A Chinese businessman behind bars at a minimum security prison in California is now the prime suspect behind a newly uncovered biolab hundreds of miles away, in a peaceful Las Vegas neighborhood.

Jia Bei Zhu, a Chinese national with a string of aliases, is awaiting trial on charges related to an illegal biolab discovered in Reedley, California, in 2022.

Zhu is also known as Jesse Zhu and Qiang “David” He.

A tip from a house cleaner led to the Jan. 31 raid of a Las Vegas residence in which the suspected illegal biolab was discovered in a locked garage. The house is one of several properties in the Las Vegas area owned by Zhu or his associates. Rooms in the house were rented on a short-term basis.

The FBI and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department discovered more than 1,000 pieces of evidence, including vials and containers of unknown liquids and other substances, authorities said.

The raid was based on “court filings, available evidence, and financial tracing,” FBI Director Kash Patel told The Epoch Times in a written statement.

He highlighted the connection to China.

“We’ve already taken decisive action, from arresting academic researchers who allegedly smuggled dangerous biochemicals into an American university, to executing large-scale gang takedowns where supply lines traced back to China,” Patel said.

In 2025, several Chinese nationals studying at the University of Michigan were charged with smuggling biochemicals from China into the United States.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the FBI has made it a priority from day one to systematically dismantle Chinese Communist Party influence inside U.S. universities and institutions.” Patel said.

Court filings obtained by The Epoch Times listed Zhu, 64, as the No. 1 suspect in the Las Vegas state criminal investigation, followed by his business and romantic partner, Wang Zhaoyan, and her mother, Yao Xiuqin.

After earning a master’s degree in cell biology from Peking Union Medical College Hospital in 1988, Zhu cofounded Canadian biotech company International Newtech Development in 1991. He was primarily engaged in product development for immunology and diagnostics, according to court documents.

Zhu and several of his companies have been mired in legal battles, stretching from Canada to Hong Kong to the United States, since 2008.

He is currently awaiting an April trial in a Sacramento court on charges of distributing adulterated and misbranded medical devices and providing false statements to government authorities. The Epoch Times contacted Zhu’s attorney for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Calls From Behind Bars

The court filings also give insight into Zhu’s communications during his time behind bars at the Taft Modified Community Correctional Facility, a low-security prison in Kern County, California.

Between Jan. 1, 2025, and Jan. 23, 2026, he made or attempted almost 7,000 phone calls from the facility.

More than 3,500 of those calls were conversations in Mandarin with Wang, who is believed to be married to Zhu and currently living in China with the couple’s infant child after she absconded from a federal indictment, according to the court filings.

Zhu also made a total of 467 calls or attempted calls to his property manager, Ori Solomon. Solomon’s responsibilities included moving and hiding medical laboratory materials and equipment, as directed from prison by Zhu, according to the court filings.

Solomon, 55, who holds Israeli and French citizenship and is known as Salomon on his French passport, was detained at his home on Jan 31. He helped Zhu move and keep the laboratory items, investigators said.

Solomon was also instructed to transfer money to Wang in China, according to investigators.

He is facing a state felony charge of disposing of and releasing hazardous waste, and a federal felony charge of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person (a nonimmigrant visa holder). Six firearms were found in Solomon’s home, including three handguns, one rifle, and one semi-automatic rifle, according to a federal complaint.

Solomon was released on $3,000 bail and is expected back in court on March 4, according to the Clark County, Nevada, court.

The Epoch Times reached out to Solomon’s attorney for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

House Cleaner, Other Properties

The house cleaner who alerted the FBI to the presence of the Las Vegas biolab on Jan. 9 identified herself only as “Kelly” out of safety concerns.

Solomon told her that Zhu called him every day to check on his properties, Kelly said.

In late 2022 or early 2023, Kelly said she was hired to clean two homes—one at 979 Sugar Springs Drive and one nearby at 971 Temple View Drive—that were searched by authorities on Jan. 31.

The garage of the Sugar Springs house was always locked, Kelly said, and she was told by Solomon “numerous times and with strong emphasis” to make sure that the doors to the garage remained locked and that the garage maintained power, according to court documents.

