Reedley the Giant Slayer?

The unconscionable and draconian federal and state over-reaction to the pandemic can be blamed for many, many things.

Educational losses.  Mental health problems amongst adults and teens, especially teen girls – see the transgender fad.  Economic upheaval that vastly enriched Wall Street and devastated Main Street.  Friendships destroyed.  Hundreds of billions of dollars looted through fraud.  The creation of a “justification” for the censorship-industrial complex and the lessening of the rights of almost every citizen.  And on and on and on.

Add the “lab” in Reedley to that list.

Covid is where the money was and anyone fogging a mirror could get it, legally or illegally.

It should be noted that the pandemic began in China, is home to many of financial principals involved in the “lab”, and where much of the equipment and even some of the infectious agents – the clear plastic tub marked “malaria” was scrawled with Mandarin characters – found on-site were from, too.  In fact, shipping labels in Mandarin were found and test kit components and various other equipment was shipped in from China – despite the claim of “Made in the USA.”  

And the pandemic is why, the City of Fresno says, it failed to shut “lab” operator Prestige Biotech’s precursor Universal Meditech down even after its facility had an August 2020 fire that “had burned surrounding shelving and materials. It also noted unpermitted lab walls and unpermitted electrical wiring.”

No further action was taken by the city for more than two years after because “all City inspections were scaled back due to the Covid-19 pandemic, including Fresno Fire and Code Enforcement inspections.”

And that’s why Reedley code enforcement officers noticed a garden hose going into what they thought was an empty building where they found vials of malaria and HIV and Covid and other infectious agents “stored” willy-nilly, 1,000 genetically engineered mice, blood and tissue samples, and tens of thousands of at-home covid and pregnancy tests.

All of that had been moved there from Fresno shortly after the city finally went back to follow-up on its two-year-old inspection. And, according to a lawsuit filed (and won – more on that later) by Sensiva Health, when their staff visited the facility to finalize a test component deal well prior to that it became immediately apparent to them that the company wasn’t what it said it was, let alone a clean and proper and safe and competent medical device facility.

All of that stuff had been in Fresno for two years with the city not lifting a finger because…you know, COVID.  

N.B. – as a former mayor, if I had heard that a local medical testing/device firm with unpermitted construction and electrical wiring had had a fire, I would have made sure the place was inspected immediately, pandemic be dammed.

The city – which has thus far delayed UMI’s re-entrance request for a different expanded Fresno facility –  was asked for further comment beyond a press release it issued last week – it declined.

Reedley, though, jumped on the potential disaster immediately and that has set off a chain of events that have – most importantly for the public’s safety – cleaned up the site, set off alarm bells nationwide regarding Chinese business and/or government programs in the United States, and sparked a re-think about the importance of proper regulatory and financial controls in the medical device industry.

“We’re the little David city that slew Goliath, except we used a garden hose instead of a slingshot,” said City Manager Nicole Zieba.  “Lots of people have known they were a problem for some time and Reedley dismantled what no one else could.”

In fact, Tuesday Reedley reached a milestone and finished its initial site abatement work. There are reams of paperwork and thousands of boxes of unopened tests on-site but the city has to get court approval to seize such property.

There are no biological samples on-site now.

Zieba noted that a few “biologics” were found by code enforcement recently, after the county health department had done its initial sweep.  She stressed, however, that they were nothing like the blood and tissues and infectious agents previously discovered and disposed of – it was urine, in jars, and on tests, found in desk drawers.

Eww and ick– and that’s why Reedley staff and everyone else –  wore personal protective equipment when there.  

Good thing the state of California pays close attention to the outfits they offer free money to.

Zieba emphasized that the city and multiple agencies are still cleaning and probing the site, though all of the federal organizations involved – the FDA, CDC, FBI, or EPA – cited their standard public information policy and would not officially confirm to either the city or the Globe the nature, extent, or even existence of those investigations.

The “lab” was not abandoned prior to code enforcement’s arrival, Zieba said.  After the first visit, nearby business owners and their employees told code enforcement that they had seen people coming and going at odd hours in and out of the 850 I Street building. 

