The Chinese government is shutting down a company based in Wuhan allegedly connected to fentanyl manufacturing after the United States indicted the company and four senior employees.

The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that Hubei Aoks Bio-Tech Co. Ltd was selling precursor chemicals that are used to make the lethal drug, which has swept across the U.S. killing over 110,000 people through overdoses in 2022 alone.

DHS alleged that the company and its four senior staff—Xuening Gao, Guangzhao Gao, Yajing Li, and a fifth defendant who uses the alias “Jessie Lee”—spent at least a decade selling controlled substances to customers across the U.S. and around the world.

Between November 2016 and Nov. 2023, Hubei Aoks sold and imported 24.2 pounds of fentanyl precursors, capable of making millions of fentanyl pills, along with 4 pounds of xylazine, known as tranq, which is a tranquilizer used to sedate cattle, horses and other large animals.

“Companies such as Hubei Aoks disguise their illicit activities as legitimate business operations yet continue to knowingly contribute to the fentanyl crisis in the United States,” Special Agent in Charge Tyler Hatcher, IRS Criminal Investigation at the Los Angeles Field Office, said in a press release.

Fentanyl in bag
A bag of 4-fluoro isobutyryl fentanyl which was seized in a drug raid is displayed at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Testing and Research Laboratory in Sterling, Va., on Aug. 9, 2016.
A bag of 4-fluoro isobutyryl fentanyl which was seized in a drug raid is displayed at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Testing and Research Laboratory in Sterling, Va., on Aug. 9, 2016.
AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File

DHS said that some of the imported chemicals arrived under labels such as furniture parts, vases, makeup and other items, using the U.S. postal system.

“The shipment of dangerous substances like fentanyl precursor chemicals through the U.S. Mail helps to fuel a pandemic that affects many Americans today,” Inspector in Charge of the United States Postal Inspection Service in Los Angeles Matt Shields said in a press release.

“Precursor chemicals are extremely dangerous substances and pose a serious threat to the health and well-being of our society. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service stands proudly with our federal law enforcement partners as we continue to fight to protect the U.S. Postal Service and Americans from illegal and dangerous substances.”

The company also exported its chemicals to at least 100 countries, DHS said, advertising online and through social media platforms.

In the indictment on November 7:

  • Xuening Gao, 38, Hubei Aoks’ sole director, was charged with two conspiracy counts
  • Guangzhao Gao, 36, the operator of Hubei Aoks’ cryptocurrency wallets used for fentanyl precursor sales, was charged with a total of six felonies, including four distribution-related counts
  • Yajing Li, 30, a Hubei Aoks sales manager, was also charged with six felonies, including conspiracy and distribution of a listed chemical
  • “Jessie Lee,” a Hubei Aoks sales manager, was charged with two conspiracy counts.

DHS said that the Chinese government had since taken action to dissolve the company and had arrested all four defendants, while its Ministry of Public Security was coordinating with the U.S. Department of Justice on the matter.

China’s alleged role in the fentanyl crisis

In October, families affected by the fentanyl crisis called for sanctions on China over its alleged inaction on companies in the country producing chemicals like those distributed by Hubei Aoks.

The group, Facing Fentanyl, estimates that around 400,000 Americans have died as a result of illicit fentanyl in recent years.

“We’re being overtaken by another country that is [waging] their silent chemical war on our country and taking the lives of an entire generation,” Andrea Thomas, who lost her daughter to an accidental overdose in 2018, told Newsweek. “This is the right thing to do and it should have been done actually a long time ago.”

A spokesperson at the Chinese Embassy in the United States told Newsweek at the time that the country took the issue seriously and had strict measures in place.

What is ‘tranq’?

Drug testing for xylazine
Leonardo Dominguez Gomez, field researcher with the New York City Department of Health, tests a heroin sample for xylazine at St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction in New York City on May 25, 2023. The…
Leonardo Dominguez Gomez, field researcher with the New York City Department of Health, tests a heroin sample for xylazine at St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction in New York City on May 25, 2023. The tranquillizer, approved for veterinary use by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has infiltrated the illegal drugs market in the US, with producers increasingly using it to augment fentanyl.

ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

The Wuhan-based company was also accused of shipping xylazine, known as tranq.

The substance is used by veterinarians to sedate large animals such as horses and cows, but it has increasingly been found in fentanyl supplies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Wednesday.

It can cause sedation, difficulty breathing, dangerously low blood pressure and a slowed heart rate, among other symptoms.

The CDC says the substance is being mixed with cocaine, heroin and fentanyl, to increase street value by upping a drug’s weight, but users may not be aware tranq is present.

While the substance was responsible for less than 1 percent of overdoses in 2015, the rate increased to 11 percent by June 2022.