California Man Arrested in $300 Million Nvidia Chip Smuggling Scheme

A California man has been arrested for allegedly smuggling over $300 million worth of export-controlled computer servers containing US-manufactured GPUs to China. Greg Lui, the 38-year-old owner of San Gabriel Valley-based Earthmade Computer Inc., is accused of using false paperwork and routing the high-end servers through Malaysia and Singapore before they were allegedly re-exported to China.

Prosecutors allege that Lui, also known as “Yiu Kong Lui,” bought export-controlled items between 2023 and 2024 and sent them to China without required US licenses. The equipment was first shipped to Malaysia and Singapore before being re-exported to China. Lui allegedly provided false documentation to US manufacturers, misrepresenting the intended end users and destinations.

From January to October 2024, Earthmade received more than $176 million from two Malaysia-based shipment companies as part of the alleged scheme. In January 2024, Lui allegedly emailed a conspirator about a Malaysian transshipment company seeking 70 servers with export-restricted GPUs. Later that month, he allegedly ordered 27 servers from a US manufacturer for approximately $7.614 million, which were shipped from Los Angeles to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

If convicted of all three charges, conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act and Export Administration Regulations, outbound smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, Lui could face up to 20 years in prison on the conspiracy and money laundering counts and up to 10 years on the smuggling count.