Alameda County man allegedly stole rare Chinese manuscripts
A San Francisco Bay Area man has been charged in a federal criminal complaint with stealing approximately $216,000 worth of rare and historical Chinese manuscripts from a university’s library system, the Justice Department announced.
Jeffrey Ying, 38, a.k.a. “Jason Wang,” “Alan Fujimori,” and “Austin Chen,” of Fremont, is charged with theft of major artwork, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison.
Ying, who is in state custody, is expected to make his initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in the coming days.
According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, from December 2024 to July 2025, Ying stole the rare manuscripts from the university’s library. Ying rented the manuscripts, brought them home for days at a time, then returned a dummy manuscript instead of the authentic one. He typically then traveled to and from China within several days of the thefts.
The library noticed that several rare Chinese manuscripts were missing, and an initial investigation revealed the books were last viewed by a visitor who identified himself as “Alan Fujimori.” Due to the rarity and value of the books, they are not in regular circulation in the library and must be reserved and checked out.
Law enforcement searched Ying’s Brentwood hotel room and found blank manuscripts and paperwork in the style and manner of the books that Ying had checked out from the university. Law enforcement also found pre-made labels known as asset tags associated with the same manuscripts that could be used to create “dummy” books to return to the library in place of the original books.
Upon Ying’s arrest, they found a fraudulent California identification card in the name of “Austin Chen” along with two library cards in the names of “Austin Chen” and “Jason Wang.”
A criminal complaint contains allegations. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
The FBI’s Art Crime Team is investigating this matter with valuable assistance from the UCLA Police Department.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark A. Williams of the Environmental Crimes and Consumer Protection Section is prosecuting this case.
Federal charges allege man produced child sexual abuse material
A Guatemalan national and former resident of the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles was extradited from Guatemala and arraigned today on federal criminal charges alleging that he produced child sexual abuse material of five children.
Miguel Angel Batz Jr., 43, a.k.a. “Mike Batz,” was transported to the United States this morning from Guatemala and arrived at Los Angeles International Airport.
Batz is charged with 12 counts of production of child pornography. At his arraignment this afternoon in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, he pleaded not guilty to all counts. A federal magistrate judge ordered him jailed without bond and scheduled a trial to begin Oct. 7.
According to the indictment that a federal grand jury returned in June 2022 and was unsealed, Batz knowingly enticed and coerced five minor victims — all under the age of 18 years old — to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of that conduct.
The depictions were produced and transmitted using means of interstate and foreign commerce, including by computer, cellphone, and the internet.
Batz originally was charged in Los Angeles Superior Court with contacting a minor to commit a lewd act and later fled to Guatemala. He had legal status in the United States at the time of the alleged offenses.
An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.
If convicted, Batz would face a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison for each count.
The FBI is investigating this matter. The U.S. Attorney’s Office thanks the Guatemalan National Civil Police Transnational Anti-Gang Unit and FBI Legal Attaché suboffice in Guatemala City for their assistance in this matter. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs working with Guatemalan law enforcement authorities provided critical assistance in securing the arrest and extradition of Batz to the United States.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon E. Martinez-Jones of the Violent and Organized Crime Section is prosecuting this case.
Woman sentenced for hospice fraud
A Glendale woman was sentenced to 108 months in federal prison for participating in a scheme in which hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal kickbacks were paid and received for patient referrals that resulted in the submission of approximately $10.6 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare for purported hospice care.
Nita Almuete Paddit Palma, 75, of Glendale, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee, who also ordered her to pay $8,270,032 in restitution.
At a separate hearing today, Judge Gee sentenced Percy Dean Abrams, 75, of Lakewood, to three years of probation, which will include two years of home confinement.
At the conclusion of a six-day trial, a federal jury in December 2024 found Palma guilty of 12 counts of health care fraud and 16 counts of paying illegal kickbacks for health care referrals. The jury also found Abrams guilty of six counts of receiving illegal kickbacks for health care referrals.
Palma was excluded from Medicare, a federal health insurance program for people aged 65 and older, because of prior federal convictions for receiving illegal kickbacks. While she was excluded from Medicare, Palma purchased Magnolia Gardens Hospice through her daughter and bought C@A Hospice through her husband in 2015 and concealed her ownership interest in both hospices from Medicare.
Palma then paid “marketers,” including Abrams, hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal kickbacks for patient referrals that Palma could bill to Medicare for purported hospice care.
Hospice is only for those who are terminally ill and have a life expectancy of six months or less. Hospice provides comfort care to a patient instead of trying to cure the patient’s illness, and a patient forfeits certain benefits under Medicare when electing hospice.
Consistent with instructions provided by Palma, Abrams falsely represented to prospective patients that they did not need to be dying to be on hospice. After collecting personal identifying information from prospective patients who were not dying, Abrams sent the information to Nita Palma so she could bill Medicare for purported hospice care.
Through Magnolia Gardens Hospice and C@A Hospice, Palma caused the submission of approximately $10.6 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare beginning in 2015 for purported hospice care for patients who were not dying. Palma received approximately $6,000 each month a patient was billed to Medicare for hospice. In turn, Palma paid Abrams and other marketers up to $1,000 per month in illegal kickbacks for each patient referred to her who was billed to Medicare for hospice. Many of the patients who were billed to Medicare through Magnolia Gardens Hospice did not know they were signed up for hospice, and some patients only found out after they were denied medical coverage for services they needed.
During the health care fraud scheme, Medicare requested additional documentation from Magnolia Gardens Hospice to support the purported hospice claims. In response, Palma and her husband directed employees to create fake patient charts and had those fake patient charts submitted to Medicare. Court documents allege that while awaiting trial in this matter, Palma took control of three other hospices and caused the submission of approximately $4.8 million in claims for purported hospice care.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and the FBI investigated this matter.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger A. Hsieh of the Major Frauds Section and Matt Coe-Odess of the Domestic Security and Immigration Crimes Section prosecuted this case.
