A library patron is accused of pulling off a rare-books switcheroo at UCLA, according to the Justice Department. Authorities say Jeffrey Ying, 38, used a number of aliases while accessing valuable Chinese manuscripts—some more than six centuries old—then swapped them out for fakes. The real texts, reportedly valued at $216,000, vanished after Ying checked them out, reports CBS News. A press release from the US Attorney's Office, Central District of California, states that Ying "typically then traveled to and from China within several days of the thefts," which are thought to have occurred between December 2024 and this past July.
Courthouse News reports how the allege scheme unraveled: Patrons must request the books be removed from secure storage; staffers retrieve them and hand them over in a box. Per the site, employees "apparently don't check the box's contents very carefully before they return it to storage." But at some point UCLA's East Asian Library determined three rare books that had been checked out by "Alan Fujimori" were missing; "'dummy' books, affixed with erroneous asset tags," had been left in the boxes in their place.
When a man called "Austin Chen" tried to reserve and review eight rare Chinese books in recent weeks, concerned library staff compared Chen's identity with that of Fujimori and "Jason Wang," another man who'd reviewed Chinese manuscripts that had then gone missing. They determined the men were one and the same. Ying showed up at the library earlier this week to check out the manuscripts and was subsequently arrested. Per the press release, police found a fake California ID for "Austin Chen" on him, as well as library cards for "Austin Chen" and "Jason Wang." If convicted of stealing major artwork, Ying could face up to 10 years behind bars.
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