California couple used surrogates to produce 21 CHILDREN for them!

Silvia Zhang, 38, and Guojun Xuan, 65, are believed to be the legal parents, Cieadlo said.

They were arrested in May after a hospital reported that their 2-month-old infant had a traumatic head injury, the result of a nanny at the home violently shaking the baby, Arcadia police said. The child was not taken to the hospital for another two days.

Cieadlo said neglect charges were not formally pursued in order for an investigation to continue. The couple told police that they “wanted a large family,” the lieutenant said.

Zhang produced what appeared to be legitimate birth certificates, including some from outside California, that list her as the mother of the children, Cieadlo said.

He said the FBI is also part of the investigation. A spokesperson declined to comment when reached Wednesday by The Associated Press.

“I'm not familiar with how the surrogacy laws work,” Cieadlo said. “We need to do a much deeper dive.”

TV stations in Los Angeles quoted women who said they were surrogate mothers for the couple but that they didn’t realize so many other surrogates were also involved.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Zhang and Xuan had a lawyer who could speak on their behalf. Zhang did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Business records with the California Secretary of State show a company called Mark Surrogacy Investment LLC was previously registered at the couple's address. The most recent filing shows the business license was terminated in June.

Kallie Fell, director of The Center for Bioethics and Culture, which believes surrogacy exploits women, posted a recent YouTube video of her interview with a Texas woman, Kayla Elliott, who gave birth last spring.

“She was lied to. She was told this couple had one other child and they wanted one more child to complete a family,” Fell told The Associated Press. “She didn't know they were the owners of the surrogacy agency. They operate with zero oversight.”

Elliott didn't return a request for comment. But she is trying to raise money to seek to have the child placed with her.

“I am prepared and deeply committed to providing that for her, but the legal process to secure placement is complex and costly,” Elliott said in her appeal on the fundraising site GoFundMe.

The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, which removed the couple's children, said it could not talk about its actions in a specific case.

Fucking Freaks. I can’t even imagine wanting one kid, let alone 21 kids.

What in the fucking hell were these people up to?

No good, obviously.

But beyond that....

Who knew purchasing kids from broodmares would have so many pitfalls?

ARCADIA, Calif. (KABC) -- An Arcadia couple's 21 children - all from surrogate mothers - have been placed in protective custody amid an investigation.

Arcadia police stumbled upon a house on Camino Real Avenue while investigating a child abuse case involving a 2-month-old suffering a traumatic head injury.

After getting a search warrant, detectives seized security cameras from inside the home and made some alarming discoveries.

"We discovered numerous children - 15 children to be specific - ranging in ages from 2 months old to 13 years old," Arcadia police Lt. Kollin Cieadlo said.

"Many of the children were birthed through surrogacy and then the male and female at the residence took legal guardianship of those kids," Cieadlo added.

Six other children, investigators say, had been moved to other homes. All 21 of the kids were confirmed to be the children of 65-year-old Guojun Xuan and 38-year-old Silvia Zhang. They were arrested for felony child endangerment but later released.

Police have also issued an arrest warrant for their nanny, 56-year-old Chunmei Li. Investigators say after looking at surveillance video, she is the main suspect in the child abuse case and is still on the loose.

"The discipline, both verbally and physical, was severe to the point where it supported the beliefs that child abuse was occurring inside the home," Cieadlo said.

Sources told Eyewitness News that of the 21 children, 17 are 3 years old or younger. Police say all 21 children are in the custody of Department of Children and Family Services.

Where did all those children come from? That is what the FBI is trying to figure out. The bureau refused to comment on the case, but Arcadia police confirmed that their detectives are working with the FBI.

Arcadia's investigation, though, determined that the children are the product of a surrogacy operation owned by Zhang and Xuan.

No charges have been filed. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office is not commenting on the case.

"It's horrific, it's disturbing, it's damaging emotionally," said Kayla Elliot, one of the surrogate mothers hired by Zhang and Xuan.

