451: Mansion Turned Prison & 32 Nanny Cams That Caught EVERYTHING! | CA Surrogacy House of Horrors

It may look like a gated mansion and suburban Arcadia, but prosecutors will tell you it's more than 10,000 square feet of shocking and heinous child abuse. Authorities rated their Arcadia mansion after a hospital reported their two-month-old suffered severe head trauma. Two are now responsible for 26 biological kids of absolute physical abuse, beatings and punishment on a daily basis. Hey true crime besties, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialist Sleeve. Hello, hello, and welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialist Sleeve. With me, your host Annie Elise, we have got a wild case to talk about today. So I hope you are in the right frame of mind to hear it. I know it's a Monday. I know you're probably either commuting to work. Maybe you're at home cleaning the house. Maybe you're listening at work already with a work buddy. I know a lot of you like to secretly listen and watch at work, which, you know, sorry for any of the bosses listening, but I fully support. But this is a wild one, and I talked a little bit about it. Last week in headline highlights, I also did a poll with a bunch of cases asking on Instagram, "What do you guys want the deep dive of?" And this one won by a landslide. And look, I understand why. It is so crazy. And like, as you start peeling back all the different layers, it gets more and more unbelievable and sinister if you can even imagine that. It's almost like, "Oh, you think you know what the case is on the surface?" Which is, uh, yeah, really freaking disturbing. But then, once you dig a little deeper, "Oh, there's another dark secret coming out of this corner." "Oh, another one popping out from under this rug." And it's just like, "How does this happen? How do people get away with things? What are people's motivations in doing?" So like, I just don't understand. So with that, let me just kind of give you a little brief introduction, although I know you've seen the title of the episode already. But we're going to be talking about the case that's happening literally right in my backyard here in California, the surrogacy house of horrors. It involves a very wealthy couple who had 21 kids, okay? Let that register. 21 kids, most of whom had been born via surrogate. And now this couple is facing some very extremely serious allegations of child abuse. And again, once you start peeling it back as to what was really going on inside this house, why were they having all of these children? Where were the children going after they were grown? What were they doing? It just gets unnerving and feels almost like borderline a lifetime movie and something that is just completely fiction. And I say that because a lot of the lifetime movies are loosely, quote, loosely based on true stories, especially the ones that are on LMN. But it just feels almost unbelievable. Because here's what happened as the investigator started looking into what was happening inside this family's massive mansion. They uncovered so much more than anyone could have anticipated. We're talking about the elaborate surrogacy operation, a possible scheme involving US citizenship, a totally separate investigation involving illegal gambling and drugs, and just people speaking out, neighbor speaking out, past surrogate, speaking out, and really putting into frame a much darker picture. And the more you learn about this couple, I'm just telling you right now, the more questions that you are going to have about not only how they managed to keep all of this hidden for so long, but who the hell are these people? It's unbelievable. I have all my notes here. So I'm going to break down everything with you, not only about the couple, but what the investigators allegedly uncovered inside the home, how this couple ended up with so many kids, despite only being together for a little around gosh, what is it now? Five years in 21 kids, where all the kids are now, and we're just going to kind of go through all of it. Now as a starting point, let's start with the couple. The couple is 39-year-old Sylvia Zhang and 66-year-old Gu Jun Shuen. Now Sylvia first came to the US from China back in 2016, so 10 years ago, not all that long ago in the grand scheme of things. At the time that Sylvia had moved here, she had been married to a much older man named Henry Tang. They were married for about two years. And similarly, even in this past relationship, there was also a little bit of an age gap, because as a reminder, in this current relationship, she's 39, and her partner is 66. Well, Henry Tang, who she was married to for about two years, when first coming here from China, he was 68 years old, and she was 27. The two of them lived together in Pomona, California. By early 2021, their marriage had ended. It was a very nasty divorce. Henry accused Sylvia of elder fraud, trickery, filed lawsuits against her, and he also said that she sold their house while he was on a trip to Taiwan, basically kind of pulling the rug out from under him, that she was financially abusive, that she was scheming, that she was, in his words again, quote, "trickery" all these things. Now within just a few months of their divorce in 2021, Sylvia and again another much older man, Gua Jun, they started dating, and they were already talking about having kids together too, which just to clarify, as I discuss this couple together, they still are not married to this day. They are only a couple, or dating, or I don't know because they're in business together. I guess you could call it a partnership, but they are not married. Now Gua Jun was also from China, and it's reported that he came to the US around 2012, so about four years earlier than Sylvia. However, before that, starting all the way back in 1997, he had ties to the Chinese government, and he held leadership roles for the better part of 20 years. You know what they say about people in high places, right? They have connections, they have access, they have a certain type of business savvy to them through years of experience, and I don't know, arguably maybe he took all of that knowledge that he gained in those leadership positions in China, and brought it with him when he entered the US. Because when he came to the US, he got into real estate business, and then later opened his own company, called Udau Management. By 2021, the same year that he met Sylvia, Udau Management had about 250 properties all over Southern California, and one former employee who oversaw the daily transactions so that they were often buying homes that were in foreclosure or homes that were at auction, then they would buy them and flip them for a profit, which honestly, that's not unheard of, especially in Southern California, and in the real estate game, you want to get a deal, so you look at homes that are either run down in foreclosure at auction, scoop it up, get the contractors in, flip it, sell it for a profit or rent it out for a profit. However, in just what, what is that? Let me do the math here, less than 10 years, he had 250 properties. That's pretty wild, right? That is a big amount of real estate to accumulate in such a short amount of time. I mean, unless like, I just don't know real estate that way, but that would account for 25 homes a year, so you're buying two homes a month on average. That's a lot, especially like, if you've ever dealt with a real estate transaction, renting or buying whatever it's involved, it's like, it is hell on earth, so I get it when you have a business, it's like dialed in, but you know, a lot of properties to say the least. And I also just want