Rohan Paul
@rohanpaul_ai
US prosecutors say Earthmade Computer owner Greg Lui smuggled more than $300M in export-controlled AI servers to China.
Lui, faces statutory maximums of 20 years for export-control conspiracy, 10 for smuggling and 20 for money-laundering conspiracy.
Lui and unnamed co-conspirators allegedly bought high-end GPU servers from US manufacturers during 2023 and 2024.
Freight forwarders carried the machines to Malaysia and Singapore, where no US license was required, before co-conspirators reshipped them to China.
Those manufacturers received false papers claiming the servers would reach permitted end users and destinations.
Yet in January 2024, Lui allegedly emailed a co-conspirator a compliance form showing a Malaysian transshipment buyer knew US law restricted the 70 servers it sought.
Later that month, he ordered 27 of those servers, fitted with Nvidia H100 GPUs, from a US manufacturer for approximately $7.614M, or $282K each.
Payments ran the other way, with Earthmade receiving more than $176M from 2 Malaysia-based shipment companies between January and October 2024, prosecutors allege.
