A California business owner was arrested on Thursday after facing charges for allegedly smuggling Nvidia hardware to China without proper export licenses. The US government maintains a strict priority of keeping the highest-end graphics processing units out of Chinese hands for national security reasons.
Greg Lui, 38, allegedly attempted to export roughly $300 million worth of Nvidia kit typically used for artificial intelligence development. Prosecutors state that he routed the hardware through United States freight businesses and Malaysian transshipment companies.
Prosecutors claim Lui used his company, Earthmade Computer Inc, to order servers containing high-powered Nvidia components within the United States. These components included A100, H100, PNY GeForce RTX 4090, and GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs.
Lui sent the equipment through Malaysia
Lui then sent the equipment to Malaysia and Singapore, two countries that do not require licenses from the Commerce Department. Companies in those locations forwarded the items to China to circumvent United States export controls.
The alleged crimes violate regulations prohibiting the sale of economically sensitive equipment to adversarial countries in the interest of national security. The United States aims to prevent high-end hardware from accelerating China toward dominance in artificial intelligence, which is referred to as super intelligence.
John A. Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security, noted that super intelligence is the defining technology of the era. He stated that the National Security Division will protect the American advantage in the chips powering this technology from illegal diversion by economic and military adversaries.
Lui received over 176 million dollars
Court documents indicate that the scheme began around October 2023 and continued until at least August 12, 2026. Prosecutors state that Lui received more than $176 million in payments from two Malaysian transshipment companies while brokering sales of nearly $300 million in kit.
The United States government accuses Lui of knowing that export laws restricted shipments of advanced Nvidia chips to China to license-holders. Documents show the United States seized files tying the export of 92 servers from San Francisco International Airport to Kuala Lumpur, with a Chinese customer listed as the final consignee.
The indictment claims Lui instructed a United States front company to fraudulently list the recipient as Jackie Lui, the supposed CEO of Topmost. Topmost is a company registered in California by the chief technology officer of one of the Malaysian transshipment businesses. Prosecutors also allege that Lui illegally purchased identity documents in 2021 to use in the scheme.
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Lui is charged with one count each of violations related to the Export Control Reform Act and the Export Administration Regulations, outbound smuggling, and money laundering. These charges carry a maximum combined prison sentence of 50 years.
Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director at the FBI Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, stated that the investigation revealed Lui sold hundreds of millions of dollars of American technology to the Chinese government. Rozhavsky emphasized that controlling advanced technology exports is critical to safeguarding national security.
