Surrogate suits allege Zhang did not disclose agency ties
At an October 16 hearing, Deputy District Attorney MacKenzie Cameron Teymouri told the judge that 26 children were involved with the family. A complaint said Zhang kept a spreadsheet listing 21 children as of May 2025, and authorities placed those children in state protective custody. CBS News, BBC’s U.S. news partner, reported in January 2026 that five more children had been born since then.
In May 2025, Walter, a two-month-old baby, was taken to a hospital in Arcadia with a head injury. The woman who claimed to be his mother said Walter had accidentally fallen from a bed, according to a police report. A doctor said Walter’s condition felt more similar to injuries sustained during a car accident or from being shaken. Police suspected child abuse, searched the mansion where Walter lived and briefly detained his parents, Xuan, 66, and Zhang, 39.
Prosecutors described what they found as a camera-laced labyrinth containing 14 surrogate children aged between six months and three and said the children faced beatings on a daily basis. According to the complaint, 32 cameras were set up in the mansion; prosecutors said they were motion-activated throughout. Footage showed young children spending hours by desks. One room had no camera, but other cameras captured nannies carrying children into it, and children could then be heard screaming from inside. At an October press conference following the charges, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said, “This house could only be described as a house of horrors for these incredibly young children that had been brought to this house through this surrogacy process.”
Prosecutors claimed that Walter’s injuries were caused by one of the nannies, Chunmei Li, and charged her with child abuse under conditions likely to cause great bodily injury or death. Li remains on the run and has not been arrested. In October, Xuan and Zhang were arrested again and charged with conspiracy to commit child abuse. They deny the charges and remain in custody, with bonds set at $20 million (£15 million) each. If convicted, Xuan faces up to 17 years and four months in prison, while Zhang faces up to 11 years and eight months.
CBS News, BBC’s U.S. news partner, reported that Mitchell Krems, who represents both Xuan and Zhang, called the allegation a “mischaracterisation” based on the evidence he had reviewed. CBS News reported that Krems said his client Xuan was innocent and quoted him saying, “He is being targeted for exercising his constitutional right to have a large family.” The BBC approached the lawyers representing Xuan and Zhang about the allegations; Krems did not respond. Matt Koohanim, who represents Zhang, said the case would be addressed through appropriate legal channels.
The agency was Mark Surrogacy, and authorities later discovered that the mansion’s address was also registered to the couple’s agency, which they used to recruit multiple surrogates. Court documents show that the request to have a surrogate baby did not raise much suspicion at first among the women who carried children for Xuan and Zhang, and several surrogates were hired through Mark Surrogacy. Although agencies are often seen as independent third parties, Mark Surrogacy was run by the couple, a fact that was not always disclosed, according to two lawsuits filed against them by some of their surrogates. A corporate registration record named Zhang as the agency’s manager and listed the mansion as its address. At the October 16 hearing, Teymouri told the judge that no other intended parent had ever been matched with a surrogate through the agency the couple ran from their home.
One of the surrogates, Tronderrica James, sued the couple in 2025 for damages including fraud and intentional misrepresentation. She alleged that Zhang did not disclose her ties with Mark Surrogacy during the initial stage and that she would not have proceeded had she known the true nature of the arrangement. James did not respond to the BBC’s request for an interview. The defendants later filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that James had no sufficient basis for a lawsuit. The case remains pending.
Another five women — Stacy Raelyn King, Evelyn Senolos Areja, Kayla Elliott, Hallie Hernandez and Vanity McGoveran — alleged similar experiences in a separate lawsuit filed in August against Xuan and Zhang. The suit alleged that Zhang failed to disclose her own and Xuan’s connections to the agency and the actual number of children they had. The complaint alleged, “Each Plaintiff was led to believe she was the only woman carrying for the couple, and that she was helping a family conceive a single, cherished child.”
