Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives arrested Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang at their Arcadia residence Tuesday and moved them to the Pasadena courthouse, where each pleaded not guilty and was held on a $20 million bond on charges that include conspiracy to commit child abuse and dissuading a witness.
Prosecutors say the case grew from a May 2025 hospital report on a two-month-old boy with a head injury and later expanded into a multi-agency probe of conditions inside the couple’s mansion, where authorities previously took 21 children, most born through surrogacy, into state custody after a July 2025 raid. The legal stakes now center on whether the filed complaint can prove coordinated abuse and witness interference, while a named nanny remains a fugitive.
CBS News reported that a law enforcement source confirmed the arrests shortly before officials staged a news conference the same day. A neighbor said helicopters and police were visible at the mansion and that the entire block was taped off.
Sheriff Robert Luna said the investigation began when Zhang brought the infant to a hospital with a head injury. Hospital staff contacted police after questioning her account.
Luna told reporters the sequence that followed:
"She appeared to be untruthful with hospital staff about how the injury was sustained and the hospital staff notified law enforcement authorities,"
When Arcadia police went to the home, Luna said, "what they discovered raised even more serious concerns." Arcadia police later asked the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for help in early September. An FBI spokesperson separately confirmed that the FBI served a search warrant at the home, apart from a sheriff’s department search.
Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said a criminal complaint filed the day of the news conference lays out conduct he described in stark terms.
"What has been publicly filed in the complaint today is incredibly disturbing. It involves horrific punishment and beatings and child abuse,"
Hochman said the home contained three rooms called “Learning Centers,” where children sat for hours under nanny supervision, and that 32 motion-activated cameras covered various rooms. Prosecutors allege nannies spanked, slapped, and hit children on video while the monitoring system recorded discipline. Hochman also said nanny Chunmei Li allegedly struck the two-month-old in the head. Authorities previously issued a $105,000 warrant for Li, who remains on the run.
Breitbart reported additional charging language described by prosecutors, including child abuse, conspiracy to commit child abuse, accessory after the fact, and dissuading a witness, and carried Hochman’s description of the residence as a “house of horrors” for very young children. That outlet also reported the children ranged from a few months old to 13 years old, with most between ages 1 and 3, and said 15 were removed from the Arcadia home while others were located elsewhere as the custody total reached at least 21.
The New York Post reported that Xuan, 66, and Zhang, 39, were taken into custody in an early-morning operation at their roughly $4 million Arcadia mansion and that Hochman said the couple paid surrogates around $135,000 total while monitoring the children with more than 30 motion-activated cameras and tracking them on a spreadsheet. That account also said the pair ran their own agency, Mark Surrogacy, and that the hospitalized infant had a traumatic brain injury, with Li accused of hitting and shaking the child.
Xuan’s attorney, Mitchell Krems, rejected the state’s theory and pointed at the missing caregiver.
"My client is innocent. It is the nanny's wrongdoing who went on the run. He is being targeted for exercising his constitutional right to have a large family."
Both defendants remain presumed innocent. The complaint’s full count list, statutes, and evidentiary exhibits have not been publicly detailed beyond the district attorney’s summary and the charges named at the news conference.
Melissa Brisman, an attorney for two surrogates tied to the case, called the arrests a signal that abuse of the surrogacy system can bring consequences and said there must be adequate protections for people who enter that system. "We need to make sure bad actors don't ruin it for everyone else," Brisman said.
Maria Castellanos, a surrogate who carried two children for Zhang and Xuan, said she trusted Silvia and voiced anger at the broader process after learning of the arrest.
"I'm mad that everyone involved couldn't stop this so the kids wouldn't go through everything they went through. I'm just mad with the whole process, the whole thing. It's not just them."
Luna said detectives made the Tuesday morning arrests at the residence and transferred the couple for arraignment. He pledged continued joint work "to pursue justice for all 21 children involved in this case."
Investigators will need to establish who directed or tolerated the alleged beatings, what the camera system captured, and whether any effort was made to dissuade a witness as charged. They will also need to resolve Li’s status while she stays at large on the outstanding warrant.
Authorities have not publicly released the complete charging instrument text, the hospital’s name, or a full roster of every caregiver under scrutiny. No public results have been released that assign final legal responsibility for each child’s injuries. The children taken into state custody after the July raid remain under state authority, with further placement details not described in the public statements tied to the Tuesday arraignments.
Bond was set at $20 million for each defendant after the not-guilty pleas. Prosecutors framed the filed allegations as extreme. The defense framed the case as misplaced blame for a large family and wrongdoing by a fugitive nanny. A judge and jury, not a news conference, will test those claims against admissible proof.
When cameras, caregivers, and custody collide with criminal statutes, the public interest is simple: protect the children, run a clean prosecution, and make sure California’s surrogacy rules cannot be twisted into a shield for abuse.
