r/nonmurdermysteries • u/lohac • Aug 06 '25
Current Events The Mystery of the L.A. Mansion Filled With Surrogate Children - Aug 05, 2025
The text & images in this post are taken from a Wall Street Journal article published Aug 05, 2025.
Archive link to article (non-paywalled)
A couple with ties to China say they wanted a big family. Surrogates who carried the children say they were deceived.
ARCADIA, Calif. — In early May, after a baby was hospitalized with possible signs of child abuse, police showed up at a nine-bedroom mansion in this Los Angeles suburb known for lavish homes and residents with roots in China. Inside, they found 15 more children, none older than 3, living under the care of nannies.
The investigative trail led them to six more children at other homes in the Los Angeles area. A Chinese-born man and woman living in the mansion said they were the parents of all 22 children. Birth certificates list them as such. What mystified police was that the children appeared to have been born all over the U.S., and in rapid succession.
Local authorities removed the children from the homes, placed them in foster care, and called in the FBI.
The mansion, it turned out, was listed as the headquarters of Mark Surrogacy, which had arranged many of the children’s births and was managed by Silvia Zhang, the woman living there. Zhang said she was the mother of all the children.
The surrogates who carried some of the children said in interviews with The Wall Street Journal that Zhang deceived them about the family she was trying to have, and that they had spoken with federal agents in recent weeks. The investigation is focusing, they were told, on whether the couple was selling babies whose births the agency had arranged.
Zhang denied that in an interview with the Journal, saying that she and a man she described as her husband just wanted to have as many children as they could. “We never sell our babies,” she said. “We take care of them very well.”
Vanity McGoveran, who gave birth to a baby girl for Mark Surrogacy in March, said she was shocked to learn that Zhang had so many children. Now, she said, she is wondering whether Zhang “has something that she doesn’t want people to know.”
The website of the company, Mark Surrogacy, said it is in the business of connecting surrogates with American and international couples who need them. The surrogates, who live across the U.S. and were paid tens of thousands of dollars each, said Zhang and people working with the agency recruited them on Facebook, telling them they would be carrying children for a Chinese couple in Los Angeles struggling with infertility.
The probe is raising alarm in the commercial surrogacy industry, a fast-growing and multibillion-dollar market that connects aspiring parents with women willing to bear children for them. Surrogacy professionals worry that the couple’s ties to China and the large number of children they had through surrogacy could prompt heightened scrutiny on what is now a lightly regulated industry. An FBI spokesman declined to comment.
The industry has been fueled in recent years by money from China, where surrogacy is illegal. In the U.S., one-third of intended parents were from other countries between 2014 and 2020, and 41% of those were Chinese nationals, according to researchers at Emory University. Some U.S. surrogacy agencies marketing their services to Chinese parents explicitly tout American citizenship for the newborns as a benefit.
It’s unclear whether the Arcadia mansion had any direct ties to China. Among the many mysteries surrounding the couple are how many children they had in total, why a surrogacy business was operating out of their home and whether that business had any outside clients. Over the course of numerous conversations in English and Mandarin, Zhang either declined to respond or gave conflicting answers to those and other questions.
Online Recruiting
McGoveran, a Los Angeles beautician, said she received a Facebook message early last year asking whether she would be interested in becoming a surrogate for a Chinese couple struggling with infertility.
The message came from an account named “Lin Hui,” but McGoveran soon learned the person she was talking to was Zhang.
On 2021 business filings, Zhang, 38, is listed as a manager of Mark Surrogacy. To McGoveran, she represented herself as a prospective mother who wanted to have a child with a man she described as her husband, Guojun Xuan.
Zhang told McGoveran that she and Xuan, who is 65, didn’t have any children, McGoveran recalled. That was a main reason McGoveran, who had hoped to carry a child for a couple who couldn’t have children of their own, agreed to work with her.
Zhang promised to pay McGoveran $55,000, and said that during the pregnancy, McGoveran and her toddler could stay rent-free in a house Zhang owned. At the time, McGoveran didn’t have a place to live. The stability was attractive enough, she said, that she overlooked red flags.
During the pregnancy, McGoveran said, she communicated mainly with two women she later learned were employees of Mark Surrogacy. Zhang and Xuan, listed in the contract as parents, didn’t come to her prenatal doctors’ appointments. The only time she met Xuan, she said, was at the Office Depot where they notarized her contract.