to apologize in this episode, guys, if it sounds like I'm running out of breath a little bit, I'm battling some sort of, I don't know, illness, cold, something, and so I'm very short of breath. So I'm going to do my best to just like, take it slow, take pauses, you know, I already talk fast by nature, but apologize for that. Now what's interesting about the way that he ran his businesses is that they never seemed to last very long. It was kind of almost like a money laundering scheme, if you will. And records show that he had filed for LLCs for almost 40 companies in 2021 alone. And only three of those companies were still in business in 2025. Now most of those LLCs were real estate investment or management companies, including you don't management, but that is interesting. You're opening up a plethora of LLCs just to shut them down. And I'm no expert when it comes to money laundering, but I have done enough research. I have seen enough movies and documentaries. I feel like I know what the red flags are when LLCs start opening and closing in this and that. And that's just my opinion, but it seemed shady from the jump. Records also say he and Sylvia would often show change the names of these shell companies or LLCs so that they could hide from people that they owed money to, hence, you know, tying back again to the whole money laundering scheme. If you have a shell company, you collapse it, you change the name, people can't find you, you're moving money, and again, it's just very shady. Now employees who had direct knowledge of the company's operation said that the couple had opened and closed more than 100 companies in total in order to move and hide millions of dollars, just breaking in the money and doing everything that they could do to hide it, protect it, shelter it, probably tax evasion throw that in there for good measure, all the different things. However, despite all of the shady things that were happening with the real estate business, he and Sylvia were bringing in tons of money, and in turn, living a pretty lavish lifestyle. Around April of 2021, the two of them bought a massive 10,000 square foot mansion in Arcadia, California, and this mansion is worth approximately $4.1 million, and when you see it, I'm gonna put photos on the screen for my video watchers, but when you see this mansion, it's got all the bells and whistles. I'm talking arched entryways, these castle-like pillars in front, this, you know, fence gate type situation, it kind of looked like a fortress of sorts. Certainly, I mean, when I first saw it, it was something that I would picture in, like, beller or Beverly Hills, maybe a little bit nicer, if that makes sense, like, a little bit more nicer finishes, but still just the size of the property and some of the architecture on the outside, like, it felt like it belonged somewhere, like there, not to shade it, throw any shade it to Arcadia, I love Arcadia, I have friends who live in Arcadia, but it just looked like a fortress. It had nine bedrooms, neighbors said that it was set up like some sort of hotel almost, that it had a lobby and suite like rooms where people were coming and going, and it wasn't this traditional home. Even though, I mean, I think to some of the homes that I've been inside just as going to events or, you know, people hosting parties where it is, like, a big lavish mansion, and when there is that much square footage, it's difficult to make it feel cozy and homey and warm, usually people with that amount of money, hire an interior designer though, and they are people to make it feel that way, but from what neighbors described, this home always kind of felt sterile, clinical, hotel-like, not like a warm cozy home. One neighbor even said, quote, "It has, like, a round what I can only describe as a hotel desk and a gentleman sitting behind it like a clerk, almost like a receptionist, that when you check in at a hotel." And like I said, pretty early on into their relationship, he and Sylvia started talking about having kids. So now, with this big mansion home, millions of dollars, basically everything at your disposal, they were able to do exactly that. They had the world at their fingertips. However, Sylvia claimed that she suffered from infertility and that they couldn't conceive naturally. So because of that, like many people do, they turned to surrogacy. About a month after buying their house, they started recruiting these prospective surrogates. And that's kind of the process, when you do look into surrogacy, you go through your options, you choose the best person to carry your baby, somebody who's trustworthy, somebody you've vetted, somebody who maybe, a consulting company has vetted for you, and you just kind of go through a meet with many people and see who the best match is for you. Because of course, it's a very intimate experience. It's very personal. You don't want to make it, and I want to be careful with my words here. You don't want to make it feel overly transactional, even though at the end of the day, it is a transaction. You want to have some sort of relationship there, or good energy, good understanding, shared goals, all of those things. However, as they were going through this process, they didn't just hire one or two surrogates, because between 2021 and 2025, this couple continuously hired multiple surrogates at one time. They lied to each of them about the reason for them being hired. They lied about what the living conditions were, that the babies would be going to, and they were kind of just collecting surrogates and collecting children one by one, as if they were collecting like Pokemon cards. And look, we will get into more of that in a second here, but I want to just kind of illustrate the backstory for you of how all of this came to fruition. Because by 2025, they had 21 children in total, and at least 14 or 15 of these children had all been born via surrogate. So think about that. They got together in 2021. So within a four year period, they had 21 children, 15 of which were born through surrogate. There were also at least two kids who were a little bit older. The oldest was 13 years old. However, it's not known if that child was born via surrogate or not. But again, because we know that Sylvia and Guajun reportedly started dating in 2021, we also don't know who those older kids belong to. It's a little bit of a cluster trying to figure it all out. And again, I know I already said this once. They're not married. And he came over from China in 2012. She came over in 2016. It is entirely possible that, and I just want to float this out there. And again, I will get into way more of this as we continue. But I want to just float this for a moment. It is possible that there was already some type of working relationship or knowledge, either between the two of them or within a larger organization to where, if this 13-year-old was born via surrogacy, if anyone, and for any of these kids who were over four years old were born via surrogacy, which I would imagine, some of them are, because we know they range in ages from two months old to 13 years old, that perhaps the surrogacy operation had been going on for quite some time, and that Sylvia and he were working together or a part of a larger organization. And we know they both came over in the early 2010s. And then at 2021, maybe that's the point where they either became a couple or became more of a unified partnership. And I'm not entirely sure. I'm just kind of floating that with you, because there is a lot to consider, right? When you have a 13-year-old in play, you don't know whose child that is and how that child was even born, it raises the question