[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2208317162.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tA 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tJeffrey Ying, 39, had pleaded guilty to a single count of art theft last October. He was sentenced to \u201ctime served, accounting for around one month in jail, in addition to one year of home confinement and three years of supervised release,\u201d the South China Morning Post <\/em>reports. \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe 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<\/em>. Then, in 2024, he checked out six more under the name Jason Wang, and in 2025, he borrowed eight additional ones.<\/p>\n \n\tSome of the manuscripts were never returned, while others were replaced with fakes. The UCLA\u2019s library opened an investigation and found that the same man had checked out the missing manuscripts when reviewing surveillance footage, per the BBC<\/em>. It is unclear if the stolen manuscripts have been recovered.<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to the US Attorney\u2019s Office for the Central District of California, Ying typically \u201ctraveled to and from China within several days of the thefts.\u201d He was arrested in August 2025 and charged for \u201cstealing approximately $216,000 worth of rare and historical Chinese manuscripts,\u201d according to the Justice Department. He was not charged in relation to the earlier thefts.<\/p>\n \n\tYing, 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 \u201cblank manuscripts and paperwork in the style and manner of the books that Ying had checked out from the university\u201d as well as \u201cpre-made labels known as asset tags associated with the same manuscripts that could be used to create \u2018dummy\u2019 books to return to the library in place of the original books,\u201d according to a release after Ying\u2019s arrest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/california-man-sentenced-chinese-manuscripts-theft-ucla-1234791930\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2208317162.jpg?w=1024″] 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.\u00a0 Jeffrey Ying, 39, had pleaded guilty to a single count of art theft last October. He was sentenced to \u201ctime served, accounting for around one month […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2042948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2042948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2042948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2042948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2042948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}