Fremont man sentenced for stealing historic Chinese manuscripts from UCLA

LOS ANGELES — A Fremont man was sentenced Wednesday to one year of home confinement for stealing historic Chinese manuscripts from a UCLA library, prosecutors said.

Jeffrey Ying, 39, pleaded guilty to one count of stealing major artwork in October 2025 for the theft of a 17th century Qing dynasty manuscript in December 2024, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice Central District of California.

Ying’s sentence was handed down by United States District Judge John F. Walter and also includes three years of supervised release.

Between December 2024 and July 2025, Ying checked out multiple manuscripts — which are not in regular circulation because of their rarity — from UCLA’s library, prosecutors said. Ying would bring the manuscripts to his home for several days, then return a fake manuscript in their place.

Ying would often travel to China within a few days of stealing the manuscripts, prosecutors added.

Ying also went by the names Jason Wang, Austin Chen and Alan Fujimori and possessed a fake California ID and two library cards under those names, prosecutors said. After the library system noticed that several rare manuscripts were missing, records revealed that they had all been checked out by a visitor named Alan Fujimori.

Ying’s Brentwood hotel room was searched by law enforcement officers, who found that blank manuscripts that were in the style of those missing from UCLA, prosecutors said. They also uncovered asset tags, which are pre-made labels for the missing manuscripts that could be used to create “dummy” books to return in place of the real items.

Ying was arrested in August 2025, prosecutors added. The incident was investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Art Crime Team in collaboration with the UCLA Police Department.

Ying will also be required to pay restitution in an amount yet to be determined.