Parents from Arcadia surrogacy mansion arrested on child abuse conspiracy charges

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Set us as preferred An Arcadia couple responsible for more than 20 children who were born through surrogates and kept under constant surveillance at a sprawling mansion were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit child abuse early Tuesday morning, authorities said.Guojon Xuan, 65, and his wife, 38-year-old Sylvia Zhang, were both arrested Tuesday morning, according to Nicole Nishida, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Members of the agency’s Special Victims Bureau, which investigates child abuse, could be seen early Tuesday outside the gated nine-bedroom multimillion-dollar mansion where the children were kept.Los Angeles County Dist.

Atty.Nathan Hochman is expected to hold a news conference discussing the arrests later on Tuesday.An attorney for Xuan declined to comment.

It was not immediately clear Tuesday whether Zhang was represented by a lawyer.The arrests marked the end of a yearlong probe that started after Arcadia police officers searched the couple’s West Camino Real Avenue residence as part of a child abuse investigation and found 15 children living there, almost all between the ages of 1 and 3.Zhang said she was the biological mother of 22 children with Xuan, whom she married in 2021, according to an affidavit written by an Arcadia investigator and other court records.

All but two of those children were delivered through surrogates, some of who have since claimed they felt duped after learning they were part of a mass delivery of newborns for the couple.Xuan, described by some as a wealthy investor who runs a real estate company, had been on law enforcement’s radar since at least 2021 after an El Monte property he owned was found to be operating as an illicit casino, then a marijuana stash house, then a grow site for psychedelic mushrooms.Police zeroed in on the Arcadia...