Discovery of illegal Las Vegas biolab with Chinese links leads to concerns of more in U.S.
· Toronto Sun
Las Vegas cops’ discovery of an unauthorized biolab with links to China could mean there are even more down south to be used for bioterrorism, warns a security expert according to the Daily Mail in an exclusive report.
Police raided a five-bedroom home, listed as an Airbnb rental, in a residential neighborhood on Jan. 31 after after several people who had stayed there reportedly became “deathly ill.”
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Once inside, cops found weapons, refrigerators containing vials of suspicious liquids and “laboratory-style equipment.”
More than 1,000 samples of the liquids were sent for testing at the National Bioforensic Analysis Center and police arrested Israeli citizen named Ori Solomon, 55, who they said was the house manager.
Solomon has been charged with disposing and discharging hazardous waste and being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm due to his visa type but his attorneys say he’s innocent and not involved with the lab.
Colateral for bail
The house was previously listed as collateral for bail by a Chinese national with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) named Jia Bei Zhu.
Zhu was arrested in 2023 after being accused of operating a similar unauthorized biolab in Reedley, Calif.
A national security expert say the discovery of those two unauthorized labs, especially in Reedley – where a Congressional probe found dangerous pathogens from legitimate American suppliers were collected for years before being detected – is concerning.
“Most striking is how long these facilities operated undetected,” Sam Howell, an associate fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told the Daily Mail .
“A local code enforcement officer just happened to stumble upon (the Reedley lab) by accident, and there was no federal mechanism that would have flagged it proactively. Policymakers, frankly, have no idea how many of these labs are operating.”
Chinese national called Vegas biolab around 400 times in last year
According to phone records, Zhu called the Las Vegas biolab around 400 times in the past year but his attorney claimed he wasn’t aware of any alleged illegal activity.
The Reedley biolab was full of many dead test mice and vials of liquid with labels for various deadly diseases including malaria, COVID-19, tuberculosis, HIV, herpes and dengue fever while a refrigerator was labeled Ebola.
A report by the House Select Committee said Zhu was a successful businessman with close ties to the Chinese government in the early 2000s and the primary shareholder of 11 Chinese cattle companies at a time when there was a China dairy crisis.
Canadian investigators allege Zhu eventually moved to Canada where he set up new businesses to steal American cattle-based intellectual property to send to China.
He was found guilty of intellectual property theft in Canada and issued a $330-million fine but in 2015 fled to the U.S. under the alias David He and opened his first biolab in Fresno before moving it to Reedley.
U.S. authorities have not charged Zhu of running an illegal biolab due to many of the Reedley location vials never being tested.
Instead, Zhu was arrested on charges of manufacturing and distributing misbranded medical devices and making false statements to the Food and Drug Administration and pled not guilty.
The investigation later alleged Zhu had received more than $1.3 million through wire payments from Chinese banks and he was also charged with conspiracy and wire fraud to which he also pled not guilty.
He remains in federal custody while awaiting a trial scheduled to begin later this month in Sacramento.