US Man Sentenced for Stealing Rare UCLA Chinese Manuscripts
Jeffrey Ying pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $216,000 in rare books and manuscripts after using aliases and dummy replacements to hide the thefts.
- On Wednesday, a federal judge sentenced Jeffrey Ying to one year and one day in prison for stealing rare Chinese manuscripts from the University of California, Los Angeles .
- Using fake identities like 'Alan Fujimori,' Ying checked out 17th-century manuscripts from December 2024 through July 2025, replacing originals with 'dummy' books to avoid detection.
- Authorities discovered pre-made labels and blank manuscripts in a Brentwood hotel room during an August 2025 arrest, evidence of a scheme to steal nearly $216,000 in cultural property.
- The Fremont man pleaded guilty to one count of theft of major artwork using aliases 'Jason Wang' and 'Austin Chen' discovered during his arrest.
- Ying frequently traveled to China shortly after each theft, while authorities investigate similar manuscript thefts at UC Berkeley attributed to someone using the same name.
21 Articles
21 Articles
California man sentenced to home confinement after stealing rare 17th century Chinese manuscript
LOS ANGELES, July 10 — A California man who swapped a library’s 17th century Chinese manuscript for a fake was sentenced Wednesday after admitting to stealing a major artwork.Jeffrey Ying used a number of aliases to get access to classic works, some over 600 years old, at the library of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Department of Justice said.Ying, 39, would check the works out and return days later with dummy manuscripts…
California man steals historic Chinese manuscripts from UCLA, using fake names, dummy documents
A Northern California man was sentenced Wednesday to a year in federal prison for allegedly stealing historical Chinese manuscripts from the UCLA library, according to authorities.
A man from California was convicted after replacing valuable manuscripts with false copies at the University of California library in Los Angeles. The fraud came to light when several of the returned copies proved not to be authentic.
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