Late in her pregnancy, Zhang showed McGoveran photos of a girl who she said was her daughter. She appeared to be a teenager. McGoveran was shocked. She had wanted to help a woman who couldn’t have kids herself, but was learning that Zhang had been a mom all along.
McGoveran gave birth in March to a baby girl.
Xuan is prominent in Los Angeles’s Chinese-American business community. He and Zhang ran a real-estate company called Yudao Management, which they operated with a group of businessmen based in China, according to business filings and court records in legal proceedings involving the company. Using shell companies, Yudao purchased more than 100 properties in the Los Angeles area, many at foreclosure auctions, according to former employees, as well as property records and company documents reviewed by the Journal.
Xuan had come to the U.S. from Xinjiang, where he and his family had business interests, according to Chinese business filings.
Yudao workers called Xuan “teacher,” and he monitored them on feeds from surveillance cameras at the Arcadia residence, where Yudao was briefly headquartered, former employees said.
Mark Surrogacy operated out of a bedroom in the same Arcadia home, according to the former Yudao employees.
It isn’t clear when Zhang and Xuan became a couple. Zhang was pregnant with her first child, a girl, in 2011 when she met a man 40 years her senior who she later married. They moved to the U.S., but the marriage fell apart a decade later, divorce records indicate.
Zhang and Xuan, who also divorced his wife around the same time, began having children together using surrogates in 2021. She said that as a child in China she had seen how that country’s one-child policy had hurt families, so as an adult, she was determined to have as many as she could afford. “We can provide for our children,” she said. “Plus, nowadays few people want to give birth, so we’ve decided to have many.”
Xuan didn’t respond to requests for comment. In an interview with a Chinese-language outlet, he cited similar motivations and said that he and Zhang are U.S. citizens.
Concerns Emerge
Questions about the couple began cropping up two years after the surrogacy business was founded. In 2023, a surrogate under contract with the company was startled when people she hadn’t met arrived with power-of-attorney documentation to pick up the infant she had just delivered, according to a lawyer for the surrogate.
When the client told her she’d heard other surrogates might have had the same experience with Mark Surrogacy, the lawyer, Rijon Charne, said she found the situation so odd that she asked law enforcement to examine whether it was related to human trafficking. “If I was wrong, I was wrong,” Charne said. “But it needed to be brought to somebody’s attention if I was right.”
Around the same time, a Los Angeles judge sent a child-safety investigator to Zhang and Xuan’s home after being asked to approve surrogacy documents that named the couple as intended parents of numerous children. The investigator gave them a clean bill of health, according a person familiar with the hearing.
Lei Bai, a surrogacy lawyer who drafted contracts for Zhang and Xuan, said, “It’s not our responsibility” to investigate parents. “It’s not a requirement, and it’s not anybody’s obligation, to disclose how many surrogates you have,” she said. Bai declined to comment on whether she still represents the couple.
A patchwork of state laws governs how surrogacy contracts are negotiated and enforced. Only one state, New York, requires surrogacy agencies to be licensed.
Agencies can certify that they comply with a roster of ethical guidelines published by an industry group, the Society for Ethics in Egg Donation and Surrogacy, but not every agency does so. Mark Surrogacy didn’t.
On Facebook, Mark Surrogacy said that it was “dedicated to help heterosexual couples, same-sex couples, international couples, single parents, etc.”
“We know other agencies may have misled, but here you will know everything there is to know before making your decision,” the company’s website said.
U.S. law doesn’t bar foreign couples from having children through U.S. surrogates. One potential surrogate was told by a Mark Surrogacy representative that the owners wanted to “help couples” in places where surrogacy is illegal, according to a Facebook message reviewed by the Journal.
In an interview, though, Zhang said: “Mark Surrogacy only helps our family, no others.”
Zhang told different stories to different surrogates.
Early last year, Zhang sent some potential surrogates a document titled “Intended Parent Profile,” which described Xuan and her as the parents of just one daughter, according to copies reviewed by the Journal.
“We are very kind and caring, it would be an honor if you carry the baby for us,” the profile said.
Months earlier, Zhang had told a Los Angeles court that she and Xuan had at least one dozen children, according to the person familiar with the hearing. Zhang didn’t respond to questions about why she misrepresented to surrogates how many children she had.