She says they told her they only had one other child. She's now hoping to get custody of the child that she had for the couple.

"These agencies, we're supposed to trust them and follow their guidance and come to find out this whole thing was a scam, and the parents own the agency - that was not disclosed at all beforehand," Elliot said.

"Anything goes. And these clinics, these agencies are not regulated by any governing body," said Kallie Fell, executive director of the nonprofit Center of Bioethics and Culture.

Fell is working with Elliot. She says having more than 20 children through surrogates is not illegal, but that it raises serious questions as to why people would do that.

"That to me smells of trafficking, child trafficking," Fell said. "What are the intentions of having that many children at home through these assisted reproductive technologies?"

This sounds like a John Waters movie

Plot Twist: the couple also owned the surrogacy agency.

Total child trafficking scam.

I don't understand this - so they hired all these surrogates (NOT CHEAP) to have these babies and then - confiscated them?

Did the surrogates not get paid and they kept the money? WTF do you do with toddlers not your own?

I'm sick to even think - were they going to use these kids for child porn or for prostitution?

Whatever the situation - it's going to be horrific, guaranteed.

No, R8. Those kids were to be sold to Apple or some other tech company. If you recall, Lutnick told us that those little hands are perfect for factory work.

Showoffs!

Crazy Rich Asians

Sick.

I’ve shared before, we’re a 2 dad family via surrogacy and it can be a profoundly happy story when it goes well. But I cannot think of many other “industries” that need and deserve hypervigilant regulation to the extent that adoption and surrogacy do — both of them.

Whatever was going on here, including the extreme child abuse, seems all kinds of evil.

*Seventeen* of the children are under three years of age. The mind boggles at what they must have been doing to control the herd

Many, many Daily Mail posters seemed to think that the couple created these kids for organ harvesting.

This is like a puppy mill, only for humans.

[quote] *Seventeen* of the children are under three years of age. The mind boggles at what they must have been doing to control the herd

What's weird is that those are ALL of their biological kids.

His sperm, her eggs.

This crazy story is definitely one that most people have never ever dreamed of.

It's mind boggling, to think of the kinds of scams that people can come up with in this modern age.

Just wait until the christian fundies hear about this story.

They're going to push to end ALL surrogacy.

Tasteful Friends, I think we can all agree that the real crime here is that horrendous McMansion.

Sum Ting Wong!

Dollface thread.

Child trafficking or organ harvesting

China and India are organ harvesting hotspots @R14

Anchor babies, the lot of them.

But the problem with the organ-harvesting theory is that - the cost of surrogate kids can be very expensive. Tens of thousands of dollars.

I don't pretend to know the cost of black market organs, but it would seem to be comparable or less than the cost of surrogacy.

I think something else was being planned - and it's going to be horrible.

Arcadia was a regular post-war middle-class suburb (and home to Santa Anita racetrack) but it recent hundreds of the mid-century housing stock has been taken over by Asians who replaced them with McMansions like the one in the OP.

Well, that's one way to protest the Chinese1 child-rule, I suppose.

Gestational surrogacy (making embryos and planting them in a surrogate who carries the fetus to term and gives birth to a baby whom she hands over to the intended parents) costs like $50K per infant.

The idea that all these children were created for future organ harvesting, doesn't make sense $$ wise. I think it was something sick and twisted, psychological, with the Asian parents. They duped more than a dozen well-intentioned surrogates into carrying a horde of siblings all close in age, and then they began to raise all these infants and toddlers and children in horrifically abusive environment -- and they did it because they wanted to.

Only other explanation I can think of, just as sad, is child trafficking -- selling their own children for slavery or sexual purposes.

Maybe that crazy bitch, Mia Farrow, will adopt a couple of them.

R26 - yeah, prostitution did occur to me - but again, not to be so crass about it money-wise, there's a massive sunken cost of having baby via surrogate, then RAISING IT and all the money involved with that.

