The US Justice Department said on October 1 that it had arrested Greg Lui, 38, of San Gabriel, California, on a three-count federal indictment. Prosecutors say his company, Earthmade Computer, smuggled more than $300 million of export-controlled servers with US-made graphics chips to China in 2023 and 2024.
New to this? Read it in simple words
- The US arrested a California man for sending AI servers to China.
- Prosecutors say the servers were worth more than $300 million.
- They say he used false papers and shipped through Malaysia and Singapore.
- He has not been found guilty, and the charges are claims for now.
- Export controls
- Rules that limit which goods can be sold to other countries.
- Indictment
- A formal document that charges a person with a crime.
- GPU
- A graphics chip; AI models are trained and run on them.
What prosecutors allege
The indictment charges conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, outbound smuggling and conspiracy to commit money laundering, the Justice Department says. The maximum sentences are 20, 10 and 20 years.
Prosecutors say Lui bought high-end servers from US makers while falsely claiming they were going to countries that need no licence. They were shipped from Los Angeles to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, and then on to China, Courthouse News reports.
Earthmade received more than $176 million from Malaysia-based shipping companies, the department says. In one deal, Lui sent a purchase order for 27 servers worth about $7,614,000.
From the Justice Department’s release and Courthouse News. These are allegations.
What officials said
“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.
The FBI says its investigation found that Lui allegedly sold the Chinese government hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of the technology. That is the government’s allegation.
The release calls the chips ones “commonly used for Super Intelligence (SI) applications”, the term the White House now uses for AI.
Nvidia’s part
The Justice Department does not name the chipmaker. Bloomberg reports the servers contained Nvidia chips, and Nvidia declined immediate comment. Tom’s Hardware also describes them as Nvidia AI servers.
Nvidia is not accused of wrongdoing in this case.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.
- 1Primary source · October 1, 2026California Man Arrested for Smuggling More Than $300 Million in Export-Controlled Computer Servers to China US Department of Justice
- 2Research · October 1, 2026California man charged with smuggling $300 million in restricted AI hardware to China Courthouse News Service
- 3Research · October 2, 2026Man charged by US over illegal shipment of Nvidia chips to China Bloomberg (via Free Malaysia Today)
- 4Research · October 2, 2026California tech CEO arrested, faces up to 20 years in prison for smuggling $300 million in Nvidia AI servers to China Tom’s Hardware (via Yahoo News)
We read the Justice Department’s release and compared Courthouse News, Bloomberg (as republished by Free Malaysia Today) and Tom’s Hardware. The release does not name Nvidia or a chip model, so we credit the Nvidia link to Bloomberg and leave out chip models that only some outlets give. Courthouse News places Lui in City of Industry, where his company is; we use the department’s San Gabriel.