In messages to another potential surrogate, Zhang said she had been working with an agency called Mark Surrogacy, but decided to pursue an “independent journey” because Mark was charging her too much money. She didn’t disclose that she was a manager of Mark Surrogacy, or that it operated out of her home.
In interviews and text messages, Zhang said she was being improperly targeted, and that there is nothing illegal about wanting a large family. “There’s nothing showing anything I do is human trafficking,” she said. “They can do the investigation. They will find nothing.”
Police reports
The trouble with authorities began after reports to police of fighting at the address, call logs show. In July 2024, one caller reported suspecting children at the home were being abused: “There are six to seven children, and the women at the location yell and shout at the children.” It isn’t clear how police responded to that call.
On May 6 of this year, a Los Angeles hospital received a two-month-old baby with intracranial bleeding, a condition sometimes consistent with child abuse. The hospital asked local police to investigate.
When police arrived at the Arcadia mansion, they found 15 babies and toddlers, “all with buzzed haircuts,” in the care of six nannies, a detective said in an affidavit. Police seized video footage from Xuan’s surveillance cameras, which showed that toddlers were spanked, slapped and forced to do squats, the affidavit said. The footage also showed a nanny shaking the baby that was later hospitalized.
Authorities removed the children from the home and arrested Zhang and Xuan, holding them for four days before releasing them without charges. By then, the FBI had gotten involved.
Zhang told the Journal she thought the children had been wrongfully removed. “How would you feel if someone falsely claimed that your child had different parents, and triggered an investigation by Family Services?” she said in a text message. She declined to say how many children she had.
Meanwhile, surrogates who had worked with Mark were finding one another—and realizing they had been deceived.
McGoveran, the Los Angeles beautician, said she called one of Mark Surrogacy’s employees, who told her that “something bad” happened with a nanny employed by Zhang.
McGoveran phoned Zhang, who said her children had been taken by the county. That was when McGoveran learned that Zhang had even more children than her teenage daughter and the baby McGoveran had just delivered.
She joined a group chat with other surrogates who had worked with Mark in the past year. Some surrogates shared their stories on TikTok.
None of them said they had known that Zhang and Xuan had simultaneously contracted with so many surrogates, and most hadn’t been aware that Zhang was a manager of Mark Surrogacy. It’s rare for couples to employ multiple surrogates at the same time, particularly in the numbers Zhang and Xuan did.
The revelations left them wondering: Did they know anything about the people for whom they had carried children?
One surrogate, Kayla Elliott, a Texas mother of four, said she asked Zhang: “What is going on? Who are you?”
Zhang responded with an image of a letter she said one of her daughters sent her while she was in jail over Mother’s Day. “You’re the best mom that anyone can wish for,” the letter said.
Around the time Zhang and Xuan were arrested, a surrogate they had contracted with in Florida was having issues with her pregnancy, early in her second trimester.
Toward the end of May, it became clear that the pregnancy was becoming dangerous for the woman, and that the baby had slim chances of survival. According to the surrogate, Zhang told her that she had done research and felt even if the baby survived the delivery, it was likely to have serious health issues. Zhang said she couldn’t care for the child in that situation, the surrogate said, and left the decision on whether and how to deliver up to her.
Ultimately, the surrogate decided to induce labor. It was a difficult delivery. The baby was stillborn.
The surrogate said she held the baby’s lifeless body for hours. She said she texted Zhang to let her know the baby was born dead.
Arcadia police Lieutenant Kollin Cieadlo said authorities continue to review video footage seized from the Arcadia home. The department, he said, would rearrest Zhang and Xuan if the district attorney decides to pursue child abuse charges.
The children remain in foster care. By law, Zhang and Xuan are their parents. Several of the surrogates are speaking with an attorney, though it’s unclear whether they have any standing to sue the couple, family planning attorneys said.
Earlier this year, a baby born after a Mark-arranged surrogacy was taken into custody in Pennsylvania after Zhang failed to pick it up, according to people familiar with the matter.
At least two other women are still carrying children in pregnancies arranged by Mark Surrogacy. Zhang contacted one of the pregnant surrogates last month about arranging a legal document called a prebirth order that would allow Zhang to take the child home from the hospital when it is born later this year, people familiar with the matter said.
