A 38-year-old man is facing a federal charge for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in rare and historical Chinese manuscripts from the UCLA library system, according to court papers.

Jeffrey Ying of Fremont in the San Francisco Bay Area was charged with theft of major artwork, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Ying was is in custody.

Ying stole rare books and manuscripts worth about $215,000 from December 2024 to July 2025. He would rent the documents, take them home to the Bay Area for days at a time, then return a dummy manuscript instead of the authentic one, prosecutors allege.

He typically then traveled to and from China within several days of the thefts, authorities said.

Library officials noticed that se

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