{"id":488932,"date":"2026-10-08T06:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T06:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/488932\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T06:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T06:58:11","slug":"arcadia-surrogacy-scandal-suspect-accused-of-child-abuse-allegedly-has-access-to-100-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/488932\/","title":{"rendered":"Arcadia surrogacy scandal: Suspect accused of child abuse allegedly has access to $100 million"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Two people accused of overseeing the abuse<\/a> of more than two dozen children at an Arcadia mansion pleaded not guilty to child abuse-related charges during their arraignment, as prosecutors sought unusually high bail and described the residence as a “house of horrors.”<\/p>\n

Guojun Xuan, 66, and his partner, Silvia Zhang, 39, were each charged with conspiracy to commit child abuse and witness intimidation. The defendants entered not guilty pleas during a court appearance.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman described the allegations in stark terms.<\/p>\n

“This house can only be described as house of horrors for these incredibly young children,” Hochman said.<\/p>\n

Investigators arrested Xuan and Zhang on Tuesday morning. Prosecutors allege the couple has more than two dozen children and cite evidence of extensive abuse by nannies working at the residence.<\/p>\n

According to prosecutors, the couple allegedly misled surrogates they paid to carry their children through their own surrogacy company.<\/p>\n

According to court documents, video recordings allegedly show nannies carrying out “bare-buttock spankings, kicks, repeated strikes to the hands with sticks, blows with shoes, hits to the head, body, and hands, and prolonged squatting as punishment.”<\/p>\n

Prosecutors asked a judge to set bail at $100 million for each defendant.<\/p>\n

Defense attorney Mitchell Krems challenged the request, saying, “The amount is absurd. It’s $100 million per each defendant.”<\/p>\n

Legal analyst Neama Rahmani said bail determinations generally focus on two key considerations.<\/p>\n

“Bail is based on two factors: risk of flight and danger to community,” Rahmani said.<\/p>\n

Rahmani said concerns about flight risk may be heightened by prosecutors’ allegations regarding Xuan’s financial resources.<\/p>\n

According to prosecutors, Xuan has access to about 200 bank accounts and at least 70 corporate accounts with a combined value of more than $100 million.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors also pointed to Chunmei Li, a nanny accused of beating a 2-month-old boy so severely that he was hospitalized with a brain bleed. They allege Li fled to China after being questioned by investigators.<\/p>\n

Rahmani said recovering Li for prosecution could prove difficult.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s unlikely that we’ll have Li arrested and extradited to the United States,” Rahmani said. “In a case like this, expect to see finger-pointing. Zhang and Xuan, they’re going to blame the nanny especially when some of this abuse was caught on video.”<\/p>\n

The judge ultimately set bail for Xuan and Zhang at $20 million each.<\/p>\n

After the hearing, Krems argued his clients were being unfairly targeted because they are Chinese and have a large family.<\/p>\n

“He’s being unfairly scrutinized because he has so many children. There’s no law against having all these children, none at all, so my client is not abusive whatsoever,” Krems said.<\/p>\n

The case remains pending.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Two people accused of overseeing the abuse of more than two dozen children at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[190857,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-488932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-190857","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}