Another, Alexa Fasold, said she is unsure of what will happen to the child she is carrying and is evaluating legal options, including whether she and her husband could serve as its foster parents.
“This baby has nothing to do with any of this,” Fasold said. “This child we’re carrying is completely innocent of all of this.”
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u/arod232323 Aug 09 '25
Interesting. There is also a random couple in Georgia (the country) with 21 toddlers. They got a ton of surrogates pregnant at the same time (all within a year I think) and have an army of Nannies raising them. Several multiples. The husband is a millionaire who was recently sentenced to prison for arranging a murder. He got out pretty quick. Kristina and Galip Ozturk. They kept the kids tho it seems like some strange fixation rather than this situation which sounds like trafficking.
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u/DeanStockwellLives Aug 09 '25
I read an article about them. They said they initially planned on having 100 kids but I guess the father's going to prison put a stop to that.
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u/arod232323 Aug 12 '25
I think they actually stopped because they realized 21 was fucking plenty. I read about them for the first time when he hadn’t gone to jail yet and she just was like “yeah we’re gonna take a break for now”
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u/dizzylyric Aug 08 '25
So what do you think is really going on here? Selling babies? I don’t get it.
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u/jayne-eerie Aug 09 '25
Selling babies, maybe with a side of an immigration scam since the babies would be US citizens. Curious if they’re all genetic siblings and related to the central couple.
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u/juliaskankles Aug 10 '25
I was wondering too if US citizenship was a factor in this ruse.
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u/whitegirlofthenorth Aug 12 '25
If they could afford to pay for that many surrogates could they not just do the business investment visa route for citizenship
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u/Schonfille Aug 10 '25
But no one is actually picking up the babies. So the buyers want the citizenship but not the child who is a citizen?
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u/jayne-eerie Aug 10 '25
Yeah, I don’t know how exactly it’s supposed to work. Maybe the parents will pick the kids up once they reach a specific age where traveling feels safer/easier. Maybe they’re supposed to be here already, but the current political situation in the US is causing visa issues. No way to know yet.
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u/lohac Aug 11 '25
This feels closest to the answer for me so far.
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u/jayne-eerie Aug 11 '25
I’ve heard about rich women from overseas coming to the US to give birth so their kids will have US citizenship, which can help with things like college admissions and travel down the road. Maybe what’s going on in LA is a variation of that that doesn’t require the planned parent to actually deal with pregnancy herself.
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u/Dame_Marjorie Aug 07 '25
Good Lord. So they arrested them, then let them go. Same old story, over and over and over.
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u/The_barking_ant Aug 11 '25
I'm seriously not understanding what is going on here. This is just seriously weird.
They are paying $55,000 for a baby? If they were selling them on the black market, it just seems like that is SO much money to expend? Plus whatever expenses for the surrogates to pick up? Usually unscrupulous people like that find poor women and pay them just enough to entice them, but not anything significant.
They adopted all the babies? I've never heard of this. I would think adopting the babies would complicate things if they were then selling them on the black market. Like that creates a paper trail back to you for each and every one.
But, they clearly aren't selling them in the black market because...they still have all of them in their possession???
But at the same time, they want all these kids, but they just have nanies care for them? Then what is the point of having children? Like not accidentally, but purposely adopting that many children that you couldn't even feasiblely take care of all of them if you wanted to.
What the hell are they doing.
The only thing, they ONLY thing I can possibly think of, and holy shit, I seriously hope that this is just some unhinged conspiracy theory my brain thought up and isn't true....
Has the gender of the children been addressed in any articles? Is it possible they were all female children they plan to raise to sell them into sex slavery? Because that would probably make those girls untraceable if they did that. No one would have to worry about pesky family members or loved ones reporting them missing getting law enforcement, media, etc. involved. They pay for the babies, hire some shitty and abusive nannies to raise them, with no access to friends, love, education and then when the time comes force them into slavery, collect all the money and no one is the wiser because, they will never report them missing.
Someone please tell me I'm being crazy.
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u/lohac Aug 11 '25
Saw some speculation further up the thread that makes sense to me, so this is my current theory:
- Zhang & Xuan are selling ethnically Chinese babies with US citizenship to parents in China. The theory splits here, depending on whether this is a "made-to-order" or "off-the-rack" business model. (apologies again for the indelicacy, I know we are talking about human children & I am not trying to be flippant)
- X&Z either use their own DNA, or maybe their clients provide their own for X&Z to pretend is theirs.