You just wouldn't make a return on your money for many, many, many years - if at all.

17 kids in one house under the age of 3? What a nightmare that would be - but this is just too weird for fiction. Like you could NOT make this up - it would not be believable.

Something awful was going to happen - but I don't understand it. China has removed its 1 child policy some time ago - and they're both Chinese.

[quote]Sum Ting Wong!

We almost made it to 20 posts in a thread about Asians without the obligatory 'Sum Ting Wong' reference. Damn you, R18.

[quote] We almost made it to 20 posts in a thread about Asians without the obligatory 'Sum Ting Wong' reference. Damn you, R18.

Ho Lee Fuk!

I wonder if this is an immigration scam. Have the surrogate baby in the US - baby is a US citizen, Chinese parents (or adoptive parents) then have an easier time to immigrate?

I don't know immigration law around this. But organ harvesting and prostitution sounds just not economically viable.

But to buy a kid with American citizenship - that may have some value?

I still don't understand half of the story. I guess my most urgent questions would be: 1. On what grounds were the children removed. If both are the biological parents - were there specific allegations of neglect? Or was that merely assumed? (Except the initial case with the trauma by a nanny.)

2. What is the parents' motivation to get all these children? What was the financial gain if any?

[quote] I wonder if this is an immigration scam. Have the surrogate baby in the US - baby is a US citizen, Chinese parents (or adoptive parents) then have an easier time to immigrate?

This is a good guess.

It all sounds like they tried to do everything deeply under the radar, which means the children were probably not being taken in for pediatric care -- and maybe not even registered as US citizens, no social security numbers or anything. It all only came to authorities' attention when one of the abused infants had its head bashed in.

The plan could have been to groom them into being household slaves when they were old enough to be productive.

“Six other children, investigators say, had been moved to other homes. All 21 of the kids were confirmed to be the children of 65-year-old Guojun Xuan and 38-year-old Silvia Zhang. They were arrested for felony child endangerment but later released.“ So, the older kids had been living with other people, living in other houses, and all the kids were biological children of the parents? It seems like they might have wanted to have a lot of children, too many to raise by themselves, and they may have fostered them out. Some combination of instinct to reproduce and obsessive compulsive disorder or just having enough money to make it a reality. Plus, the article says they ran a surrogacy agency, so it would have been easier for them to reach out to many people at the same time; they would have had contact info for the agency surrogates.

The organ harvesting and porn allegations are based on what? If they were going to do something like that, why would they want to be biological parents of all the children? Wouldn’t that lead to an instinct to protect them? The only allegation with the article was that the nanny shook the baby and practiced severe discipline that crossed a line to abuse. They released the parents after reviewing security cameras. I am guessing that means they never saw or participated in the abuse.

Reminds me of the man with 1,000 kids (sperm donor).

To think this went under the radar for do long. Im so troubled by what this could be.

Best case scenario is they are just batshit for babies, like Octomom

When the Mail first published this story the headline included “AGE GAP COUPLE” as if that were the most controversial aspect of the situation lol

Maybe a private adoption scam. Here’s a healthy baby/toddler already in US for desperate childless couples.

Were the husband and wife born in the US? ICE might be interested otherwise.

Religious or cult involvement?

The avg cost for a surrogate birth is $100k to $200k.

How is this 65 year old man spending $2-$4 million on these kids in the first place?

I don't think it's a baby fetish or a weird desire for children. 21 kids under the age of 3. That's almost triple the Octomom.

[quote] It seems like they might have wanted to have a lot of children, too many to raise by themselves, and they may have fostered them out

That's bullshit R36, and you know it.

They open their own surrogacy agency, for fuck's sake. Just to keep it very quiet.

And they didn't tell the surrogates what they were doing.

There is definitely something nefarious going on, and I hope that investigators get to the bottom of it.

Can anyone track down the exact address of the house?

The street number is 612.

