A California man named Greg Lui has been arrested on federal charges alleging he helped smuggle more than $300 million in export-controlled computer servers to China, routed through Malaysia and Singapore. Lui, 38, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, of San Gabriel, was arrested on October 1 after a federal grand jury handed down a three-count indictment two days earlier. The charges include conspiracy to violate U.S. export-control laws, outbound smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Lui was the CEO and owner of Earthmade Computer Inc., based in City of Industry, California, and established in November 2023. He was also the registered agent of a company called Coindigger, which did business as Earthmade. Prosecutors allege the conspiracy kicked off no later than October 2023 and continued through at least August 12, 2026, meaning the feds allege this operation ran for the better part of three years. That is a long time to pretend a lumber company needs cutting-edge artificial intelligence chips.
The Lumber Company That Really Loved Nvidia GPUs
Between January and October 2024, according to the indictment, Earthmade received more than $80 million from one Malaysian company and $96 million from a second. Prosecutors allege Earthmade brokered nearly $300 million in sales of export-controlled Nvidia-powered servers from three U.S. manufacturers. One of those Malaysian companies had been in business since 1999 and primarily dealt in lumber, plywood, and wood panels. Nothing says “high-performance computing” quite like a sawmill.
In January 2024, Lui allegedly told a co-conspirator that the lumber company wanted 70 servers containing Nvidia H100 GPUs. He placed an order for 27 of those servers worth about $7.6 million, which were shipped from Los Angeles County to Kuala Lumpur. Less than two months later, prosecutors say, a co-conspirator emailed a Malaysian government official confirming those 27 servers had been transshipped to a Chinese purchaser. Apparently the plywood business was just not keeping the lights on. According to the Nvidia server smuggling case, the indictment identifies the ultimate buyer as an unnamed industrial company based in Hangzhou, China.
False Documents, Fake CEOs, And Stolen Identities
The scheme did not stop at creative use of the timber industry. Prosecutors allege Lui used a U.S. front company to place an order for 100 servers equipped with Nvidia H100 GPUs worth more than $22 million, submitting false documents that named a “Jackie Lui” as the CEO of another City of Industry company called Topmost. The indictment also alleges Lui purchased someone else’s identifying documents back in 2021 and later used that stolen identity in transactions tied to the scheme. Points for commitment to the bit, at least.
Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said the 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, “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 on all counts, Lui faces a statutory maximum of 20 years on the export-control conspiracy charge, 20 years on the money-laundering conspiracy charge, and 10 years on the smuggling charge, for a potential total of 50 years. He was expected to make his initial appearance and be arraigned on October 2 in federal court in downtown Los Angeles. The next time someone tells you free trade with China is just fine and enforcement is unnecessary, feel free to mention the lumber company that somehow needed a quarter-billion dollars in AI servers.