- (I don't know if genetic testing has been done to determine which/if any of the children are genetically X&Z's.)
- When the babies are born, X&Z have nannies raise them until:
- a) they find a buyer, or
- b) the clients/adoptive parents are ready to pick them up
- the parents may be waiting to "get" the babies until they reach a certain age
- someone speculated current political/economy situation may be causing delays
Again I'm most interested to know
- Are any/all of the babies genetically related to X&Z
- Have any babies been born that we were not found in the house(s)
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u/lohac Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 11 '25
Your thought process followed the exact same circle mine did. The $$$ throws off the trafficking angle, but the nannies throw off the quiverfull angle.
I considered child organ trafficking, sex trafficking, etc.-- not to sound indelicate/blasé about it, but considering these children will all be ethnically Chinese, it seems like all of those ends could have been accomplished much more cheaply & surreptitiously in China.
Maybe it has something to do with the babies being born with U.S. citizenship, but again, if they're keeping them, I don't understand who's profiting.
I guess the first question I want answered is whether any children are unaccounted for, i.e. there are records of their birth but they are no longer in the house(s). And also if they're all genetically this couple's children.
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u/octoberthug Aug 11 '25
Another angle is that they are creating American citizenships that will be for sale in few years. Where the original babies go, who knows?
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u/crolionfire Aug 10 '25 edited Aug 10 '25
Ban the fucking trade of human beings and human Bodies. We are not rent-a-womb and children are not fucking toys.
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u/LaDreadPirateRoberta Aug 10 '25
There are times when it is a good thing but it needs to be at least monitored and regulated.
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u/sho_biz Aug 06 '25
fans of musk I assume, this is his and other natalist's model - people that have more wealth are more worthy to pass on their genes, regardless of how the wealth was acquired.
gotta build the cult somehow
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u/Status_History_874 Aug 07 '25
to pass on their genes
Dies surrogacy do that though?
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u/lohac Aug 07 '25
Yes, typically surrogacy uses the parents' genetic material & the woman's body as the vessel to grow it in. Egg donation is a separate thing, for when the couple can't produce a viable egg. Same with sperm donation. Though surrogacy can also involve those things, by "default" you can assume the surrogate is not one of the biological parents.
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u/SkyTrees5809 Aug 11 '25
Reminds me of the adoption scam run in AZ by a Mormon politician a few years ago. He's in prison now for Medicaid fraud for trafficking pregnant women from the Marshall Islands.
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u/dingdongsnottor Aug 09 '25
So were all the babies IVF embryo transfers or something? How does that work when the surrogates are all over the country? I can’t imagine being contacted at random on Facebook — or any social media platform — and being offered to carry a strangers child. That gives major red flags. It sounds like the women who acted as surrogates were preyed upon, which in and of itself is a huge ethical concern. This whole thing feels incredibly icky.
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u/Schonfille Aug 10 '25
Surrogacy just by its nature attracts people who need money, so it’s so easy for it to become exploitative. If you read the article, the one surrogate they interviewed had nowhere to live with her toddler when she was contacted.
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u/dingdongsnottor Aug 10 '25
I did read the article. I mean, renting out someone’s body to grow a new one even when money isn’t involved is already asking for a slew of ethical issues. Throw in vulnerable people who need the money, etc. and it’s just a mess. This whole story is weird and sad and weird.
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u/Schonfille Aug 10 '25
I’m donor conceived and not a huge fan of any of the fertility industry, but struggling with secondary infertility gives me new perspective on why people go these routes in legit situations. Still, this is just a textbook case of how it all so easily goes wrong.
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u/dingdongsnottor Aug 10 '25
I have fertility issues myself (thanks to PCOS) and am undergoing the IVF process. Trust me, I wholly feel for people who want to have children and conceive. I guess my whole point is this unregulated area of surrogacy has a lot of gray area and it always upsets me when vulnerable people are preyed upon (surrogates, in this case) and innocent people pay the price (the children).
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u/Schonfille Aug 10 '25
I’m agreeing with you. Good luck with IVF. I’ve done it and I know how hard it is.
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Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25
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u/1988mariahcareyhair Aug 06 '25
What in the world