of what's going on here. And that's only one piece of all of this. Who the children were born to? Who they belonged to? Who was instructing the surrogates this entire time? Because on top of the entire surrogacy scandal itself, this couple was also abusing the children. And this whole case really broke wide open when one of he and Sylvia's kids was brought into the emergency room back in early May of 2025. Because on May 6th of 2025, officers were notified by a local hospital about a possible incident of child abuse. When the officers arrived, they learned that a two-month-old baby boy named Walter had been admitted to the hospital with a traumatic head injury and had inner cranial bleeding inside his skull. The sheriff has even made a statement at a press conference about Sylvia taking the baby to a hospital and not being truthful about what happened. Take a listen. Back on May 6th, Sylvia Zhang or Zhang, that's spelled-- the last name is spelled Z-H-A-N-G for those of you who are taking notes. Took her two-month-old son to children's hospital Los Angeles regarding a head injury. She appeared to be untruthful with hospital staff about how the injury was sustained in the hospital staff, notified law enforcement authorities. I want to pause there. That's when Arcadia PD responded. I can't tell you how important the hospital staff recognizing doing their thorough interview and analysis, the fact that they called us, started this whole thing. That is very important. Sylvia had told the doctors that Walter had just fallen off of a bed while being cared for by an auntie. But according to investigators, his injuries were so bad that he looked like he had been in a car accident. And think about that for a moment. I understand that two-month-old babies are very fragile. They-- I still have the very soft part of their heads where you have to, of course, cradle their head, cradle their neck, protect them. And they are very fragile. They're not crawling. They're not strong. They're still like wiggling. And they have the morrow reflex and all of these things. But for a two-month-old child to come into a hospital, looking as though they had been in a car accident, that is more than a roll off of the bed in the sight of a nanny. Because remember, she said, oh, the nanny was caring for the boy, and he rolled off the bed. That leads me to believe these injuries were far more visible and far more severe than, especially if immediately, it looked like a car accident. And then she just tried to cover it up and lie about it. Police went and they served a search warrant at the home in Arcadia. And they seized surveillance camera footage from the cameras that he and Sylvia had set up in the house, which is wild in and of itself, because they had-- 32 camera set up, which that indicates to me that there was a high level of monitoring going on exterior and interior cameras. Now, I like to think of my home personally as Fort Knox. I have one, two, three, four, five, six cameras, which might sound a little overkill, but you know, I've covered true crime and maybe call me a little paranoid, but I am, but 32 cameras across this property inside and outside. Something feels a little fishy. And sure enough, when they started looking through this footage, the detective saw a nanny a few days earlier from this hospital incident on May 5th, violently shaking and striking the baby. So much so that it resulted in the child losing consciousness, losing consciousness well on footage, which isn't something like she was shaking him and striking him and like we are unfortunately here so often in true crime cases that then the next morning, you know, the following morning the child's not waking up, this is something we're on this footage as the investigators are watching it back in real time, they see the baby immediately lose consciousness. It is so fucking violent sick. Now this nanny was 56-year-old Chun Mei Li, who at first had put baby Walter out of the camera view for a little while while he was crying, but then the investigator said that a third or a hit could be heard and then it was followed by the baby suddenly stopping crying. The footage then allegedly showed Chun Mei walking back in camera view and attempting to wake baby Walter up before then shaking him. And detective said that even though Walter's parents, this couple were aware of the incident, they didn't seek medical attention immediately and they only brought him into the hospital after he started having seizures two days later. So obviously not concerned about the behavior and the abuse that was happening inside the home, only then brought him in when he had to get medical treatment, which I know arguably he did need medical treatment earlier. I get that, but you know what I mean? Like to where there was something where they couldn't hide it, he was having he was seizing and so they had to take him to the hospital. So just a few months later, after all of this comes to light and they realize what's really happening inside this home on May 9th, 2025, arrest warrants were issued for the nanny, Chun Mei and Sylvia and Guajun. And the couple was arrested immediately. However, the nanny, Chun Mei, she went on the run and she is still on the run to this day, a year and a half later. Now obviously with all of this, this huge revelation, all of the kids were removed from the home as soon as this investigation got started. I mean, when a two month old baby shows up at the ER with a brain bleed, even though the investigators didn't quite know what any of the other kids had been subjected to yet, they still knew that they had to get them to safety just in case. And that's pretty typical. Think about Ruby Frankie, for example. And if you don't know Ruby Frankie, count your lucky stars. She is freaking worst human on earth. Well, there are a lot of them, but she's one of them. When they discovered her children, and wasn't Ruby Frankie, it was. Everybody has to be taken for protection. And maybe I'm, maybe I'm misremembering in Ruby's case, but my point is, anytime there is a child abused in the home, they of course air on the side of caution and they remove all of the children and do an investigation. And you know, now that I say that out loud, I shouldn't say always, because there have been plenty of cases where I get very angry because they should remove the other children and they don't. There's one that I actually covered recently where they didn't and then that child went on to be killed by his parents and it's just sick. But anyway, I'm digressing a little bit. I'm just trying to give you a little bit of context of why certain decisions are made and why things happen. So the children were removed. And I want to talk about inside the house just a little bit because I think it's going to help illustrate a much clearer picture of how this house was being operated and the purpose behind all of this. So let's talk about the house. Like I said, it was a huge house over 10,000 square feet and it had nine bedrooms in total. Now, three of those rooms were set up as these quote unquote learning centers. Rooms where the kids would spend hours every single day sitting in rows of desks being watched and instructed by nannies or instructors and they had cameras in these rooms as well. Like I said, there were 32 motion activated cameras in total set up around the property and they were done so that people, presumably the couple, could watch what was happening at all times. Now, going back to the total kid count and the surrogacy of it all, he and Sylvia had 21 kids but only 16 of them lived in this house and 14 of the 16 were confirmed to be born via