Chinese nationals allegedly shipped microchips
Two Chinese nationals — one of them an illegal alien — have been arrested on a federal criminal complaint alleging they knowingly exported to China tens of millions of dollars’ worth of sensitive microchips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications, the Justice Department announced.
Chuan Geng, 28, of Pasadena, and Shiwei Yang, 28, of El Monte, are charged with violating the Export Control Reform Act, a felony that carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. Geng surrendered to federal authorities. Yang was arrested earlier that day.
At their initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, a federal magistrate judge ordered Geng released on $250,000 bond and scheduled an Aug. 12 detention hearing for Yang. Arraignment is scheduled for Sept. 11.
Geng is a lawful permanent resident. Yang is an illegal alien who overstayed her visa.
According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, from October 2022 to July 2025, the defendants — through their El Monte-based company, ALX Solutions Inc. — knowingly and willfully exported from the United States to China sensitive technology, including graphic processing units (GPUs) — specialized computer parts used for modern computing — without first obtaining the required license or authorization from the U.S. Department of Commerce. According to the complaint, ALX Solutions Inc. was founded shortly after the Commerce Department began requiring licenses for the advanced microchips that Yang and Geng are alleged to have illegally exported.
A review of export records, business records, and company websites indicates that a December 2024 shipment and at least 20 previous shipments by ALX Solutions involved exports from the U.S. to shipping and freight-forwarding companies in Singapore and Malaysia, which commonly are used as transshipment points to conceal illegal shipments to China.
ALX Solutions has not received payments from the entities to which they purportedly exported goods. Instead, ALX Solutions received numerous payments from companies based in Hong Kong and China, including a $1 million payment from a China-based company in January 2024.
For example, in December 2024, ALX Solutions sent a shipment that falsely labeled as sending GPUs subject to federal laws and regulations. In fact, the shipment contained GPUs that required a license for export to China. Neither the defendants nor their company applied for, nor did they obtain a license from the Commerce Department.
According to the complaint and public information, the chip — made by a manufacturer of high-performance AI chips — is the “most powerful GPU chip on the market,” and is “designed specifically for AI applications,” such as “to develop self-driving cars, medical diagnosis systems, and other AI-powered applications.”
Law enforcement searched ALX Solutions’ office and seized the phones belonging to Geng and Yang that revealed incriminating communications between the defendants, including communications about shipping export-controlled chips to China through Malaysia to evade U.S. export laws.
A complaint contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security and the FBI are investigating this matter.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Colin S. Scott, Joseph Guzman, and Jenna Long of the Terrorism and Export Crimes Section are prosecuting this case with assistance from Trial Attorney Chantelle Dial from the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the National Security Division.
Financial TV analyst gets 5 years for con
A former San Gabriel Valley resident — who was a frequent guest on financial TV news programs then became a fugitive from justice after being accused of scamming investors — was sentenced today to 60 months in federal prison for defrauding his victims out of millions of dollars.
James Arthur McDonald Jr., 53, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer, who will order restitution in this case at a hearing to take place on a future date.
McDonald pleaded guilty on April 7 to one count of securities fraud.
McDonald was the CEO and chief investment officer of two companies headquartered in Los Angeles: Hercules Investments LLC and Index Strategy Advisors Inc. (ISA). He frequently appeared as an analyst on the CNBC financial TV news network.
In late 2020, McDonald lost tens of millions of dollars of Hercules client money after adopting a risky short position that effectively bet against the health of the United States economy in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election. McDonald projected that the COVID-19 pandemic and the election would result in major selloffs that would cause the stock market to drop. When the market decline didn’t occur, Hercules clients lost between $30 million and $40 million. By December 2020, Hercules clients were complaining to company employees about the losses in their accounts.
In early 2021, McDonald solicited millions of dollars’ worth of funds from investors in the form of a purported capital raise for Hercules but misrepresented how the funds would be used and failed to disclose the massive losses Hercules previously sustained. As part of the capital raise, McDonald obtained $675,000 in investment funds from one victim group on March 9, 2021. He misappropriated most of those funds in various ways, including spending $174,610 at a Porsche dealership and transferring $109,512 to the landlord of a home McDonald was renting in Arcadia.
McDonald also defrauded clients of ISA, his other firm, using less than half of the approximately $3.6 million he raised for trading purposes. Instead, McDonald frequently commingled ISA client funds with funds from his personal bank account, which he used to purchase luxury cars and to pay rent on his home, personal credit card charges, and Hercules operating expenses and to make Ponzi-like payments to ISA clients — such as paying some ISA clients using funds from other clients.
In total, prosecutors argue that McDonald caused his victims more than $3 million in losses.
McDonald failed to appear before the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in November 2021 to testify after allegations arose that he had defrauded investors and remained a fugitive until his arrest in June 2024 at a residence in Port Orchard, Washington. McDonald has been in custody since then. At McDonald’s Washington state hideout, law enforcement found, among other things, a fake Washington, D.C., driver’s license bearing McDonald’s photograph and the name “Brian Thomas,” according to court documents.
“To his victims, (McDonald) seemed to embody the American Dream,” prosecutors argued in a sentencing memorandum. “But looks can be deceiving, and as (McDonald’s) victims learned, their trust had been betrayed.”
The FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation investigated this matter.
In September 2022, the SEC filed a civil complaint charging McDonald and Hercules with violations of federal securities law. In April 2024, U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson found McDonald and Hercules liable and ordered that they pay several million dollars in disgorgement and civil penalties.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander B. Schwab and Assistant U.S. Attorney Nisha Chandran of the Major Frauds Section prosecuted this case.
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