The mayor of Lancaster — whose city was rocked by FBI investigations earlier this spring — sees this week’s federal raids throughout the Inland Empire and Los Angeles region as part of a related probe into Chinese influence-peddling efforts.
In an interview Thursday, July 30, Mayor R. Rex Parris said that a common theme between FBI raids in Lancaster City Hall and councilmember homes in his high desert community and this week’s sweeps is the same: Chinese influence to get insider access to local projects in exchange for money and gifts.
The 74-year old Parris told the Southern California News Group that the FBI is looking into the Chinese-backed BYD bus company’s operations in Lancaster, plus many other philanthropic endeavors sponsored by the city and others. The public backlash from the raids also has led to a funding pullback to build a $1.1 billion hospital in Lancaster and fill a financial gap in a newly built sports complex, he said.
In April, FBI agents arrived in the northern L.A. County suburb, taking cell phones from people throughout the community — well beyond City Hall — and communications records from targeted people, searching for evidence to prove some sort of corruption, Parris said. One targeted councilmember even had his computer data copied, or mirrored onto another device, by the FBI in his City Hall office, the mayor said.
The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles declined comment on the investigations.
BYD — which stands for “Build Your Dreams” — operates a sprawling battery and electric bus factory in Lancaster, and has sold EV buses to the Antelope Valley Transportation Authority and other bus agencies and school districts over the past dozen or more years. BYD electric vehicles also are found in the Anaheim Transportation Network, the Antelope Valley Schools Transportation Agency, Long Beach Transit, Denver Regional Transportation, LA Metro and Los Angeles Department of Transportation.
The parent of BYD America, which operates the factory in Lancaster, is Chinese-based BYD Co. Ltd. BYD passenger cars are not sold in the U.S. due to high tariffs and a lack of federal safety and emissions certification.
BYD officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Raids everywhere
The raids in Lancaster happened April 15, 2026, and came nearly four years after the FBI first began poking around for leads as the agency built its case, according to Parris. No charges have been filed in that investigation.
This week’s FBI raids in San Bernardino County were part of a public corruption probe and involved the homes of a county supervisor, an Ontario City Council member, and the offices of EDI Media, a well-known Chinese-U.S. media producer in West Covina. Federal agents also conducted surprise searches at a Beverly Hills mansion and took records at Ontario International Airport as part of its operation.
“I don’t have any doubt that the Chinese government is exercising influence inappropriately,” said Parris, noting that BYD and other targets were mentioned in a warrant letter provided to him by another city official after the Lancaster raids — though he declined to identify them. A warrant letter is a legal notification of a pre-arrest warning.
“If somebody took some money, they shouldn’t have, they need to be held accountable. If the Chinese are doing something in Lancaster, I want them to investigate,” Parris said. “But they build buses, for heaven’s sakes. We’ve got a huge factory here. They should look, but I don’t think they should destroy people’s reputations.”
On April 15, the day after city council elections, FBI agents raided the homes of Vice Mayor Marvin Crist, Councilmember Raj Malhi and a third home in Bel Air, according to Parris. Crist sits as chair of the Antelope Valley Transit Authority, which began converting its entire fleet of diesel buses to BYD EVs in 2018. Malhi also is a member of the AVTA board.
Crist, a former firefighter turned insurance broker, did not seek reelection, while Malhi, first appointed to the council over a decade ago, lost his seat to a challenger. Neither Crist nor Malhi could be reached for comment.
Rally time
Some people in the Antelope Valley — including Parris — have rallied around the two councilmembers targeted by the FBI. Crist, for example, was given a distinguished alumni award June 5 at commencement ceremonies held by the Antelope Valley College.
“I’ve never seen them do anything that made me suspicious. The first time that we (the city) heard that the investigation was ongoing, we spent a great deal of money going through every message, every email with independent counsel,” Parris said. “I said to them (the lawyers) that I need to know if there’s anything to this, and it came back, ‘No.’ I can say we looked really hard to see if there was a problem. We couldn’t find one.
“The relationship between the U.S. and China has deteriorated tremendously,” said Parris, who hotly competed with Los Angeles and Long Beach officials to recruit the EV manufacturer more than 16 years ago. “I was the one who went to China and brought BYD to Lancaster.”
Parris made three trips to China — before Xi Jinping came to power in November 2012 — to court BYD officials to build a manufacturing plant in Lancaster. The electric bus and battery manufacturer officially announced plans to move to the high desert city 60 miles north of Los Angeles on May 1, 2013.
The plant at its peak employed about 1,000 workers, but today has shrunk by about 200 people given the soft market conditions for battery-powered vehicles of all sorts, said Parris, who has served in the position since April 2008.
The spring warrant cited charities, a hospital, other city officials and community members that Parris declined to identify for fear of their reputations being ruined. He also said the FBI took cell phones from several community members — including an unidentified AVTA board member.
“The warrant was pretty broad-based, and it was worded in a way that it was hard to tell if other people were targets.
The city has hired criminal attorneys for the city manager and the assistant city manager because of the way the warrant was worded,” said Parris, whose concerns over the probe are rooted in the fact that he has extensive expertise as a trial lawyer. His biggest win in court came in 2009 when a Los Angeles jury awarded $370 million to five former employees of Guess Jeans co-founder Georges Marciano in a defamation suit they filed after the former chief executive accused them of stealing millions of dollars in funds and artwork.
With the fortune from legal victories, he and his wife bought a Laguna Beach home previously owned by late automotive executive Lee Iacocca for $6.6 million in 2020.
Lancaster City Manager Trolis Niebla and Assistant City Manager Larissa De La Cruz were not available for comment on the warrant.
Backlash in Lancaster
Since the FBI raids in Lancaster, a bond financing measure to build a five-story, $1.1 billion hospital was pulled.
The measure was needed to replace the aging 1950s-era Antelope Valley Medical Center, one of the busiest emergency departments in the state. “It was going to be a joint financing deal between the city and hospital. It was an attractive partnership. We need a hospital,” Parris said.
He also said that Los Angeles County recently withdrew its $10 million in funding to help pay for the two-year-old Parris Center, a $90 million, zero-energy building using hydrogen for electric power generation, after the county learned of the FBI probe.
“It was put together by Marvin [Crist],” Parris said. “As soon as you say FBI, people panic.”
The building is named after the mayor who pushed for construction of the 140,000-square-foot facility that can house 1,000 evacuees during heat storms and earthquakes. It has 30 pickleball courts that can be converted to basketball and volleyball courts. The cities of Palmdale and Lancaster and the state all gave tens of millions of dollars to pay for the facility, according to Parris.
Parris, to date, has not been contacted or served by the FBI.
“It’s not over. I expect to hear their (the FBI’s) bullhorn at 5:34 in the morning one day, whenever the sun breaks. I’m tying to decide whether I should walk out naked so that I don’t get shot,” Parris jested.
“There is no way to have a world economy without working closely with China. It’s just not possible. So, develop the rules that make it safe to do that.”