Chinese couple harvested babies from surrogates then raised children in California ‘house of horrors’

Guojun Xuan, 66, and Silvia Zhang, 39, have been accused of using surrogates from around the country to bear the children. The case has drawn national attention since officials started to investigate a year ago. Xuan has been charged with child abuse and other crimes, and Zhang has been charged with dissuading a witness as well as other offenses. Both have also been charged with conspiracy to commit child abuse, and both are facing over a decade in prison. They were arrested in May and have been accused of abusing at least 14 out of the 21 children.

According to police, the couple operated a surrogacy agency, Mark Surrogacy Investment, out of their home in Arcadia, California, starting in 2021. They paid out up to $135,000 for surrogates to have their children, per the Washington Post. Zhang allegedly told one surrogate that she was a "single mother struggling to conceive,” charging documents stated. Another surrogate did not know they already had over a dozen children.

The couple was raising them in a 10,000-square-foot mansion where they had nannies tracking the children on a spreadsheet and had different "learning centers" in the mansion. The children were sitting at desks for several hours a day and ranged in age from 2 months to 4 years old.

“This house could only be described as a house of horrors,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said on Tuesday in a news conference. He said that the treatment being given to the children was “nothing short of absolute physical abuse, beatings and punishment on a daily basis." He called the case "unprecedented."

The motive for why the couple has gone through such lengths to have the high number of children is still uncertain. A lawyer for Xuan, Mitchell Krems, previously said that the husband was driven by "altruism" to have the high number of children.

“The reason he has all these children is because he wants them to contribute to society,” Krems told ABC 7. He wants them to be "the philosophers, the physicians, the researchers and the inventors that help society.”

Authorities first grew suspicious of the couple after a 2-month-old infant was brought to the hospital in May 2025 with a head injury. A nanny had struck the child, but Zhang claimed the baby fell on its head, police records said. At the same time, the couple met with the nannies to tell them that strikes on the children should not leave visible marks, per charging documents.

Prosecutors are seeking $100 million bail as the couple is extremely wealthy and poses a flight risk. Charges have also been issued against one of the nannies, but police have not been able to take her into custody.