealt with the acquisition of expensive medical equipment and dangerous pathogens including the Ebola virus, one of the deadliest viruses known to humanity. He was somehow able to acquire these apparent pathogens even though he was a wanted fugitive and operated an unlicensed laboratory.

He also began “purchasing counterfeit Covid-19 and pregnancy test kits from the PRC and re-selling them in the United States,” labeling them “Made in the USA,” the House report said. This “business” became a front for the biolab operation, which was always kept locked.

While he engaged in this criminal activity, Zhu was also “receiving steady payments” — totaling more than one million dollars — “via wire transfer from Chinese banks,” the House report attested.

FBI Drop the Ball

Despite the glaring red flags, the FBI dropped the Reedley case after stating that “no mass weapons of destruction” were involved at the biolab that required its intervention. The CDC, in turn, refused to conduct any testing of the wide array of substances found at the facility, some of which bore labels attesting to their pathogenicity.

How ironic. The same CDC that aggressively imposed masking, vaccine mandates, social distancing, and lockdowns during the pandemic seemed untroubled by deadly pathogens sitting in an illegal, low-security facility—posing a risk to untold thousands. [See Sidebar]

FBI Director Kash Patel, in an interview with Just the News last week, slammed the failure of federal officials under the Biden administration to conduct a serious investigation after the exposure of the illegal biolab. The incident suggests the Biden administration may have chosen to “bury” the truth about these hazardous facilities being tied to China, he said.

“We’ve taken action to ‘course correct’ the intelligence and figure out why the American public was misled by individuals who said the secret facility [in California] had no connection to the Chinese Communist Party, when in fact evidence shows it was closely tied to the CCP,” Patel said in the interview.

The House Select Committee report had highlighted Zhu’s links to Beijing and the CCP, noting that before coming to North America, Zhu held important positions in several enterprises controlled by the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Whether by design, or due to inertia or sheer incompetence, the prior FBI leadership’s failure to follow through on clues pointing to CCP involvement clearly endangered the public, Patel said.

“This FBI, under President Trump’s leadership, has prioritized the CCP’s threat against us and we’ve already taken swift action,” Patel told Just the News, promising full transparency as the facts emerge.

“We worked with the state law enforcement authorities there in Las Vegas to execute search warrants and collect over 1000 samples of material that has been sent back to the FBI lab for analysis,” the FBI director detailed. “And this is something that we’re going to keep continuing to uncover.”

He had harsh words for the Biden administration for shutting down the “China Initiative,” the FBI’s main counterintelligence effort to find Chinese security threats inside academia, saying it has led to an explosion of CCP activities on U.S. soil.

“This is just another disastrous example of the Biden administration failing to protect national security,” Patel said. “Who takes down an initiative against our number one adversary, the CCP, when they are not only conducting counterespionage activities here in the homeland against Americans, but also overseas, and importing illegal bio pathogens to harm us?” the FBI director questioned.

Just the News has detailed findings by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) that raised concerns about at least 20 Chinese scientists who are embedded inside American academia and at cutting-edge U.S. labs.

These Chinese nationals “appear to be members of the CCP, are affiliated with Chinese projects aimed at stealing U.S. technology, or are involved with companies tied to Beijing’s defense sector,” the AAF said.

“That situation is due to prior policies detrimental to our national security,” Patel observed. “President Trump came in and said we’re reversing course. We don’t necessarily need a new “China Initiative.” We just need the FBI all in against the CCP, and that’s what we’ve done.”

Bipartisan Group Sponsors Bill to Thwart Illegal Labs

Among the congressmen who have been most vocal about passing legislation to thwart the smuggling of biological materials into the United States by foreign nationals is a bipartisan group of California representatives: Reps. Jim Costa and Kevin Kiley, both Democrats, and David Valadao, a Republican.

The three sponsored a bill in 2023, following the discovery of the Reedley biolab, “Preventing Illegal Laboratories and Protecting Public Health Act,” aimed at installing rigorous measures to prevent dangerous unlicensed labs from operating under the radar.

“The Reedley lab was a dangerous national security failure, and it’s critical we put safeguards in place to ensure it never happens again,” Rep. Valadao said in a statement.

The bill would strengthen tracking and oversight, and ensure stricter coordination between government agencies to protect national security. It would close loopholes to prevent foreign adversaries from operating illegal labs while escaping detection.

Despite being introduced more than a year ago, the legislation has been languishing in the Energy and Commerce Committee. The sensational media coverage of the biolab in Las Vegas, however, has turned the spotlight on the issue, galvanizing more support for the bill.

Representatives Kevin Kiley and Jim Costa promoted the legislation on the House floor last week, urging committees to move it forward. “The announcement of the recent federal and local law enforcement raid in Las Vegas doesn’t come as a surprise,” said Costa. “I’ve been ringing the alarm since 2023, when my constituents experienced a similar threat from an illegal Chinese lab operating in Reedley, California.”

