An illegal Fresno County laboratory in a dirty warehouse just got raided and shut down by the Feds.
Usually when you hear a statement like that, you think it must have been drugs: Fentanyl, meth, some other designer drug, but this one was different.
This laboratory was experimenting with multiple infectious diseases on rats, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis, and herpes.
The old warehouse used for storage first came under suspicion in April when a "code enforcement officer" noticed an "illegal garden hose" attached to the back of the building.
(California authorities will destroy you if you aren't up to code but hard drugs on the street are fine.)
Local authorities then searched the premises. After finding the lab, they quickly called state and federal authorities.
Here are some photos of the lab:
When federal agents tried to track down ownership of the building and equipment, they discovered it belonged to a company called Prestige Biotech.
They called the owner, one Xiuquin Yao, and he said the equipment belonged to a long defunct company called Universal Meditech, and Prestige Biotech had taken possession of it as a creditor after bankruptcy.
However, all the addresses provided for Prestige Biotech were empty buildings and unverifiable addresses in China.
"The other addresses provided for identified authorized agents were either empty offices or addresses in China that could not be verified," court documents said.
On top of that, the equipment wasn't just thrown in the building for storage. There were hundreds of live rats still in the middle of ongoing experiments with thousands of samples of blood and tissue, and it was a warehouse, not a laboratory, meaning containment was not a priority.
According to court documents, all of the biological agents have been destroyed.
Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba told KSEE that officials have cleared the area of hazardous materials but are still working to empty the warehouse.
"Some of our federal partners still have active investigations going. I can only speak to the building side of it," Zieba said
It's unclear what exactly the purpose of the experiments were.
If I had to make a guess though, a cure for any of those diseases wasn't it.
