Mansion search found antique sculptures, millions in alcohol and fake passports
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge on Tuesday ordered Guojun Xuan and Silvia Shasha Zhang to surrender all of their passports, real and fake, and set bail at $20 million each on charges the couple conspired to abuse 15 of their 27 children, including a 2-month-old, in their 10,287-square-foot Arcadia mansion.
Judge Kerry White’s orders also placed the couple on home detention with electronic monitoring, prohibited them from contacting any surrogacy agencies and barred them from contact with most of the children. The couple, ages 66 and 39 respectively, pleaded not guilty in court Tuesday and denied all charges.
A search of the mansion by investigators turned up antique sculptures, millions of dollars’ worth of alcohol, bank statements for 200 bank accounts and 70 corporate accounts, and multiple fake passports, Deputy District Attorney MacKenzie Teymouri said.
“This house could only be described as a house of horrors,” District Attorney Nathan Hochman said at a Tuesday press conference. “The discipline was nothing short of physical abuse, beatings and punishment on a daily basis.” The criminal complaint alleges the couple ordered nannies to beat the children with shoes and wooden sticks, including toddlers, while the couple sometimes watched and laughed.
Xuan and Zhang are the former owners of Mark Surrogacy, a company shut down last year. Prosecutors say the couple reached out to potential surrogates across the country, providing false information about themselves and their reasons for seeking surrogacy services, and that the company had previously been the subject of an investigation into an alleged surrogacy scam operated out of the couple’s home. At least 14 of the children living with the couple in May 2025 were born to surrogate mothers, prosecutors said.
The couple’s attorney, Mitchell Krems, told NBC News that Xuan is innocent and is being “unfairly scrutinized” because he is Chinese and has an unusually large family. Krems also denied that Xuan needed “surrogacy for money.” “He’s exercising his civil liberties to be able to have as many children as he wants,” Krems said. “There’s no law against that.”
The investigation began after a 2-month-old child was brought to a hospital with head injuries. A criminal complaint alleges a nanny struck the child in the head on May 4, 2025, and that the couple waited days before seeking medical attention. Each defendant faces one felony count of conspiracy to commit child abuse; Xuan additionally faces one felony count of child abuse. If convicted, Xuan faces up to 17 years in prison and Zhang faces up to 11 years and 8 months.