Two notes: Zieba said she is convinced the out-of-town owners of the property – who gave Prestige a short-term lease on the old ag cold storage building that had been empty for a decade – were unaware of what was occurring at the property and that the recycling service tenant at one of the other two buildings – the one furthest away – is a legitimate company.  Second, the building does not “share” an alley with the Reedley Police Department as has been rumored elsewhere – there is a large parking lot and train tracks between the backs of the buildings.

As for the three-ish month delay in informing the public of the situation, Zieba said their first priority was the safety of the community and that they felt they needed the site to be cleaned and the facts determined as best they could be before they did so. Additionally, the other agencies working on the situation specifically asked the city not to make any public statement on the matter if at all possible, something Reedley did until the court-ordered abatement warrants were processed.

Prestige, by the way, had no local permits nor had even bought a $230 city business license.

“They really didn’t want us to know they were there until we found them,” Zieba said.

Finding “them” seems to be a continuing issue.  Zieba said all of the principals that they had previously had excrutiartingly difficult and convoluted contact with have gone quiet once the “lab” became public knowledge.  And Sensiva is having trouble finding them, too, as they want to be paid the $2.35 million dollar judgement they got against UMI (which has cross-leadership with Prestige and a third China-based medical device firm.)

In mid-2021, Sensiva filed suit against UMI saying it failed to live up to its contract to provide hundreds of thousands of “lateral flow devices” (basically, that’s the strip part of a covid or even a pregnancy test – different types of tests can be made using the technology) to Sensiva to manufacture/package its own proper at-home covid test.  

After UMI – through its representative listed in the suit as Karakin Khatchadoorian (NOTE: not in any way related to the noted downtown Fresno developer brothers Serko and Sevak Khatchadourian, Serko said) – and Sensiva agreed to the deal, a Sensiva official visited the Fresno lab to confirm everything and personally inspect the equipment they were purchasing (they had already sent UMI more than $500,000 “down.”)

The Sensiva rep was shocked by what he discovered. According to the successful federal lawsuit, he found covid testing solution that “needed to be kept sterile in water jugs on the floor,” that UMI – despite promises and photographs to the contrary – was trying to pawn off “Sensiva with flimsy, low-grade, translucent Chinese-made cassettes and diluent that was neither prepared nor packaged in a sterile fashion,” and that Khatchadoorian refused to let Sensiva see anything in the facility except for the lobby and the conference room where he was shown the shoddy merchandise.

The deal, needless to say, went south quickly and it can be strongly inferred that the UMI-“made” tests that were later recalled  for being unlicensed and untested and therefore not legal by the FDA were also most likely worthless garbage.

As are the thousands of covid and pregnancy tests found in Reedley.

Sensiva would like to track down Khatchadoorian, and UMI operators Xiaoxiao Wang and Zhaoyan Wang, and anyone else involved in the company to collect their judgement. But – as with so many other entities looking into this matter – that is proving exceedingly difficult.  In fact, after multiple attempts to find (even using private investigators) anyone associated with the company, a federal judge took the pretty unusual step of allowing Sensiva to officially serve the defendants with the judgment demand by simply placing a series of advertisements in the the local Business Journal.

Per court records, the last ad was slated to run a few weeks ago.

Amazingly, none of this has stopped UMI from trying to move to a new location in Fresno. The city is delaying that attempt – for now – and attempts to reach the landlord of the potential new site on Blattella Lane – par for the course in this matter – did not respond to emails requesting comment.

As for what this could mean in the larger picture of Chinese government influence – Chinese Communist Party tactics experts do not doubt there is another “Reedley” out there – is as yet unknown.

But Zieba strongly hopes federal financial and health agencies get to the bottom of this incredibly tangled web, find the people involved, follow the money trail, figure out exactly the extent of Mainland China business and/or government involvement, and do so quickly.

“We’re doing our part,” Zieba said.  “And we will keep doing so.”