U.S. Charges San Gabriel Man in $300 Million AI Server Smuggling Scheme to China
Federal prosecutors allege Greg Lui used his California company to illegally route advanced American-made hardware through Southeast Asian intermediaries.
Federal law enforcement authorities have arrested a San Gabriel, California resident for his alleged role in an illicit scheme to export more than $300 million in artificial intelligence servers to China, according to a report from The Next Web (https://thenextweb.com/news/greg-lui-earthmade-ai-server-smuggling-china).
The defendant, identified by federal prosecutors as 38-year-old Greg Lui—also known as Yiu Kong Lui—was taken into custody on Wednesday. Prosecutors allege that Lui operated through his company, Earthmade Computer, to ship servers between 2023 and 2024 without securing required export licenses from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
According to prosecutors, the shipments were initially routed to intermediate destinations in Malaysia and Singapore, where export licenses were not required. The hardware was subsequently forwarded to China, with Lui allegedly using falsified paperwork to obscure the final destination.
The servers contained U.S.-manufactured graphics processors designed for artificial intelligence workloads. In official statements, the U.S. Department of Justice referenced the hardware using the term "super intelligence," a phrase adopted by the Trump administration to describe artificial intelligence assets. The Justice Department did not name the specific manufacturer of the chips involved.
Lui faces three criminal charges, including smuggling and conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carry a statutory maximum penalty of up to 50 years in federal prison. An indictment represents an unproven formal allegation, and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty in court.
"We will aggressively prosecute those who put our national security at risk for profit," said Bill Essayli, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.
The arrest comes as U.S. authorities enforce strict export controls to prevent Chinese entities from obtaining advanced computing hardware. Supply chain diversion remains a significant challenge across global semiconductor markets; in a separate international case, Taiwanese authorities recently indicted an Nvidia manager over unauthorized hardware shipments to China.
Sources
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