When Jesse Jia-Bei Zhu left British Columbia in 2015, the 62-year-old had a six-month jail sentence and a multimillion-dollar B.C. Supreme Court judgment hanging over his head — fallout from his thwarted plans for global domination of the lucrative bull semen industry.
Nearly a decade later, the wily entrepreneur’s name has resurfaced in the U.S. in connection to equally bizarre — if unsettling — allegations involving a pair of biolabs in California and Nevada stocked with vials of potentially hazardous substances.
Questions have swirled around Zhu since authorities stumbled across a suspected laboratory last weekend in a Las Vegas home he proposed as a place to live while awaiting trial for distributing adulterated COVID-19 tests throughout the United States.
Zhu — who is both a Chinese and Canadian citizen — lost that application for release.
Instead, he remains in the pre-trial jail cell where he has lived since his arrest in 2023 following the discovery of a separate biological lab in Fresno County, Calif., full of test mice and vials of liquids containing labels like HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.
It’s the same correctional facility from which Zhu — who claims he’s innocent of all allegations — continues to battle efforts by corporate giant XY LLC to collect on B.C. Supreme Court judgments totalling more than $270 million for stealing valuable bull sexing technology.
Evidence cited at those trials may provide some insight into the problems Zhu faces today.
“The law is strong,” Zhu said at one point in an email quoted in one of the searing rulings against him.
“But the outlaws are ten times stronger.”
CBC News has reviewed court documents related to Zhu in both Canadian and U.S. courts. The records shine a light on the complex path that put him in the headlines in both countries.
The Canadian proceedings also raise questions about the way companies connected to Zhu obtained government grants and perpetrated what one judge said was “arguably a fraud against the Canadian government” by tying investment to immigration.
According to U.S. court documents, Zhu moved to Canada from China in 1988, living in B.C. and travelling extensively back and forth to the United States before he left Canada for good in 2015 — when he was recorded flying into Los Angeles, his last recorded border-crossing.
Around the same time, a lawyer for Zhu told a B.C. Supreme Court judge his client was “afraid of setting foot in this jurisdiction for fear that he will be arrested” — in relation to a six month sentence for civil contempt of court related to the XY LLC lawsuit.
The contempt ruling followed a $8.5 million decision against Zhu and the web of companies he was found to have used to obtain XY LLC’s confidential technology allowing for the separation of female and male chromosomes in bull sperm.
In defiance of that ruling, Zhu was accused of setting up a new entity “for the purpose of secretly producing sexed semen using XY’s technology” through a complicated shell game involving retrofitted machines and plans to sell semen and technology in China.
In WeChat conversations, Zhu spoke about his plans to break XY by making them “feel all the time the sword of Damocles is on their heads.”
A judge called him “somewhat melodramatic.” At one point, Zhu said he wanted to “defeat the American aggressor and wild ambitious wolf!”
Instead, he wound up with a second ruling against him — one of the largest ever issued in a B.C. courtroom — for $270 million in damages. But by that time, Zhu was gone.
According to a report from the U.S. Congress Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Zhu next came into public view when a law enforcement officer in Reedley, Calif., “noticed a green garden hose sticking out of a hole drilled into the side of a warehouse.”
Upon entering, she found “laboratory equipment, manufacturing devices, and what appeared to be medical-grade freezers.”
“Inside, she saw thousands of vials of biological substances. Many were unlabeled. Others were labeled in a foreign language later identified as Mandarin. Others still were labeled in some kind of code. A few of the vials, however, had labels in English,” the report says.
“Some of these labels listed substances that (the officer) at the time did not recognize. She did, however, recognize the names listed on several labels, such as HIV.”
According to the congressional report, officials learned the facility had been set up by Zhu — who was now using the name David He. The report says the samples seized at the facility were never tested, despite concerns they might have pointed to cross-border transport of pathogens.
Following an investigation, Zhu was charged with selling hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 test kits throughout the U.S. without obtaining pre-market approval, pre-market clearance or emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Zhu has filed a civil suit seeking damages from civic and public health officials in the U.S. in relation to the raid on the California facility, claiming officials lied about the laboratory being hazardous and operating illegally.
He claims he and his company have been “dragged through the mud,” characterized “as operating an ‘illegal Chinese lab’ and of engaging in bioterrorism, although neither accusation had even a scintilla of factual support.”
The congressional report called for greater oversight of laboratories engaging in pathogenic studies in order to safeguard “Americans while still promoting responsible research.”
“A disturbing realization is that no one knows whether there are other unknown biolabs in the United States because there is no monitoring system in place,” the report concluded.
Last weekend, FBI agents were back at the California lab, in support of an investigation which began the previous day with a police raid at a Las Vegas home suspected of housing a biolab.
In a statement, police drew the link to Zhu, noting that the home was owned by an individual who was already in federal custody in relation to the biolab in Reedley.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sheriff Kevin McMahill told a news conference that three individuals were renting rooms in the house, but were not involved in the investigation.
He said investigators used a tactical robot to enter a locked garage, where they found hazardous material.
“Investigators observed multiple refrigerators, a freezer and other laboratory type equipment along with numerous bottle and jugs containing unknown liquid substances,” McMahill said.
“These items, importantly, were consistent in the appearance of items found and described in the Reedley California lab investigation.”
Police arrested the 55-year-old property manager of the Las Vegas house, Ori Solomon, booking him on charges of disposing and discharging hazardous waste.
According to a motion for review of Zhu’s detention order filed in January 2025, Zhu proposed Solomon and another man as third party custodians in a plan that would have seen him live with an ankle bracelet and GPS monitoring at the Las Vegas home.
Zhu is not charged with any wrongdoing in the Las Vegas case.
His lawyer did not respond to an email from CBC News requesting comment, but in a statement quoted by the Associated Press, Anthony Capozzi said Zhu is scheduled to go on trial in relation to the COVID kits in April and has been in jail for three years.
“He is not involved in any kind of a biolab being conducted in a home in Las Vegas,” Capozzi said.
“What went on in that residence we are unaware of.”
Meanwhile, XY LLC continues in its efforts to make good on its B.C. Supreme Court judgments in Canada and in Hong Kong, where the company is also fighting Zhu in court.
The company said it had no comment on events involving Zhu as litigation remains before the court in Canada.
XY LLC filed a civil claim against Zhu and others in 2023 to obtain a default judgment in relation to the original $8.5 million award.
Zhu has filed responses to the suit from jail, and XY LLC has obtained an order forcing him to advise the company of the source of funds spent on legal fees, including those paid to Capozzi.
The company’s legal filings include two pages of quotes from judgments against Zhu, accusing him of “fraud of epic proportions” and “highly reprehensible conduct.”
Zhu recently applied to set aside the default judgment, and then applied to adjourn the hearing of his application.
In a response, the company asked a judge to consider “the history of the matter.”
“Mr. Zhu has engaged in repeated delay tactics before this court in an effort to ‘stonewall the legal process in British Columbia,'” the company wrote in submissions filed last month.
“This adjournment request, and the underlying application (to set aside the default order) as a whole, is yet another example of these tactics.”