surrogate. The children ranged in ages from two months old to 13 years old, however, most of them were between one and three years old, which imagine that for a moment, having over 10 two year olds at the same time in one house. That is a lot and I'm going to talk more on that in a little bit here because I believe there is a specific reason that most of the children were between one and three years old and that the balance of the children were either older or not living in the house and what I think the motivation there was and what this whole scheme really was but let me just continue going into some of the abuse that was witnessed and that happened at the hands of this couple because the more that the investigator started digging into the case, the darker the allegations became because it wasn't just one of these kids who had been abused. It was almost all of them. The couple had hired at least six nannies to quote supervised and discipline these children. However, there are no records pointing to how much these nannies were paid, what the working relationship was, what the contract obligation was, however, reports do say that they were extremely underpaid. The DA did a press conference shortly after the allegations started to make their way into the headlines and he said that the abuse or as they claimed, the couple claimed, the discipline was daily and that it would happen for hours at a time every single day. Take a listen. - They set up in this house as alleged three different rooms that they called learning centers where these children from the ages of one, two, three, four years old, spent hours a day seated at death under the supervision of various nannies and what was going on has been alleged in the complaint of that discipline is nothing short of absolute physical abuse, beatings and punishment on a daily basis. - As investigators continued combing through hours of surveillance footage, they saw multiple instances of the nannies spanking, slapping or hitting the children. And in one instance, a nanny actually struck a child with a shoe while the couple just laughed as they watched the footage. In another instance, on April 30th, 2025, so right before the hospital incident, Guajun went into one of the rooms and allegedly told a nanny, quote, "strike the child harder." He allegedly then repeatedly spanked the child himself, delivering open-handed blows to the child's head and then lifting the child up by one arm while continuing to hit them like in the air, suspending the child from the air and continuing to hit. So this wasn't just one of those situations like we unfortunately had been seeing more and more frequently where at a daycare center, it's one outlier instructor who is getting physical with a child and it's caught on footage and you're horrified and you can't believe this is happening. This is something where the nannies were instructed to have that kind of behavior and that kind of, quote unquote, "discipline" and they were being instructed to abuse the kids while the couple themselves not only sanctioned it, encouraged it, condoned it, but also participated in it as well. So like I said, three of the rooms were set up as these learning centers with the desks, the rigid rules, the discipline, the abuse, all of it. And one of the still photos that was taken from the video footage showed that there was a child on his belly on top of one of the tables inside one of these learning centers and he had his pants down, inches away from the other kids and he was being spanked repeatedly by a nanny. And I would imagine that this was done as some sort of fear tactic so that the other children could witness it and, you know, almost like don't get out of line or you're gonna be like little Johnny here. Let me show you how bad this hurts. Let me show you what he's subjected to and what we're doing to him all as a part of gaining the control over these children and instilling true fear into them, which again, one, two, three years old, kids at one year old, barely are learning how to walk. So only saying a few words can't even fully communicate. and they are being subjected to this kind of abuse and torture and witnessing it and learning from that. It is, I don't even know the right word when I think about it. It makes me want to just like burst into tears truly because it's just inhumane. It's subhuman. How these adults could inflict this type of horror on these children and subject them to this, when their little bodies are growing, they still can't even communicate. They don't know what's going on and it's just like it is so evil. I don't know the word to even use for something like this. Now, in another photo from this learning center and from the footage that they had recovered, one child who looks like a toddler, probably no older than three or four, seems to be doing squats in front of everyone. All while a baby in a high chair in the back of the room is being hit in the face by another nanny. So we're talking severe corporal punishment, right? And I don't even want to say punishment. That word, I feel like it's misconstruing the entire situation. Corporal abuse, one toddler doing squats. It reminds me of when children are forced to remain on their knees on grains of rice for hours on end. It's so much so that the rice ends up getting embedded in their knees and skin grows over top of it and they have actual grains of rice in their knees into adulthood. It reminds me of something like that, just the lashings, the beatings, it's horrible. There was also one room that didn't have a camera, which God only knows what was going on inside that room, considering they put cameras everywhere else. Why choose not to put a camera in that room? And in that room, you could see from the other vantage points of the cameras that some of the nannies would take the children inside there, you couldn't see what was going on, but you could hear screaming that was so loud that it was heard on the other cameras outside of the room. Neighbors also had said that they had seen the kids lined up on little potty training chairs in the backyard and that the kids weren't allowed to stand up until they used the bathroom. So as you can imagine, when news of this absolutely horrific situation broke, everyone was shocked. Neighbors all started coming forward with their own statements, their own eyewitness accounts of what they had seen over the years over the last four years since the couple started having kids. And it's pretty disturbing. In total, records show that police responded to at least 36 calls to the house in less than four years. Some of these calls were for noise complaints and, quote, verbal altercations, but other calls were from neighbors who were genuinely concerned about these kids. One neighbor named Chuck said that he often could hear screaming coming from the house. He said, quote, "Their interaction wasn't like you would have with your child." He also remembered one specific day when he saw all of the kids lined up, quote, "like soldiers" in the backyard and had all of their hair cut short or buzzed off. Again, little toddlers, little children, little infants, just, and I know infants obviously don't have hair, but like toddlers buzzing their hair. So it almost looks militant, the way, not even almost, it does look militant the way that you are orchestrating this. Another neighbor, Lorraine, it said, quote, "The kids were screaming like someone was killing them. This was a cry for help. That's what this was." Lorraine and her husband also said that a few months before the couple was arrested, he had seen an older woman shaking a baby, presumably one of the nannies. She