California Tech CEO Arrested — Accused of Smuggling $300 Million in Nvidia AI Chips to China
A San Gabriel Valley entrepreneur is facing up to 50 years in prison over one of the largest alleged AI chip smuggling schemes U.S. prosecutors have charged to date.
Greg Lui, 38 — also known as Yiu Kong Lui — owner of Earthmade Computer Inc., was arrested after a federal grand jury indictment, accused of running the operation between 2023 and 2024.
Here's how prosecutors say it worked:
→ Earthmade allegedly purchased high-end servers containing export-controlled Nvidia GPUs, then routed them through Malaysia and Singapore using false paperwork before they reached Chinese buyers
→ In one example cited in the indictment, Lui submitted a purchase order for 27 servers containing Nvidia H100 GPUs, valued at roughly $7.6 million — just one shipment in a pattern prosecutors say totaled over $300 million
→ Earthmade allegedly received more than $176 million from two Malaysia-based companies tied to these shipments between January and October 2024
→ He faces three federal charges: conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, outbound smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering — carrying a combined maximum of up to 50 years if convicted on all counts
→ The case was built with the FBI, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service
→ "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 U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli
The allegations remain unproven, and Lui is presumed innocent unless convicted.
This case lands in a pattern, not an isolated incident. Just months earlier, three individuals tied to Supermicro were indicted over an alleged $2.5 billion server-smuggling scheme using the exact same playbook — third-country routing through Southeast Asia to mask the real destination.
What this tells you: export controls on advanced AI chips are no longer just a policy headline — they're becoming one of the most actively prosecuted areas of U.S. enforcement. As GPUs get treated like strategic military technology rather than ordinary computer hardware, the legal exposure for distributors, resellers, and logistics companies anywhere near that supply chain is rising fast, whether or not they're the ones building the chips.
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