DOJ charges Earthmade CEO Greg Lui with smuggling $300M in Nvidia servers to China
Tags Hardware · AI / ML · Industry
Federal prosecutors charged Greg Lui, owner of Earthmade Computer Inc., with smuggling more than $300 million of export-controlled Nvidia A100/H100 servers to China via Malaysia and Singapore, carrying up to 50 years in prison. A three-count indictment returned Sept. 29, 2026 charges Lui with conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, outbound smuggling and money-laundering conspiracy, with maximum penalties totaling 50 years (20+20+10). Earthmade received more than $176 million from two Malaysia-based transshipment companies between January and October 2024, and brokered the sale of almost $300 million of export-controlled servers containing Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs classified under ECCN 4A090.a. Lui allegedly used false end-user documentation and transshipped via Malaysia and Singapore; a March 2024 email confirmed 27 H100 servers were reshipped to a China-based purchaser.
Technical significance
The case is the clearest enforcement action yet against the transshipment channel that moves advanced AI accelerators to China through Southeast Asian intermediaries. It signals that U.S. export controls are being enforced at the level of individual brokers and end-user documentation, not just chipmakers, which may raise compliance costs for server resellers and logistics firms. For AI compute buyers, it reinforces that A100/H100 supply routed through third countries carries legal risk that could tighten secondary-market availability.