Greg Lui charged over $300m Nvidia AI chip smuggling scheme to China
Greg Lui, 38, owner of Earthmade Computer, was arrested on federal charges alleging he smuggled more than $300 million in export-controlled AI servers to China via Malaysia and Singapore.
A California technology company owner has been arrested on federal charges alleging he orchestrated a scheme to smuggle more than $300 million worth of export-controlled computer servers containing Nvidia artificial intelligence chips to China.
Greg Lui, 38, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, of San Gabriel, was arrested on Thursday on a three-count federal indictment returned by a grand jury on 29 September, the US Department of Justice said. He is charged with conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, outbound smuggling and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Lui owns Earthmade Computer Inc., a City of Industry-based technology company. Prosecutors allege that from 2023 to 2024 he used the firm to buy high-end servers containing restricted GPUs used for what the department calls “super intelligence” applications, routing them through Malaysia and Singapore to evade US export controls before re-exporting them to China. From January to October 2024, Earthmade received more than $176 million from two Malaysia-based shipment companies, the indictment says.
In one example cited by prosecutors, Lui ordered 27 servers for about $7.6 million in January 2024, had them shipped from Los Angeles to Kuala Lumpur, and a co-conspirator later confirmed they were transshipped to a buyer in China. The indictment describes the Chinese purchaser as an industrial company based in Hangzhou.
“This defendant allegedly used false paperwork and shipments through third countries to smuggle more than $300 million in export-controlled computer servers to China,” said First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli. “We will aggressively prosecute those who put our national security at risk for profit.”
The charges are the latest in a series of federal prosecutions targeting alleged chip smuggling to China; in March, prosecutors charged a co-founder of Super Micro Computer with illegally diverting billions of dollars in Nvidia chips, the Straits Times reported. Lui was arraigned on Friday in federal court in downtown Los Angeles, where prosecutors argued he should be detained without bail as a serious flight risk. If convicted on all counts, he faces a statutory maximum of 50 years in prison. An indictment is merely an allegation, and Lui is presumed innocent.
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