DOJ arrests Earthmade CEO on $300M GPU charges

Greg Lui, 38, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, of San Gabriel, California, was arrested Thursday on a three-count indictment charging him over more than $300 million in export-controlled high-end computer servers containing U.S.-made graphics processing units that were allegedly diverted to China, the Justice Department said. Lui is the chief executive and owner of Earthmade Computer Inc., a closely held City of Industry technology company, according to the charging documents. An indictment is an allegation; Lui is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

What the indictment alleges: A federal grand jury in the Central District of California returned the indictment on Sept. 29 (case 2:26-cr-00618-ODW). The introductory allegations say Lui and others conspired to illegally move “over 300 million dollars’ worth of high-end computer servers, commonly used for artificial intelligence applications,” to China. Elsewhere the indictment says Earthmade, through Lui, brokered the sale of “almost three hundred million dollars’ worth of export-controlled servers containing Nvidia GPUs.” The Justice Department’s release tracks that figure as “more than $300 million.”

The servers contained Nvidia A100, H100, PNY GeForce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs subject to Commerce Department export controls, the indictment says. From about October 2023 through at least Aug. 12, 2026, Lui and unindicted co-conspirators allegedly bought those servers from unnamed U.S. manufacturers while falsely claiming end users were in countries that did not need a U.S. export license, then had freight forwarders ship them to Malaysia and Singapore for onward movement to China, according to the charging documents.

How the money allegedly moved: Between January and October 2024, Earthmade received over $80 million from one Malaysia-based shipment company and $96 million from another, the indictment says; the Justice Department puts the total at more than $176 million. In a January 2024 episode, Lui submitted a purchase order for 27 Nvidia H100 servers for about $7,614,000, shipped from Los Angeles County to Kuala Lumpur; a March email cited in the indictment said those servers had been transshipped to a China-based buyer. Another episode describes 100 H100 servers bought through a U.S. front company for over $22 million.

The charges: Lui faces one count of conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act and the Export Administration Regulations, one count of illegal outbound export of goods from the United States, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, the Justice Department said. If convicted of all counts, he faces a maximum of 20 years on the export conspiracy count, 10 years on the illegal-export count and 20 years on the money-laundering count, according to the release. The FBI, Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security Office of Export Enforcement and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service are investigating; prosecutors are also pursuing forfeiture of seized property, the department said.

Why it matters for AI: Advanced GPUs and the servers that pack them are the scarce hardware behind large-scale AI training and inference, and U.S. export rules have tightened to limit China’s access to that class of chips. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg, quoted in the department’s release, said the department “will protect the American advantage in the chips that power this technology,” which the release calls Super Intelligence. The release does not name Nvidia; those product names come from the indictment.

Who has a stake: Chipmakers and server builders that sell export-controlled AI hardware face compliance risk when paperwork misstates end users or destinations. Cloud and model builders that depend on constrained GPU supply watch diversion cases for what they signal about enforcement. Earthmade’s public site describes the company as an AI-hardware reseller and an authorized reseller of Super Micro Computer, 2Crsi and Dell; that site is used here only for a company description, not for the charges. As of early Monday, Earthmade had not posted a public statement on the arrest.

What’s next: Lui was expected to make his initial appearance and be arraigned the afternoon of the arrest, the Justice Department said Thursday. Next markers: whether he is detained or released; any superseding indictment naming co-conspirators still identified only by number; forfeiture filings; whether manufacturers labeled “U.S. Manufacturer 1, 2 and 3” are identified in later papers; and whether Commerce or BIS announces parallel civil export penalties.

— Nico Valdez