At arrest in August 2025, authorities found fraudulent California IDs and multiple fake-name library cards; UCLA had recently tightened ID-verification procedures for rare-material access.

Librarians’ limited tracking across expansive collections highlighted vulnerabilities that allowed the thefts to go undetected for a period.

Jeffrey Ying, a 39-year-old California man, pled guilty to an elaborate scheme to steal and replace major artworks, including 17th-century Chinese manuscripts, from UCLA Library.

Ying received a sentence of time served, one year of home confinement, and three years of supervised release; restitution timing remains undecided and no fine was issued.

Officially, the sentence comprised time served, one year of home confinement, and three years of supervised release.

The thefts began before the pandemic, with borrowings under aliases such as Alan Fujimori, Jason Wang, and Austin Chen, totaling more than $200,000 in lost items.

Ying orchestrated a scheme to steal rare Chinese manuscripts from UCLA by borrowing items with fake assets, making dummy copies to replace the originals, and then traveling to and from China soon after the thefts.

Authorities allege the timeline extends from late 2024 to mid-2025, with roughly $216,000 in stolen items dating from 1393 to 1575 among the losses.

The scheme unraveled in August 2025 when Ying was arrested upon returning to UCLA, where staff recognized him and investigators found blank pages, fake versions, and manufactured labels in his hotel room.

Similar library-theft cases cited include an antiquities dealer in the 1980s and a 2020 incident at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, underscoring a pattern of rare-item thefts from libraries.

The guilty plea describes a plan to remove rare manuscripts, substitute dummy copies, and use fake IDs to facilitate the thefts.

Investigators linked the stolen items to Ying via aliases—Jason Wang, Alan Fujimori, Austin Chen—and recovered paperwork and blank manuscript templates found in his hotel room.