The Handelot Times
California server reseller charged over $300 million in Nvidia servers smuggled to China
On 1 October 2026, US federal agents arrested Greg Lui, 38, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, the owner of Earthmade Computer Inc., a server reseller in City of Industry, California.
A federal grand jury indictment, returned on 29 September, charges him with smuggling more than $300 million worth of export-controlled computer servers containing Nvidia GPUs to China (US Department of Justice). The FBI, the Commerce Department’s Office of Export Enforcement and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service led the investigation.
The alleged scheme
According to prosecutors, between 2023 and 2024 Lui and co-conspirators used Earthmade to buy high-end servers from three US manufacturers. They allegedly gave the manufacturers false paperwork about the buyers and destinations, then used freight forwarders to ship the servers to Malaysia and Singapore, from where they were sent on to China (DOJ, Central District of California). The servers contained Nvidia A100 and H100 data-centre GPUs, and the indictment also mentions GeForce RTX 4090 and 5090 cards (The Register).
The indictment gives examples. In January 2024, Earthmade ordered 27 servers worth about $7.6 million, shipped from Los Angeles to Kuala Lumpur; in March, a co-conspirator allegedly confirmed by email that they had reached a buyer in China. In June 2024, 92 servers were flown from San Francisco to Kuala Lumpur and on to Hong Kong. Earthmade allegedly received more than $176 million from two Malaysian companies between January and October 2024 (Hoodline, SCMP).
Lui faces three charges: conspiracy to violate export controls (up to 20 years), conspiracy to commit money laundering (up to 20 years) and outbound smuggling (up to 10 years). These are statutory maximums, not expected sentences. Nvidia itself is not accused of wrongdoing (Pasquale Pillitteri). Lui has not yet entered a plea and is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