Noting that the threat of deadly pathogens in the hands of unknown “bad actors” persists throughout the country, Costa urged Congress “to pass this legislation to protect our communities and safeguard public health.”

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Rep. Kevin Kiley Eviscerates CDC on Congressional Floor

In May 2024, less than a year after the Reedley biolab was discovered, Rep. Kevin Kiley delivered a scathing floor speech condemning the CDC’s “deeply disturbing” response to an illegal biolab housing deadly pathogens.

The congressman began his remarks by describing the findings of the police, recounting that “at the time that this was discovered, I called for an investigation and, eventually, the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party produced an incredibly disturbing report.”

“The report found that local officials in Reedley had begged the CDC to come in and investigate after they found this lab, and the CDC repeatedly ignored them and even hung up on them,” Kiley said.

“I have spoken with the city manager, Nicole Zieba, and she said that their calls for help from both the Federal Government and the State were completely ignored. It was only after Representative Jim Costa, who represents that area, got involved that the CDC finally came to investigate.”

Even then, their investigation was “completely inadequate,” Kiley said. “Incredibly, they didn’t test any of the actual samples, some of which were labeled “E. coli” or “Hepatitis” or whatever it was. They just assumed that the label was accurate, took it at face value. Yet some of those samples were in an indecipherable code. We don’t know what was in them, and they didn’t bother to test those.”

The California Democrat expressed his astonishment at the fact that after the CDC completed their investigation, officials came across a refrigerator labeled Ebola which had completely escaped the CDC’s notice.

“I have sent a letter to Director [Mandy] Cohen, asking for an explanation as to how it is possible that the CDC first ignored, and then failed to sufficiently investigate this dire danger to public health?’ Kiley told the assembly.

His letter fired off a series of hard-hitting questions. “Why were local officials ignored by the CDC? Why were none of the unlabeled agents tested?

“Why did the CDC falsely claim that it ‘could not test unlabeled select agents’ [deadly biological viruses, bacteria or toxins], when they have previously tested ‘unlabeled select agents’ in many cases, such as when anthrax was sent to this congressional building?”

“How did you miss a freezer that was labeled Ebola? And how did this lab escape detection in the first place?”

“Finally, what is the CDC doing to prevent future labs of the same nature from being built?”

Asking for a timely response to his questions, Kiley concluded with an appeal to “my colleagues in the House to pass my legislation with Representative Costa, so we can do everything possible to ensure there are no other CCP-linked, illegal labs operating in this country.”

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Tip of the Iceberg

Perhaps because Las Vegas is a bigger, higher-profile city than Reedley, California, the discovery of the illegal biolab there galvanized the media, and pictures of SWAT teams in full protective gear hauling out tons of biological materials were splashed under sensational headlines.

Suddenly, interest was reawakened in the earlier Reedley case, which had never achieved traction in the news cycle despite being a larger and more dangerous facility than the Las Vegas lab. Americans began to realize that these incidents were likely not isolated cases.

Speaking to Just the News, FBI Director Patel confirmed that the exposure of the two labs dealing with lethal pathogens are merely the tip of the iceberg. He pointed to a shocking string of federal arrests linked to Chinese students at the University of Michigan, who had allegedly engaged in a scheme “to smuggle biohazardous pathogens into the U.S. for experimentation.”

“Just last year in Michigan, we arrested three individual researchers at the University of Michigan who were trying — not trying, did — import illegally biohazardous materials and pathogens into this country. They are apparently aiming to attack our agricultural and bio-seed industry, Patel said. “And so we’ve been on it since then.”

In the same vein, the Justice Department announced in June that two Chinese nationals — Yunqing Jian and Zunyong Liu — had been charged with “conspiracy, smuggling goods into the United States, false statements, and visa fraud.” Jian had been a scholar at the University of Michigan while her friend, Liu, had been studying at a Chinese university.

The DOJ said the bureau had “arrested Jian in connection with allegations that Jian and Liu had smuggled into America a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, which scientific literature classifies as a potential agro-terrorism weapon.” In November, Jian pleaded guilty to these charges and to lying to FBI agents about it.

In another case, the DOJ also announced in September that another Chinese national, Chengxuan Han, had “pleaded guilty to three smuggling charges related to biological material, and to lying to U.S. CBP Officers.”

The Justice Department said that “Han sent multiple packages to the United States from China containing concealed biological material” and that “these packages were addressed to individuals associated with a laboratory at the University of Michigan.”

The string of cases stemming from the University of Michigan International Research Department has continued to spiral. The DOJ announced recently that three additional Chinese students were charged with a “conspiracy to smuggle biological materials into the United States and for making false statements” to CBP officers.

Critics say these developments underscore a chaotic situation at the University of Michigan whereby its research programs are being outrageously exploited in ways that endanger public safety, with seemingly no internal controls.