The couple also used another outside agency, California-based Babytree Surrogacy. Its founder, Patrick Yu, told the BBC that Xuan approached him in 2018 and wanted a large family. The agency matched several women who delivered at least four babies. Yu said, “When we saw the news reports that he was under investigation, that was when I first realised he had so many children. We immediately stopped working with him.” One woman the agency matched in 2024 was already pregnant when reports about Walter’s injuries emerged in May 2025, while police investigated alleged child abuse and authorities had placed 21 children in protective custody. Yu told the BBC he arranged a meeting between the woman and the couple. He described the couple as sounding very confident and said they reassured the surrogate mother that they treated the children well. The surrogate decided to continue the pregnancy and gave birth to a baby in early 2026.
There is no legal limit to the number of surrogacies an intended parent can request, and there is no requirement to disclose that information, according to Dr Liang Yu, vice chair of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s Chinese Special Interest Group and program director of Reproductive Clinical Science at Old Dominion University. Liang said certain banks or agencies might have their own requirements, but those requirements were not required by law. A couple could also work with several agencies at the same time without fully disclosing all of their information to each agency. Liang said, “This creates a grey area in the law and in industry regulations.” Within that grey area, she said she had seen many examples involving wealthy clients, not just Chinese intended parents. Privacy protections and confidentiality agreements signed with doctors and fertility clinics keep most such arrangements from public view. “In other words, this kind of behaviour (like Xuan) is not unprecedented,” she said.
The United States has become one of the world’s leading destinations for surrogacy, which is when a woman carries someone else’s child to term. A 2024 study of U.S. surrogacy data found that nearly one-third of intended parents between 2014 and 2020 came from outside the country. China, where surrogacy is banned, was the single largest source of international clients, accounting for roughly 42% of foreign intended parents. The United States offers assisted reproductive technology services that many people from China cannot easily access at home. In China, single women and LGBTQ individuals often face barriers to IVF and egg freezing. Some couples affected by China’s decades-long One-Child Policy had become physically challenged to carry a pregnancy themselves by the time the policy ended in 2016, prompting some to turn to surrogacy abroad.
Xuan and Zhang moved into the mansion in April 2021. Online listings showed that the 10,000-square-foot, or 929-square-meter, property had sold for $3.3 million (£2.48 million) that year and listed nine bedrooms, 11 bathrooms and a heated pool. Arcadia is an affluent suburb on the east side of Los Angeles that local media have dubbed the “Chinese Beverly Hills.” The most recent U.S. Census recorded almost 60% of the population as Asian, predominantly Chinese, and household incomes well above those of most U.S. families.
Xuan was born in Zhejiang in eastern China in 1959, according to local Chinese media, and began working as an accountant for a state-owned grocery company in Urumqi at 18. He became a deputy of the People’s Congress in Urumqi in 1997 and a deputy for Xinjiang Autonomous Region in 2008, a provincial legislative position similar to a state representative. After moving to the United States, Xuan became president of the US Xinjiang Chamber of Commerce and vice president of the China America Federation, appearing at public events as early as 2019. A photograph seen by the BBC showed Xuan holding hands with former Arcadia mayor Eileen Wang at an event in 2022. During Wang’s mayoral campaign that year, Xuan donated $4,900 through a company under his name. Wang resigned as mayor in May 2026 after the U.S. Department of Justice charged her with acting as an illegal agent of China. She pleaded guilty to the felony count.
Zhang worked as a real estate agent. Xuan and Zhang were never married. Court documents said Zhang was married to another man until her 2022 divorce. At the October 16 hearing, Teymouri told the judge that the couple’s net worth substantially exceeded $100 million (£75 million) in 2025. She also said authorities had found three passports belonging to Xuan: Mexican, Chinese and United States passports.
One child born to a surrogate is still living with her surrogate mother in Virginia. Melissa Epps, a surrogate hired by the couple, was pregnant when she learned about the investigation last year and decided to keep the child. Xuan and Zhang sued Epps for breaching their surrogacy contract, demanding the return of the baby girl and $1 million. Epps initially represented herself before Pamela DeCamp, an attorney for the Virginia Legal Aid Society, took the case. Epps declined a BBC News interview. The child remains under social services custody and lives with Epps, who recently celebrated the child’s first birthday. The case will continue until next March. DeCamp said the legal-aid team was “very thankful for the efforts of the Los Angeles, California District Attorney to obtain justice for the young children.” “She remains safe and happy in Virginia. And we are confident she will continue to do so,” said DeCamp.