California Couple Arrested, DA Seeks $100 Million Bail Over Abuse of 21 Surrogate-Born Children

Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies arrested Guojun Xuan, 66, and his wife, Silvia Zhang, 39, at their Arcadia home on Tuesday morning, more than a year after authorities first removed 15 children from the property. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced the charges at a news conference: multiple counts of child abuse, conspiracy to commit child abuse, accessory after the fact, and dissuading a witness.

"The physical abuse, beating and punishment that these very young children received is despicable," Hochman said, according to the Associated Press.

Hochman is asking a judge to set bail at $100 million, citing the severity of the charges and flight risk. The couple were transferred to the Pasadena courthouse for arraignment Tuesday, Sheriff Robert Luna said. Mitchell Krems, an attorney for Xuan, previously told ABC7 that Xuan's goal was to raise children who become productive adults.

How the Case Started

The investigation traces back to May 2025, when Zhang brought the couple's two-month-old son to Children's Hospital Los Angeles with what doctors determined was a traumatic head injury and brain bleed, according to Fox 13 News and Sheriff Luna. "She appeared to be untruthful with hospital staff about how the injury was sustained and the hospital staff notified law enforcement authorities," Luna said.

Arcadia police obtained surveillance footage from the home that showed a nanny, identified as Chunmei Li, violently shaking and hitting the infant, causing him to lose consciousness, Fox 13 reported. Police say the couple waited two days to seek medical care, only bringing the child to the hospital after he began having seizures.

When police first went to the home in July 2025, they removed 15 children ranging from two months to 13 years old, most between one and three, and located six more children living elsewhere, bringing the total to 21, according to CBS News and the Guardian. Police believe Zhang gave birth to one or two of the children while the rest were born through surrogates. Arcadia police did not file charges at the time, saying they needed to complete a full investigation, and asked the LA County Sheriff's Department for assistance in early September.

"Learning Centers" and Hidden Cameras

Hochman said the couple set up three rooms in the home they called "learning centers," where children spent hours each day at desks under nanny supervision. Motion-activated cameras throughout the house let the couple watch nannies deliver what Hochman described as daily beatings.

In one video, Hochman said, Xuan tells a nanny to strike a child harder; in another, he joins in hitting the child himself. Nannies were instructed "not to leave any physical marks on the children," and when police first arrived in May 2025, the couple told the children to deny they had been beaten, Hochman said.

An arrest warrant has been issued for the nanny seen on video hurting the infant, Chunmei Li, but she has not been located. Hochman said one of the two defendants faces more than 17 years in prison if convicted, and that the couple's motivations, along with the legal parentage of each child, remain under investigation.

The Surrogacy Business Behind It

Public records show Zhang owned a surrogacy agency previously called Mark Surrogacy, now operating as Future Spring Surrogacy, according to Fox 13 News. One surrogate said she conceived through IVF and transferred custody through the agency believing the couple had only one child at the time. Hochman said the couple used that agency to recruit surrogates across the country.

Melissa Brisman, an attorney representing two of the surrogates involved, told CBS News the arrests were "wonderful news that people will be held responsible for their actions." She added that surrogacy needs to remain available to people who need it, but said the system requires "adequate protections" so "bad actors don't ruin it for everyone else."

California has no federal surrogacy regulator to answer to, but is considered "surrogacy-friendly" because state law requires both parties to have lawyers and a notarized contract before any embryo transfer, according to the Guardian. A 2024 Emory University study found international clients accounted for nearly 40% of U.S. gestational-carrier cycles by 2019, with Chinese nationals making up 41.7% of those international clients between 2014 and 2020, nearly two-thirds of them contracting with California clinics. Separate reporting by the Daily Wire on an unrelated Irvine agency, Patriot Conceptions, and a Chinese client who has reportedly fathered more than 100 children through American surrogates, underscores how large and loosely supervised that international market has become. That case has no known connection to Xuan and Zhang, but it shows the scale of demand the same California surrogacy laws are built to accommodate.

Xuan previously drew law enforcement scrutiny for an El Monte property allegedly used as an illegal casino and psilocybin-growing operation, Fox 13 reported, though no charges tied to that property were announced Tuesday. Prosecutors have not said whether any additional defendants, including the missing nanny, will face charges, and the parentage question for all 21 children remains open as the case moves to arraignment in Pasadena.