said, I was in the kitchen, and then I heard the baby screaming. When I went outside, she had the baby in her arms and was shaking the heck out of it until I yelled at her, and then she stopped. Lorraine said that at that time she called the police and they told her that they would do a welfare check. A third unnamed neighbor said that he often saw the adults being aggressive toward the kids, saying it wasn't the way that you treat a little kid. You didn't see them holding them, and it was more like a drill school. It didn't look normal. Even the police captain later said that DCFS, Department of Child and Family Services, had never seen this many kids in one place. He added, they were all different genders, but they had the same general appearance in terms of their hair being cut so close. And the clothing was like shorts and t-shirts, so very gender neutral. And I want to break that down a step further. It is, yes, like a drill school and the same overall appearance, which feels militant in a way. But also, it's almost to strip them of any identity. And I would imagine, too, for the caretakers, and I say caretakers very loosely, the nannies and the couple, to look at them as though they're just a number, no identifying features, no long hair, no dresses for the girls, no this, no that. They all are just a number lined up in t-shirts and shorts and buzz cuts. And that's all these kids mean to these people. It's heartbreaking. There was also a former employee who spoke out after the arrests, named Tina Powers. And she said that the atmosphere in the home was tense and volatile. She said that the couple was often already yelling and screaming within five minutes of her arriving at the house. Tina, along with five other former employees, are now suing the couple for unfair treatment, failure to pay overtime wages, and failure to permit timely breaks, which I got to say. Yeah, maybe you were overworked. Maybe you were underpaid, but truly, I don't give a shit. And the fact that you were participating in this kind of behavior and allowing this behavior to happen right in front of you and not call it into the authorities and not put a stop to it, you aren't entitled to shit. And now you're going to see this couple because they have millions of dollars and say, oh, well, we were treated unfair. We have lost wages. What about the kids who were treated unfairly? What about the kids who were treated as they are calling it in a house of horrors? And now you want to cry about how you were treated? What about your responsibility in all of this, your responsibility at just a human level? I'm sorry, no sympathy whatsoever for anyone who ever set foot inside that house and didn't do something to stop it. None, none, none, none, none. Now, as all of this was happening and coming out, overall, the biggest thing that people were still left wondering was how the hell did this couple manage to hire enough surrogates to have 21 kids all within a couple of years? Well, it turns out they did have some connections to a surrogacy agency. And remember how I said earlier that 20 years in leadership that he had in China, that those connections, that access, those tools and tricks might have come into good use when he came to the US. Well, I think all of those connections proved to come into good use for them because it wasn't just them knowing the owner of a surrogacy agency. They owned the agency themselves. Mark surrogacy investment LLC was owned by Guajun and Sylvia. And it technically opened in 2021 when the two of them linked up, but it wasn't officially licensed until 2024. Then in 2025, they changed the name to future spring surrogacy. And they ran this surrogacy company completely out of their home. The money came from them, they chose the surrogates and then all of the kids ended up in their care after they were born. And this surrogacy operation, I'm gonna call it, it really ramped up around 2022 because that's when the couple started, I'm just gonna call it mass ordering pregnancies through social media and Facebook. As if you were going on to Facebook marketplace to buy a vintage lamp or post about what you ate that day. Like I said, most of their kids were one to three years old, which means that the mass births, they would have had to have started right along that reported timeline in 2022. Hiring on a plethora of surrogates and just mass pregnancies, mass deliveries. Women who signed these contracts with the agencies were paid anywhere from $45,000 to $113,000 per child. They were also given elaborate gifts like jewelry, massive bouquets of flowers, just kind of dote it on and really, I don't know, like, glamored into what was happening. Maybe so much so that they wouldn't ask a lot of questions. All of their medical care was also paid for as well as any other pregnancy-related expenses. And they kept having more and more kids, which you would think that they would lose track at some point, right? Well, they didn't. Because they kept track of all the babies who they were born to and where they were from all on a spreadsheet, which I would love to get my hands on that spreadsheet and like really dissect all the different tabs and what exactly they were including in this. And I mean, look, at first, maybe people might think that it's a coincidence that they just so happened to own a surrogacy agency and had fertility issues. Maybe they wanted a big family and they had the resources and the money to run a business like that. However, when federal investigator started looking deeper into what was happening, it turned out all of this Most likely was in the U.S. not a coincidence at all, because investigators learned that he and Sylvia had actually lied to at least a handful of their surrogates, saying that the baby would go to them once it was born. However, in the reality of it, the surrogates later learned that the "intended" parents on the contract turned out to be, quote, "random, mandarins speaking employees." Employees of the surrogacy agency, that the two of them owned, but who they were, and why their names were listed on the contract? Who knows. It says, though, they were taking these babies, getting them in their possession, and then handing them off to somebody else. A federal source who spoke with the Daily Wire called the situation "very bizarre" and explained that when babies are born in the United States, they are automatically granted citizenship because of the 14th Amendment. And in some cases, like this one, those babies are being neglected, but then they are being transported back to China with the citizenship. The FBI calls this a huge security risk, not only because it's human trafficking, but also because it exposes loopholes with surrogacy when it comes to background checks, to untraceable money transactions, and sharing of information with foreign countries. It also makes sure that there is zero paper trail saying where these kids are actually going. In an interview, Katie Fell, executive director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, said, "We believe this case points to a form of organized reproductive trafficking, and the public should be outraged. And it won't stop unless we hold the fertility industry accountable and close our borders to international surrogacy arrangements." Now, let's talk a little bit about that. What is organized reproductive trafficking? Because some may be familiar with that or loosely have a good understanding of it, but let me just break that down. It's basically an emerging area of concern with human trafficking frameworks. It involves the systemic recruitment, transportation, or harboring of individuals, through