Federal prosecutors arrested Greg Lui, a 38-year-old California tech company owner, on charges of smuggling more than $300 million worth of export-controlled computer servers packed with Nvidia AI GPUs to China, routing the hardware through Malaysia and Singapore with false paperwork. Lui, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, of San Gabriel, was arrested Thursday and arraigned the same day in the Central District of California.
Lui owns Earthmade Computer Inc., a technology firm registered in the City of Industry east of Los Angeles. A federal indictment returned September 29 charges three counts: conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act and the Export Administration Regulations, outbound smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The smuggling charge alone carries up to 20 years in federal prison. Prosecutors have not said how large Earthmade was or who its customers were, and company filings show no public footprint beyond California registration.
“This defendant allegedly used false paperwork and shipments through third countries to smuggle more than $300 million in export-controlled computer servers to China,” First Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California said in the Justice Department’s arrest announcement.
How the scheme worked
According to the indictment, Lui and unnamed co-conspirators used Earthmade between 2023 and 2024 to buy high-end servers and ship them to buyers in China without the Commerce Department licenses required for that class of hardware. The work-around ran through third countries: shipments first went to Malaysia and Singapore, where no such license applies, and were then re-exported to China. Prosecutors say Lui submitted false end-user documentation to US manufacturers, misrepresenting that the servers would stay with permissible buyers in permitted destinations, even though he knew the actual end users were in China.
The DOJ statement describes the chips as GPUs commonly used in what it calls Super Intelligence applications. Media coverage, including Bloomberg and Tom’s Hardware, identified the components as Nvidia AI accelerators. Nvidia declined to comment on the specific case, and the indictment does not name the chip model or models involved. The three-year span matching the purchases to orders means investigators in all likelihood spent months stitching together records from manufacturers, freight forwarders and customs data before moving to arrest.
A familiar pattern in enforcement
The case fits a series of federal prosecutions that began tightening after October 2022, when Washington restricted exports of advanced AI chips to China and placed much of Nvidia’s datacenter lineup under license. Prosecutors in California and elsewhere have brought dozens of smuggling cases since then, most following the same outline: a shell buyer in the US, false end-user certificates, and a transit country with lighter rules. Singapore has faced repeated pressure over its role as a transit point and in 2025 prosecuted its own fraudsters connected to diverted servers. Malaysia occupies a similar spot in several earlier indictments, which pegged it as a re-export hub in cases against smaller intermediaries.
Federal attention has also moved downstream of the smugglers. In late September, filings reported by US media showed that Semi-Tech Leasing, a company owned by local government entities in China, financed purchases of servers housing restricted Nvidia Blackwell B300 chips inside China, evidence that state-linked money helped fund the grey market on the receiving end. The two cases run on different tracks: one prosecuting the shipping side in a US court, the other documenting the funding side from corporate filings.
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Defendant | Greg Lui, 38, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, San Gabriel, California |
| Company | Earthmade Computer Inc., City of Industry, California |
| Value | More than $300 million in servers |
| Period | 2023 to 2024 |
| Route | US to Malaysia and Singapore, then re-export to China |
| Charges | Conspiracy under ECRA/EAR, outbound smuggling, money laundering conspiracy |
| Maximum sentence | 20 years on the smuggling count |
What prosecutors gain and what they do not
The charges give prosecutors two coercive levers: the conspiracy and money laundering counts allow forfeiture claims against any assets Earthmade or its principals control, and co-conspirator counts leave room to add defendants if anyone names them. What the indictment does not establish is recovery. Once servers reach buyers in China, the hardware almost never comes back, so enforcement aims at deterrence and at mapping the network rather than clawing back machines.
For Nvidia the arithmetic is uncomfortable but familiar. The company has said repeatedly that restricted chips represent a small share of its China revenue, yet each large case chips away at the confidence of buyers elsewhere that supply chains are clean. Compliance teams at US server makers now routinely embed end-user verification before release, and some distributors require escrow arrangements or in-country presence for large orders, both adjustments that raise costs for legitimate buyers as much as for smugglers.
Context: the chip war at scale
US export controls have grown wider each year, and enforcement has accelerated accordingly. The Export Control Reform Act, passed in 2018, set the framework for restricting dual-use and emerging technologies; the AI chip rules layered on top starting October 2022 turned datacenter GPUs into a controlled category, and further rounds through 2025 and 2026 tightened model classes, licensing for third countries and re-export tracking. Beijing pushes domestic alternatives in response, with local governments subsidizing domestic accelerators and cloud providers such as Huawei and Baidu building their own hardware stacks.
Cases like Lui’s sit at the seam between those systems, where a single intermediary in a US strip mall can route sensitive hardware across three borders with nothing but paperwork. Two features recur in every case of this kind. First, the volume is large relative to the size of the intermediary, which makes the scheme obvious in hindsight and hard to catch beforehand. Second, enforcement relies heavily on tips and on data manufacturers themselves flag, which means interception depends on US companies reporting suspicious orders rather than on customs agents spotting crates at a port.
Lui was detained after the arrest and faces arraignment in the Central District of California. Prosecutors have not commented on whether additional arrests are planned, and the indictment’s co-conspirator section remains sealed pending further proceedings. Nvidia’s office line on such cases has been to support enforcement actions and cooperate with investigations, and Nvidia’s stock price showed little movement on the news, which markets appear to treat as routine enforcement rather than as new information.