Jia Bei Zhu, owner of secret Chinese-run California lab, faces new US charges
- He and his partner Zhaoyan Wang were linked to a scheme to import Covid-19 test kits from China while pretending they were made in the US
A US federal grand jury handed down new charges on Thursday for the man accused of being behind the California lab that regulators said was illegally distributing misbranded Covid-19 test kits as the owners lied to investors.
Jia Bei Zhu, 62, previously faced three counts of lying to regulators and distributing misbranded medical devices, but the grand jury on Thursday returned a new 12-count superseding indictment.
The new charges filed in the Eastern District of California courtroom in Fresno County included conspiracy and wire fraud related to the lab discovered in late 2022, the US Department of Justice said in a news release.
Zhu is a citizen of China who lived in Clovis at the time of the lab’s discovery, according to prosecutors. His romantic and business partner, 38-year-old Zhaoyan Wang, was also named in the indictment.
Their lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two were linked to a limited partnership based in Oakland that owns the property in question in downtown Reedley, California, that was secretly used by Universal Meditech Inc. and Prestige Biotech Inc.