force, fraud, or coercion, all for the exploitation of their reproductive capabilities. And while traditional definitions of trafficking explicitly highlight forced labor, sex work, organ removal, things like that, things we've heard about with trafficking, like, oh, it's to harvest the organs. Oh, it's to traffic them for sex work, whatever it is, reproductive trafficking. It targets a person's biological or reproductive anatomy. And this can really encompass anything, forced breeding, forced pregnancy, where victims are held in captivity, subjected to a sexual assault, and compelled to carry pregnancies to term, often to feed illegal underground adoptive rings or baby selling markets, just like you would sell an organ on the black market. You can sell a baby on the black market. There's also the method of coercive or illicit surrogacy, which is basically taking advantage of legal loopholes or extremely economic vulnerabilities. People who really do want that paycheck of possibly $100,000 and force them into surrogacy through the contract and under very deceptive terms. There's, of course, forced marriages that we, I'm sure, have all heard about at one point or another, where it's kind of like modern day slavery in some respects, but people who are forced into marriages, where it structurally is designed to exploit the victims, a reproductive and domestic labor, capabilities under absolute control. You get what are they used to call a male-order wife, and she comes over because she's going to cook and clean for you and do it on you and have your children and all of these things where it's just these, it's, again, another form of trafficking, but it's not the sexual nature that we so often hear about, so you're not as privy to it necessarily. And so, of course, with all of this new information now coming out and people talking about this possibly being a trafficking situation and hearing about how organized the entire operation really was, the surrogates, the surrogates that were hired, they started speaking out about how they felt about the situation. There have been many women who have come forward in the last year saying that they carried babies for this couple, and I've seen six of them on social media so far, but there have definitely been more than that. Some of the surrogates involved in the case wondered what would happen to the children, while others said that they didn't even want news about the babies if it was upsetting. One of the surrogates named Maria, who had two babies for the couple, a boy in 2022, and a girl in 2024, she said that the couple had promised her that she could see them once a year, but they went back on their word. Then, after the children were removed from the home, Maria desperately called lawyers to see if she could foster these children, but she said that nobody was willing to help her. She now is becoming a foster parent hoping that she can eventually care for the children that she delivered to this couple. Vanity, a surrogate who gave birth to a baby girl in March of 2025, said that she felt relieved when she learned of the arrest, saying finally, Vanity said that she was hesitant to learn more information about what had happened to the children that she handed over to this couple, saying, I don't want to hear about it if it's bad news. I don't want to know. Kayla was also one of the surrogates for the couple who recently has been one of the most outspoken about her story and her feelings on the situation, and she said that when she first learned about what had happened, she was shocked, saying, I was a bit hysterical. You just don't expect that you're going to go through a pregnancy and a delivery and then hand the baby over to their parents, and then all of a sudden find out that there was abuse and neglect going on. She also said that the surrogate agency that the couple ran told her that the couple had one teenage child and that they had given up on trying to have a second after they had 10 rounds of failed fertility treatments, which, as we know, that was obviously a lie. After the baby that Kayla carried for the couple was born, she learned that the child wasn't actually living with them, but rather with a nanny and another child of similar age. So that kind of goes right back to what we talked about earlier with the couple lying about who the intended parents were going to be and the baby's actually living with random employees. And here's what Kayla said when she was asked what she thought about all of this. What do you think it was about? Honestly, after all of this is unfolded and all of these new facts have been brought to light, I definitely think there's some type of trafficking to some extent going on for sure. I mean, nobody in the right mind wants 21 children, and especially all at one time, I mean, it just the setup, the way everything is playing out. I mean, it definitely seems like something very fishy is going on, and it seems like it could be happening internationally to China as well. Who knows? Kayla is now working with attorneys trying to get custody of the baby she had, but she has allegedly been told that because the couple haven't technically lost their parental rights yet, it might be difficult. How are you doing with your effort to get custody? So it's been a little bit of a challenge. I've talked to a few attorneys, and it's it seems like everyone's a little bit stumped as to how to go about this, especially because I'm in Texas, and I guess since the parents don't have trial until September, they haven't technically fully lost their custodial rights. And so once that happens, we might have a good chance of me being able to gain, you know, guardianship of the child, and that's the hope anyways. That's what we're praying for. So we hope that that happens. Now, while all of these surrogates were trying to process everything that had happened, there were still more women across the country who were still pregnant with or had very recently given birth to children belonging to this couple, which can you imagine that? Can you imagine being a surrogate hearing all of this on the news or just having delivered a baby and being like, oh my god, what is going on? I'm carrying this child for this couple. Like, what do I do? What's happening? At least five additional babies were born to surrogates in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Georgia after the couple was arrested, and after the 21 kids were removed from the home. Those children were also taken into state custody in their respective states. None of those children are included in the criminal charges, though, filed by the LA district attorney. But what's interesting, and what I find really rich is the couple actually have the nerve to file lawsuits against the surrogates of those five babies in an effort to regain custody of them in attorney for one of the surrogates, said that her client was thankful that the district attorney was blocking this and was helping. Now, let's talk about the motive here and why they had so many kids. Two weeks before the arrests, a woman outside the Arcadia mansion declined to answer questions about the couple's large family, and also called the police. But then a few days after the arrest of the couple, attorney Mitchell Crems was asked why his client had so many children. He said, oh, it's simple. They just wanted a big family. But then he went into a little more detail saying that they're desired to have a larger family stemmed from what he described as altruism, despite the unusual nature of the situation, which altruism is basically the unselfish concern for the well-being and life of others, acting to help