Kelly and another Solomon employee, Michael “Mikey” Richey Harold, became “deathly ill,” about five days after entering the garage in April 2025, according to Kelly’s affidavit to law enforcement. Kelly “could not get out of bed” and was left with breathing issues, fatigue, and muscle aches.

The garage smelled like a hospital, Kelly said, “not like a clean hospital but more of a foul stale stagnant air smell.”

Kelly told the investigators that if authorities “contacted Ori [Solomon], he would have the lab moved out of the garage immediately.”

Kelly told investigators that Harold had previously moved the lab equipment, refrigerators, and freezer from a location on West Charleston Boulevard in Las Vegas to the house on Sugar Springs Drive.

That lines up with a statement from Kent Williams, a public health analyst at the Southern Nevada Health District, who told FBI special agent Scott Foutz on Jan. 9 that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, FBI Las Vegas, and the Department of Homeland Security had previously investigated a facility in the 1800 block of West Charleston Boulevard. Medical equipment was allegedly stored at that facility, but investigators never found it.

Zhu and his associates had attempted to obtain a license for a lab at the West Charleston Boulevard address about four months after the discovery of the illegal biolab in Reedley in December 2022.

Public records show that PBI Diagnostic Laboratory LLC, a company owned by Wang, applied for a medical laboratory license on April 4, 2023. The company subsequently fired its staff and hired a new director, who rescinded the application before officials could meet with her to process it.

Zhu’s company David Destiny Discovery, which is registered under his alias David He, owns the Sugar Springs Drive home, according to public records. Although both homes were raided on Jan. 31, investigators found no biological materials at the Temple View property.

Wang and her mother are listed as managing members of David Destiny Discovery, and as owners of the Temple View Drive home, which shares a mailing address with the Sugar Springs Drive residence.

David Destiny Discovery also owns Zhu’s residence in Clovis, California. Records show that the house was transferred from Wang to David Destiny Discovery for $10 on Nov. 12, 2022. She had purchased the property in 2017 at a price of $507,500, public records show.

Medi-Source, LLC, another company linked to Zhu and Wang, owns five high-rise condos in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, according to assessor records in Clark County, Nevada. Wang is listed as the only managing member of Medi-Source.

Wang’s mother, Yao, is listed as president and director for Prestige Biotech, one of the owners of the Reedley biolab. In 2023, Yao’s address in relation to her roles at Prestige was listed with the Nevada secretary of state as one of the condos that Medi-Source owns in Paradise, Las Vegas.

The Evidence

During the raid on the Sugar Springs Drive home, authorities retrieved more than 1,000 samples, including vials and unknown liquids of various colors, many of them collected from refrigerators and a freezer located in the locked garage.

“All samples were carefully loaded into an FBI aircraft for transportation to the National Bioforensic Analysis Center in Maryland,” Las Vegas FBI Special Agent in Charge Christopher S. Delzotto said at a press conference on Feb 2.

The National Bioforensic Analysis Center conducts analysis of evidence from bio-crimes and terrorist attacks, according to its website.

“These items were consistent in appearance to the items found and described in the Reedley, California, lab investigation,” Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters on Feb. 2.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested about 15 percent of the biological materials—only those that were labeled—discovered in the Reedley case in 2022, Jesalyn Harper, code enforcement officer for the Reedley Fire Department, told investigators.

Harper discovered the Reedley biolab.

“We’re appreciative that the Las Vegas lab is being taken seriously and showing that biosafety labs are a crisis in the United States,” Harper told The Epoch Times.

“But we sympathize with the community because we relate to what they’re going through, the frustration, the fear, the lack of communication with federal partners.

“Together we’re hoping to be able to move forward and work together on addressing these labs.”

The Las Vegas investigation is ongoing, Patel said.

“For years, the CCP’s covert presence in the United States grew while some leaders looked the other way,“ he said. ”That is no longer the case. We’ve been given a clear mandate to root out these networks, protect American institutions, and save lives.”

Steve Ispas contributed to this story.