Man Sentenced for Stealing ‘Rare and Unique’ Chinese Texts, Valued at More Than $200,000, by Using Aliases, Fake IDs and Dummy Manuscripts
The works were stolen from the University of California, Los Angeles, over the course of several years
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A California man was sentenced after using aliases, fake IDs and dummy texts to steal historic Chinese manuscripts valued at more than $200,000 from a university library.
On July 8, a judge sentenced 39-year-old Jeffrey Ying to time served, plus one year of home confinement and three years of supervised release, for the elaborate scheme he carried out at the University of California, Los Angeles, reports the New York Times’ Ali Watkins.
Ying had pleaded guilty to major art theft in October 2025 for stealing a 17th-century Qing Dynasty manuscript, Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, tells SFGate’s Madilynne Medina. According to McEvoy, Ying also admitted in court to stealing other texts.
According to the New York Times, the saga started when a man named “Alan Fujimori” checked out two centuries-old Chinese manuscripts from the UCLA library’s rare books collection. Four years later, a man named “Jason Wang” borrowed six additional historic Chinese texts. In August 2025, “Austin Chen” checked out eight more.
In reality, all three patrons were Ying, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. Ying kept the original texts and replaced them with dummy copies—complete with fake labels known as asset tags—which library staff did not immediately recognize as dupes.
Authorities have not said what Ying did with the texts, nor whether they’ve been recovered.
Investigators say Ying requested the rare texts from a remote UCLA library storage facility called the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRL), according to the Los Angeles Times’ Katerina Portela. Acting on his request, library staff transported the manuscripts to UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library, where Ying reviewed them in a reserved reading room.
The library requires a staffer to be in the room whenever a patron reviews books from the special collection, per the Los Angeles Times, but it's unclear whether that policy was followed during Ying's visits.
Sometimes, Ying “would sneak in the dummy books and perform the swap on scene,” Allen Grove, a member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team, tells USA Today’s Marc Ramirez. In other instances, Grove says, “he was able to check out books, saying he was a researcher, then he would return with dummy books.”
Ying’s scheme began to unravel after library staffers noticed that Chinese texts were missing. Library staffers reviewed security camera footage and realized that Fujimori, Chen and Wang were the same person. Authorities reviewed Ying’s travel records and found he’d gone to China within a few days of each of the thefts.
In August 2025, Ying returned to the library once more—and was arrested. Ying had a flight booked to China for the next day. When investigators searched Ying and his hotel room, they discovered blank pages that matched the style of the Chinese texts he had requested, as well as asset tags, and IDs and library cards for his aliases.
It’s possible Ying had also targeted other institutions, as the name “Alan Fujimori” was linked with similar thefts at University of California, Berkeley, per the Los Angeles Times.
Did you know? Rare book heist
In the late 1990s, James W. Gilreath pleaded guilty to stealing rare books worth $25,000 from the Library of Congress, where he had worked as an American history specialist. Gilreath was caught after attempting to sell some of his loot, including some that still bore the Library of Congress stamp.
The materials missing include poetry, prose and ink rubbings and woodblock prints. They are “rare and unique books, more akin to cultural heritage objects,” Athena Jackson, UCLA’s university librarian and former head of special collections, wrote in an impact statement submitted to the court, as reported by USA Today. “The loss of access to these materials and the difficulty in replacing them affected our ability to provide resources that scholars from around the world engage with to further our understanding of China and its history and culture.”
She added that the thefts had “eroded the trust that scholars, booksellers and communities place in us to safeguard and steward rare and unique materials.”
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