TLDR Hardware · MISCELLANEOUS

CALIFORNIA MAN CHARGED WITH SMUGGLING $300M OF NVIDIA AI SERVERS TO CHINA THROUGH MALAYSIA AND SINGAPORE

latimes.com3 min read

Summary from the TLDR Hardware newsletter

Federal prosecutors arrested Greg (Yiu Kong) Lui, owner of San Gabriel Valley company Earthmade, on charges of exporting more than $300 million of servers loaded with export-controlled Nvidia AI GPUs to China between 2023 and 2024. The scheme worked by exploiting a licensing gap: Commerce doesn't require an export license to ship this hardware to Malaysia or Singapore, but does for China, so Lui allegedly sent servers to Malaysian and Singapore transshipment companies using false paperwork, then used freight forwarders to move them on to Chinese buyers.