California Man Accused Of Routing More Than $300 Million In Restricted Servers To China

Authored by Arthur Zhang via The Epoch Times,

A California man has been arrested on federal charges accusing him of helping route more than $300 million in export-controlled computer servers to China through Malaysia and Singapore.

Greg Lui, 38, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, of San Gabriel, was arrested Oct. 1 after a federal grand jury returned a three-count indictment two days earlier.

Lui was the chief executive officer and owner of Earthmade Computer Inc., a company based in City of Industry, California, and established in November 2023. He was also the registered agent of another company, Coindigger, that did business as Earthmade.

Earthmade has not been charged in the case. The company did not respond by publication time to a request for comment.

Lui is charged with conspiracy to violate U.S. export-control laws, outbound smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors allege payments from Malaysia flowed into Earthmade’s U.S. bank accounts and were then used to buy restricted servers from American manufacturers.

Prosecutors allege the conspiracy began no later than October 2023 and continued through at least Aug. 12, 2026. The indictment’s detailed transaction examples are concentrated in 2024, when Lui and others allegedly bought high-end computer servers and graphics processing units, or GPUs, from U.S. manufacturers and routed them through Malaysia and Singapore before they ultimately reached China.

Malaysian Route

Between January and October 2024, Earthmade received more than $80 million from one Malaysian company and $96 million from another, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say Earthmade brokered nearly $300 million in sales of export-controlled Nvidia-powered servers from three U.S. manufacturers.

One of the Malaysian companies had been established in 1999 and primarily dealt in lumber, plywood, millwork, and wood panels. Prosecutors describe the second Malaysian entity as a front company.

In January 2024, Lui allegedly told a co-conspirator that the lumber company wanted 70 servers containing Nvidia H100 GPUs. Later that month, he placed an order for 27 H100-equipped servers worth about $7.6 million.

Those servers were shipped from Los Angeles County to Kuala Lumpur. Less than two months later, prosecutors say, a co-conspirator emailed a Malaysian government official stating that the 27 servers had been transshipped to a Chinese purchaser.

Another order was far larger. A U.S. manufacturer quoted Earthmade for 512 export-controlled servers in April 2024, and Lui placed the order the following day.

The indictment traces 92 of those servers. Although a manufacturer had said they were ready to ship to Earthmade in Los Angeles County, prosecutors allege Lui and a co-conspirator instead had them flown from San Francisco to Kuala Lumpur and then onward to Hong Kong. The Chinese purchaser was listed as the consignee.

The indictment identifies the purchaser as an unnamed industrial company based in Hangzhou, China.

US Front Company

Prosecutors describe another transaction involving 100 servers equipped with Nvidia H100 GPUs and worth more than $22 million.

Lui allegedly used an unnamed U.S. front company to place the order and claimed that another City of Industry company, Topmost, was the buyer. He then submitted false documents identifying “Jackie Lui” as Topmost’s chief executive, according to the indictment.

Topmost was also not charged in the case. The company did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Prosecutors allege Lui had purchased another person’s identifying documents in 2021 and later used that identity in business transactions connected to the export-evasion scheme.

The indictment also alleges that a person presented as chief technology officer of the Malaysian lumber company was actually an international broker of export-controlled servers who incorporated Topmost in California.

Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said the bureau’s investigation found that Lui allegedly sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of the technology to the Chinese government.

An Nvidia spokesperson told The Epoch Times on Oct. 2, “This case shows yet again that smuggling is a losing proposition – legally, economically and technically. Our work with law enforcement has led to prosecutions, and we will continue to engage with law enforcement.”

If convicted of all charges, Lui faces statutory maximum sentences of 20 years on the export-control conspiracy count, 20 years on the money-laundering conspiracy count, and 10 years on the smuggling count.

Lui was expected to make his initial appearance and be arraigned Oct. 2 in federal court in downtown Los Angeles.