people independently of personal benefits. So like, oh, he just wants to have more children. He wants to help people. He wants to be a saint, a savior, which like, hello, obviously not. And here's exactly what that attorney said. Why does he have so many kids? Yeah, so that's a great question. Because on the surface, it seems that it's very eccentric. But I've gotten to know Mr. Schwan, a very personal level as his attorney. And it's become apparent to me that his desire to have so many kids emanates from his altruism. Crem says, well, John, simply wants to raise good kids who become good adults. The reason he has all these children is because he wants them to contribute to society. He's not a man who's self-indulgent, some who are wealthy might spend on jewelry, cars, but he is actually spending his resources to help his children become educated so that they can be the philosophers, the physicians, the researchers, inventors that help society. He also said that his client is innocent and that he is being targeted for exercising his constitutional right to have a large family. Basically, he wanted to raise as many kids as he could, give them a good life, make them smart, polite, upstanding citizens, because he felt like that was the right thing to do. His attorney is saying now people are persecuting him for being a good guy, which how is subjecting them to such severe abuse and such torture and making them again? Cut their hair. Where are the same thing? Not at all being considered giving them a good life. That's you being concerned for their well-being, are you out of your mind? Following the arrest, the attorney said that there were aspects of the case that he couldn't discuss, but he did deny the allegations that they were abusive, and he argued that the allegations outlined by the LA District Attorney mischaracterized the situation. Well, you know what doesn't, mischaracterize the situation, CCTV footage, and they have got plenty of that. But here's the thing, the abuse allegations and the surrogacy scandal. Those were not the only thing that the investigators were looking into, because like I said, this case has a lot of layers. And as everything was unfolding, the authorities were also looking into him for an entirely different reason. See, in September of 2025, he faced a whole new set of allegations after he was named as a co-defendant in an unrelated civil case. According to a civil complaint filed by the City of El Monte, he had managed a business complex where the investigators found gambling machines and bundles of drugs, including the drug, psilocybin mushrooms. Now he had purchased the 100, and I think it was approximately 116,000 square foot property back in 2019 for $10.5 million, and he purchased it through a company called Hongshing Investment, and he and the other co-defendants allegedly used this property and used alter egos and overlapping addresses to register at least 50 businesses, all to hide who owned the buildings at the business center. And this is all on record, according to an abatement complaint that was filed by the City of El Monte. They can play also alleges that Guadju knew that a convicted felon by the name of Howren Dragan Ma, who was 61 years old, was the alleged mastermind of this gambling and drug manufacturing operation that was happening at the property. So he owned the building, he bought it for $10 million, it's over $100,000 square feet massive. And he knew that this kingpin of sorts named Dragan, which, a little embarrassing, little ik, but he knew that he had this whole gambling ring, drug manufacturing ring, this whole operation, and just didn't care. Dragan was sentenced to 4.5 years in federal prison after he pled guilty to conspiracy, immigration document fraud, and aggravated identity theft. Which I didn't even know that identity theft could also have an aggravated factor attached to it. I learned that today, in this case. Now it's unclear how the two of them first met, but according to the civil complaint, the alleged illegal gambling and drug operation has been running for at least nine years at this business center. So clearly, a very long time. And according to the complaint, police back in 2023 found slot machines and other gambling paraphernalia related to poker and my favorite, Majong, which is a Chinese style game. I play that weekly. And they found that at a building also owned by him. And in addition to all of the gambling paraphernalia, El Monte police also seized a total of 84 boxes of the mushrooms that were planted in soil in this makeshift grow room at the property. Investigators also found a cell phone style concealed handgun, a bag of rifle ammunition, and several different marijuana products that had been moved to another building that was located inside that same business center property. And this property, I think, really was the hub of all of the things that they were doing because Tina Powers, that same former employee, is now suing him and had told the Daily Mail that the couple did run their surrogacy business from the Arcadia home, but then they decided to move all of their companies to this El Monte building. Tina said that she would see gambling tables that were set up in the lower level of one of the buildings whenever she worked at the business center and that that ranged from 2021 to 2022. And she said, quote, "When it was the end of a work day around 5 p.m., that's when you would see people going down to the lower level part of the building. When I went down there, I saw a bunch of cards on the table. It was set up like a casino night type thing. And there were always video cameras everywhere watching your every move." And what is that ring true of? Just like the video cameras that were all over the Arcadia property. And just kind of having this lower level and that the word for that is underground, gambling ring, drug ring, as if surrogacy wasn't enough, he really had to have his hand in every single pot, right? Now, getting back to the allegations involving the children, I want to talk about where things stand today. 66-year-old Gu Jun Shwen, the arguable mastermind behind this whole thing, is facing charges of felony conspiracy to commit child abuse, one count of child abuse, one count of accessory after the fact for allegedly harboring Chunmei Lee, the nanny, five counts of preventing or dissuading a witness, and he's also accused of directly abusing children and instructing them to lie. So his possible sentencing, he faces a maximum of 17 years and four months in state prison if convicted, which, to me, does not sound like enough. What is that? A year for every child, not even? I don't know, feels very lax, but hopefully this is just like the first onset of charges. As for his partner Sylvia, 39-year-old Sylvia, her charges are felony conspiracy to commit child abuse, one count of accessory after the fact, and four counts of preventing or dissuading a witness. She's also accused of hiding evidence and misleading medical staff about an infant's head injury, which I believe goes back to Little Baby Walter. Her possible sentencing, if convicted, is a maximum of 11 years and eight months in state prison. Again, feels very light in the grand scheme of things to me. Now as for the nanny, 58-year-old Chunmei, who is currently on the run, she's facing charges of one felony count of child abuse, likely to cause a great bodily injury or death, and that stems from the allegations that she struck and shook the two-month-old child on May 4, 2025, right before the child was hospitalized. She currently, though, remains a fugitive, with an outstanding $105,000 arrest warrant. And she's believed to