A California business owner faces export and money-laundering charges over what prosecutors describe as a years-long effort to move advanced Nvidia hardware to China.
Greg Lui, 38, was arrested Thursday. The government says his company, Earthmade Computer Inc, ordered servers packed with A100 and H100 accelerators along with RTX 4090 and RTX 5090 cards, then shipped them to Malaysia and Singapore, two countries that do not need Commerce Department licenses. Firms there allegedly forwarded the goods onward to China.
Court documents put the value of the diverted equipment near $300 million. Prosecutors say Lui collected more than $176 million in payments from two Malaysian transshipment companies, and introduced those firms to US suppliers able to fill the orders.
The scheme is said to have run from around October 2023 to at least August 12, 2026. Investigators point to paperwork tying 92 servers to a flight from San Francisco International Airport to Kuala Lumpur, with the onward Hong Kong consignee listed as a Chinese customer. The indictment also alleges a US front company was told to name a fictitious executive as recipient.
Lui is charged with violations of the Export Control Reform Act and the Export Administration Regulations, outbound smuggling and money laundering. Together the counts carry a maximum of 50 years in prison.
Washington has made keeping top-end accelerators out of Chinese hands a priority. The Justice Department’s John A. Eisenberg called the chips the defining technology of the era, while the FBI’s Roman Rozhavsky said curbing their export is central to national security.
