In fall 1945, Lieutenant Colonel William K. Evans, the US Army’s chief civil affairs officer in Taiwan, smuggled sixty kilograms of gold bullion that he confiscated from the Japanese Tenth Area Army and offloaded it on Shanghai’s black market, returning to the United States with $108,000 in cash (worth approximately $1.5 million today). The gold was supposed to go the Chinese Nationalist government. Although US military authorities found overwhelming evidence of Evans’ guilt and had recently sentenced another colonel to ten years in prison for a nearly identical crime committed in Tokyo, Evans walked away a free man after a protracted Sino-US diplomatic struggle and two mistrials in federal court. By examining the Evans case, this chapter sheds light on the transition from extraterritoriality and formal colonialism to America’s postcolonial model of using status of forces agreements (SOFAs) to exercise jurisdiction over US forces stationed abroad.