A federal jury in Sacramento found Jia Bei Zhu guilty on all 12 counts for running a scheme that sold more than one million faulty COVID-19 test kits across the United States, prosecutors said. The 64-year-old California man, already tied to a shuttered underground biolab in Reedley, California, now faces decades in prison.
The conviction came after a two-week trial. Zhu is scheduled to be sentenced in August.
The charges included conspiracy, wire fraud, distributing misbranded medical devices, and lying to the Food and Drug Administration, Fox News reported. Each wire fraud count alone carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in federal prison.
Prosecutors laid out a straightforward grift. Zhu and his associates imported cheap COVID-19 tests from China, repackaged them, and resold them under false pretenses through his Fresno-based company, Universal Meditech Inc. The tests were falsely marketed as FDA-approved, manufactured in the United States, and produced in certified laboratories, authorities said.
None of that was true. Prosecutors said UMI’s Fresno facility lacked the ability to manufacture COVID-19 tests at all. The scheme brought in nearly $4 million.
The fraud played out, prosecutors said, “at the height of the pandemic”, a period when Americans were desperate for reliable testing and willing to trust what they were told about the products they purchased. Accuracy mattered. People made medical decisions, returned to work, visited elderly relatives, and sent children to school based on the results of tests like the ones Zhu’s company was peddling.
U.S. Attorney Eric Grant did not mince words after the verdict:
“This verdict holds the defendant accountable for actions that exploited a public health crisis for his own gain. He… deliberately deceived the public by repackaging low-quality, foreign-made test kits at a time when accuracy and reliability were critical.”
Grant added that his office “remains committed to prosecuting those who endanger the public through fraud.”
The conviction is the latest chapter in a case that already drew national attention. Zhu had previously come under scrutiny for his connection to a now-shuttered warehouse in Reedley, California, that local and federal officials described as an illegal, makeshift biolab.
When authorities inspected the Reedley facility, they found lab materials, mice, and improperly stored substances. The discovery raised alarm about what exactly was being manufactured or stored in the Central Valley warehouse. Federal agencies including the FDA, CDC, and FBI ultimately determined that the materials were part of a failed attempt to manufacture COVID-19 tests and did not pose a direct threat to the public.
That determination may have eased immediate public safety concerns, but it did nothing to absolve Zhu of the fraud charges. The fact that his operation could not even successfully produce the tests it claimed to sell only underscored the hollowness of the marketing claims attached to the kits that did go out the door.
Pandemic-era fraud has become a persistent pattern across the country. A Minnesota man recently admitted to stealing over $1 million in PPP funds through a fake basketball league, one of countless cases in which opportunists exploited emergency programs and public fear for personal enrichment.
Zhu did not act alone. Zhaoyan Wang, described by prosecutors as Zhu’s romantic and business partner, was also charged. But Wang fled the United States before authorities could make an arrest and remains a fugitive believed to be in China.
The Department of Justice has filed additional charges against both Zhu and Wang. Wang’s flight to China, and the near certainty that Beijing will not extradite her, means American justice may only reach half of the alleged conspiracy.
That Zhu allegedly lied to federal agents about his own identity in at least one instance only deepens the picture of deliberate deception. This was not a case of sloppy paperwork or an honest businessman cutting corners under pressure. Prosecutors described a calculated operation built on false claims from start to finish.
The scale of the fraud, more than one million faulty test kits, raises its own questions. Who purchased these kits? Were they bought by hospitals, employers, schools, or state and local governments spending taxpayer dollars? The trial record may eventually shed more light, but the sheer volume suggests the damage reached far beyond individual consumers.
The broader problem of fraud draining billions from taxpayers remains one of the most underreported consequences of the pandemic spending spree. Every dollar lost to a con artist is a dollar that never reached someone who needed it.
FDA Special Agent in Charge Robert Iwanicki framed the verdict in public health terms:
“The defendant’s scheme… undermined public health during a critical time.”
That is a measured way to describe what happened. During the worst public health emergency in a generation, a man imported cheap, unreliable tests from China, slapped on labels claiming they were FDA-approved and American-made, and sold them to people who had no reason to doubt the packaging. People who tested negative on a faulty kit may have unknowingly spread the virus. People who tested positive may have quarantined unnecessarily, lost wages, or delayed treatment for other conditions.
The human cost of unreliable tests is impossible to quantify with precision. But the jury clearly found the evidence persuasive enough to convict on every single count.
Federal fraud prosecutions tied to the pandemic era have moved slowly, but they have moved. Cases like this one, and the barring of a former congresswoman from federal funds after alleged FEMA fraud, suggest that at least some of the grifters who exploited the crisis will face real consequences.
Zhu’s sentencing in August will determine whether those consequences carry real weight. Wire fraud charges with 20-year maximums give the judge significant room. The question is whether the sentence matches the scale of the deception, more than a million bogus kits, nearly $4 million in proceeds, and a co-conspirator who skipped the country.
The pandemic created a gold rush for fraudsters. Emergency spending flowed with minimal oversight. Regulations were loosened. Demand for medical supplies outstripped supply. And people like Jia Bei Zhu, prosecutors say, saw opportunity where others saw crisis.
A growing list of pandemic-era fraud prosecutions shows that the bill for all that loose money and lax oversight is still coming due, years after the emergency ended.
Twelve counts. Guilty on every one. When someone sells a million fake tests during a pandemic and pockets $4 million doing it, accountability is not optional, it is the bare minimum a serious country owes its own citizens.
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