I'm morbidly curious about the interior of a place where 21 fucking small children were being surreptitiously warehoused.

Amateurs!

Tasteful surrogacy friends!

I very seriously doubt that the Chinese couple that are believed to be the "legal" parents of all of the children are also the genetic parents. Nothing about that is clear in the article. The term surrogate can be given to a woman carrying a child for another couple even if using her own egg. That makes it far easier to achieve medically. They may have just used a turkey baster and not required involvement of the medical community. Fewer flags raised and MUCH less expensive. I can't imagine the motive as raising children from birth is very expensive in the US. The idea of slavery or servitude just wouldn't be economically viable. I think they may just be nuts. Maybe some kind of religious fanatics or conspiracy cult.

They're starting a junior version of Shen Yun.

I'm really baffled. This ABC article states that at least some of the embryos were implanted. A fertility clinic had to be involved as well as attorneys. They all should be in trouble for this. Of course, that assumes that laws, rather than just ethics, have been broken. I am not against surrogacy, but clearly there needs to be more oversight than there is.

R9 “Coming to a city near you….” 🎪

The plot for the next horror movie is born.

Have any new details come out?

Interestingly, Arcadia is where Genie spent her early life in captivity

I hope horrible things were done to Genie's (feral child) father. He should be locked up for life for abusing a small innocent child. People like that don't deserve to live.

He committed suicide days after she was discovered r54

The picture at R50 is a perfect illustration of what I described at R24- McMansion across the street from mid-century housing. Arcadia and much of the San Gabriel Valley looks like that these days.

Finally a thread where i´m safe from my second wife´s ghost.

Too bad the title to the inevitable TV movie about this is already taken...

[quote] Arcadia was a regular post-war middle-class suburb (and home to Santa Anita racetrack) but it recent hundreds of the mid-century housing stock has been taken over by Asians who replaced them with McMansions like the one in the OP.

Just insert Bellevue, Wash. for Arcadia. In the picture linked, see the rambler on the left and the three monstrosities behind it. All owned by Chinese. The biggest house was an affordable (990k) rambler. It was torn down and sold for 3.5 million to a young Chinese influencer couple who do not have any blinds, leave all their lights on at night and have camera lighting ring on display in their front window. This is what my neighborhood is becoming. I went to Starbucks the other day and I was the only white person in there. It’s quite different than when I grew up here. The old 7-11 is a Muslim temple with blacked out windows surrounded by a chainlink fence covered in black material with a sign that women have to enter in the back of the building.

I’m beginning to feel isolated and pushed out in a town I’ve lived in for 64 years because I have nothing in common with new normal.

^^^How expensive is the Seattle Metro Area if an affordable house goes for 990k?

Expensive — for older, native residents and affordable for the all the tech people who live here. A friend of mine bought a 1.2 million home, then $75k car and then decided he wanted a rental so bought another million dollar home. He works at Amazon (AWS).

They used to call those monster houses

That's the horrible beauty of a competitive economy. There's always someone else willing to accept higher cost or worse conditions/quality/pay/safety/service/neighbors.

Isn’t there a Russian couple doing something similar? Although I believe they have way more kids. Nobody is suggesting they’re doing it for organ harvesting.

Selling Chinese babies. Probably for organ farms, or maybe as meat for zoo animals.

You know how it goes in China. Fucking toilet of a country.

Elon Musk has 14 children and shows no signs of slowing down, and no one is accusing him of organ harvesting either. Plenty of those Quiverfull freaks have close to 21 children too. Is natalism only criminally suspect in the US when it's non-white people practicing it?

Why do people always have to make it about race and imply that this would all be acceptable if they were white? No, it wouldn't be. As I said in R48, "I can't imagine the motive as raising children from birth is very expensive in the US. The idea of slavery or servitude just wouldn't be economically viable. I think they may just be nuts. Maybe some kind of religious fanatics or conspiracy cult."