have fled back to China. And that's important, because I'm going to talk about the whole motive in all of this in just a moment. Once if convicted, once found, whatever happens, she faces a maximum of 12 years in state prison if convicted. Fail had been set at $20 million each, down from the $100 million prosecutors had reportedly requested, and there also is strict home detention and protective orders in place. However, financial investigations revealed that the couple allegedly managed more than 200 personal bank accounts and 70 corporate accounts. Can you imagine that? I have a hard time with two bank accounts, okay? 100 and 700 corporate accounts, and they also say that they allegedly moved approximately $250 million annually. Investigators also identified a $70 million cash account and multiple passports from the United States, China, and Mexico, which, I don't know, I get that it was set at $20 million and it was reduced from the $100 million for bail. I feel like the $100 million was probably the way to go with this. These people clearly have resources, they're savvy, they have multiple passports, they know how to launder money, move money, do all of these things. If one nanny has already fled to China, who's to say they're not going to assume a different identity and flee as well? It just feels a little reckless, and I know they have home monitoring systems in place, you know, ankle bracelets, all of that, but like, I don't know, why take the risk when you have this many children involved and this serious of allegations? As for the kids, all 21 of the kids, as of the most recent reports, are either in state care or have been placed into foster homes. But as of right now, their parental rights have not been terminated. Some reports say that their attorneys claim that they still have visitation with the kids, though I haven't been able to confirm or deny that I sure is shit, hope not. Some of the surrogates, as I said, have started fighting for custody of the kids as well, and they have also taken the steps to become foster parents in the hopes that they will be able to help these children, but surrogates generally don't have parental rights. So this is going to be a long process that they're going to have to go through to become foster parents and hopefully even get access to those children. I mean, if the parental rights of the couple end up being severed and ultimately mentally terminated, the surrogates could, I would imagine, seek to adopt the children that they gave birth to, but I don't know how all of that works legally. Now as far as the motive in all of this, here's where I stand, and I know we talked about it a little bit already earlier in the episode. I do believe that this was done as a operation to gain American citizenship for these children and then send them back to China. Sending them back either to work in China, to do some sort of manual labor, to possibly do some sort of trafficking, sex work, I don't really know, but the fact that they were not only born here, because they got it, if it were only for citizenship alone, why not be born here and then sent immediately to China. I'm sure there is a requirement of a certain time length, you have to be here maybe, I don't know, I don't think so actually now that I say that out loud, but my whole point is there was obviously something done intentionally to not only have the children born here in the United States, but then to put them in these quote unquote learning centers for years, strip them of their identities, beat them into submission, and basically create this corporal punishment, militant style environment, just to send them back. Why? Why would they need to learn all of that behavior and obedience and discipline unless they're going directly to someone in China who's ready to receive them, who wants them behaving that way. And hopefully you're following me with what I'm saying, especially because as we know, some of the older children and some of the other children who were born to surrogates are no longer even in that house, only what was at 14 or 16 of the 21 were even in that house. So it appears that once they hit a threshold, or a particular age that they then must be sent back to China for what reason we don't know, and I have the chills literally thinking about what that reason could be, but there's a reason that they had this type of abuse happening inside this home to train them, to work them, to strip them, then to move them. Well, where are they moving to? Who was receiving them? Who, what was the plan of who was going to receive them? That's what I want to know. And I'm trying to dig in deeper to see how long did these two people really know each other? Was it truly 2021 where they first connected? I don't think so. It seems like maybe it was something that was ongoing and less like, yeah, he met her and she just got swept up and all the scheming and all that because she already did have that alleged past of elder fraud and she was just an opportunist and a greedy asshole. I don't know, but it is so gnarly and it is still being uncovered as we speak. So I don't even know what to say about this case. There is just so much going on here. The thing that I keep thinking about is those poor children, everything that they had to go through because regardless of what ultimately happens with the criminal charges or the nanny who's on the run or the investigations, we are talking about dozens of children who had absolutely no say in any of this. They didn't ask to be born. They didn't ask to be born at this parent. These parents, they didn't ask to go through this type of abuse to have their identity stripped from them. And most of them were babies, babies who had to witness this who were subjected to it. It is horrible. I also have a lot of questions about how this was even able to happen in the first place, especially with that many surrogates involved, that many 911 calls on the house, that many neighbors raising the red flag to the police the entire time. Like, how did nobody catch on to what was happening sooner? When the police said they were going to do the welfare check because the one neighbor called in the screams, right? And saw a child being shaken. What did that welfare check yield? Did you not see that the home was set up like a hotel? Did you not see that there were dozens of people inside that home? Like, how did this go on for so long? And why was it not stopped sooner? So I'm really curious what you guys think about this case. I am going to be following it very closely. I think I'm actually going to be a little nosy and pop on over there since it's nearby. And to see what the hell's going on. But I'm really curious to know what you think because this case it is far from over. So I will definitely be keeping an eye on it and let you know of any new developments and just keep you up to date with all the situation and what we know. Thank you so much for tuning in. Let me know your thoughts. Sound off in the comments on YouTube. Sound off on the comments on Spotify. And for anybody who is listening to this on Apple, please take a quick second. Leave a five star review. But also let me know in the text field, what do you think the motive was here? Was it strictly money? Was it to send them back to China to work? What do you think was really going on here? Also, really quickly before you go, we have brand new fall and seasonal merch for sale now. Quantities are limited. Grab them while you can. Annie Elyse.com. And yeah, go get your shopping on. All right. Thank you guys so much. And until the next one, be nice. Don't kill people. And protect the children. All right, bye.