California Man Sentenced in Theft of Rare Chinese Manuscripts from UCLA Library

A California resident was sentenced last week for his theft of a rare 17th-century Chinese manuscript from the library of the University of California, Los Angeles. 

Jeffrey Ying, 39, had pleaded guilty to a single count of art theft last October. He was sentenced to “time served, accounting for around one month in jail, in addition to one year of home confinement and three years of supervised release,” the South China Morning Post reports.  

The string of thefts attributed to Ying began in 2020, when he checked out two Chinese manuscripts from UCLA under the alias Alan Fujimori, according to the New York Times. Then, in 2024, he checked out six more under the name Jason Wang, and in 2025, he borrowed eight additional ones.

Some of the manuscripts were never returned, while others were replaced with fakes. The UCLA’s library opened an investigation and found that the same man had checked out the missing manuscripts when reviewing surveillance footage, per the BBC. It is unclear if the stolen manuscripts have been recovered.

According to the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, Ying typically “traveled to and from China within several days of the thefts.” He was arrested in August 2025 and charged for “stealing approximately $216,000 worth of rare and historical Chinese manuscripts,” according to the Justice Department. He was not charged in relation to the earlier thefts.

Ying, who is from the Bay Area city of Fremont, was staying at a hotel in Brentwood, the tony neighborhood that includes UCLA. When authorities searched it, they found “blank manuscripts and paperwork in the style and manner of the books that Ying had checked out from the university” as well as “pre-made labels known as asset tags associated with the same manuscripts that could be used to create ‘dummy’ books to return to the library in place of the original books,” according to a release after Ying’s arrest.