A California business owner is facing up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted, a prosecution maximum rather than a sentence, over accusations that he ran a scheme PCMag reported was valued at more than $300 million in allegedly smuggled servers, routed through Southeast Asia and into China. After a federal grand jury returned the indictment on September 29, 2026, the Justice Department announced charges against Greg Lui, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, on October 1, 2026, the day he was arrested, naming four Nvidia GPU models at the center of the case: the A100, the H100, the GeForce RTX 4090, and, as The Register specifically noted among the alleged shipments, the newest GeForce RTX 5090, according to reporting from The Register and PCMag.
The case lands five months after federal prosecutors charged a Super Micro co-founder in a separate $2.5 billion smuggling scheme, underscoring how aggressively Washington is now policing the flow of AI hardware to China. For a site that tracks every twist in Nvidia’s supply chain, from RTX 5090 vs RTX 4090 benchmarks to chip pricing swings, this is the clearest sign yet that consumer-grade gaming cards have become collateral in a geopolitical fight over AI compute.
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What Prosecutors Allege Greg Lui Did
According to the Justice Department, Lui, 38, of San Gabriel, California, owns and operates Earthmade Computer Inc., a server reseller based in City of Industry, California. Federal prosecutors allege that Lui and a group of co-conspirators used Earthmade between 2023 and 2026 to place orders with US manufacturers for servers packed with export-controlled Nvidia components, then falsified paperwork about where that hardware would ultimately end up.
Court documents cited by Bloomberg and summarized in subsequent coverage, along with The Register’s October 2026 reporting, describe a conspiracy that ran precisely from October 2023 through August 2026. In that nearly three-year window, prosecutors say, Lui’s operation obtained hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of hardware that should have required a Commerce Department license before leaving the country.
Per the Justice Department’s October 2026 announcement, Lui faces three felony counts: conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, outbound smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The DOJ has said a conviction on all three could carry a combined maximum of 50 years in prison, with the two conspiracy counts each exposing him to as much as 20 years and the smuggling count carrying up to 10 years, based on details reported by Bloomberg and relayed through multiple outlets including Courthouse News and The Register. None of the allegations have been proven in court, and Lui has not been convicted of any crime.
Inside the $300 Million Earthmade Computer Scheme
The dollar figure prosecutors are using, more than $300 million as PCMag’s October 2026 reporting put it, places this case well below the $2.5 billion Super Micro scheme uncovered earlier in 2026, but still makes it one of the larger single-defendant export cases of the year. What sets the Earthmade case apart is the product mix: rather than data center-only silicon, the indictment names two gaming GPUs sold directly to consumers, the RTX 4090 and, as The Register flagged, the newest-generation RTX 5090, alongside the data center-grade A100 and H100 accelerators.
That detail matters because it shows how export enforcement has widened beyond the data center chips Nvidia builds specifically for AI training. The RTX 4090 and RTX 5090, built primarily for gamers and creators, carry enough CUDA cores and VRAM that they remain attractive for smaller-scale AI inference and research work, a gap that smugglers have exploited for years, according to the broader pattern described in coverage of prior cases from The Register and TweakTown.
The Malaysia-Singapore Pass-Through
Prosecutors say Lui’s network relied on a now-familiar workaround. Malaysia and Singapore do not require an export license for many of the server components at issue, unlike mainland China. By first shipping the Nvidia-equipped servers to front companies or logistics partners in those two countries, then re-routing the same hardware onward to China, the alleged scheme avoided the licensing checkpoint altogether, at least on paper.
It is a pattern this site has tracked before. Earlier reporting on the Apex Logistics probe and on Megaspeed’s Malaysia-based Nvidia purchases described similar transshipment routes through Southeast Asia, suggesting investigators are now working through a list of logistics chains rather than chasing isolated incidents.
The Charges and Maximum Penalties Explained
Federal export control cases typically stack multiple counts, and the Earthmade indictment follows that playbook. The Export Control Reform Act conspiracy charge targets the underlying act of moving controlled technology without a license. The outbound smuggling charge addresses the physical movement of goods out of the country through deceptive means. The money laundering conspiracy charge goes after the financial side, the flow of payments used to fund and profit from the alleged scheme.
| Case Detail | What Prosecutors Allege |
|---|---|
| Defendant | Greg Lui (Yiu Kong Lui), 38, San Gabriel, CA |
| Company | Earthmade Computer Inc., City of Industry, CA |
| Alleged scheme value | More than $300 million |
| Hardware named | Nvidia A100, Nvidia H100, GeForce RTX 4090, GeForce RTX 5090 |
| Transshipment points | Malaysia and Singapore, before re-export to China |
| Timeframe alleged | Around October 2023 through at least August 2026 |
| Charges filed | ECRA conspiracy, outbound smuggling, money laundering conspiracy |
| Maximum exposure | Up to 20 years (ECRA conspiracy), up to 10 years (smuggling), up to 20 years (money laundering conspiracy) |
| Charges announced | October 1, 2026 |
It is worth repeating that these are allegations contained in an indictment. Lui is presumed innocent, and the case will need to clear a trial, or a plea agreement, before any of the alleged conduct is legally established as fact.
A Pattern, Not an Isolated Incident
The Earthmade case does not exist in a vacuum. It lands in a year that has already produced the largest Nvidia smuggling prosecution on record. In March 2026, federal prosecutors indicted Super Micro co-founder Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, along with a Taiwan-based sales manager and a contractor, over an alleged $2.5 billion scheme to route Supermicro servers loaded with Nvidia H200 and B200 chips to China, as CNBC reported at the time. Super Micro’s stock fell roughly 30% in the days after that news broke.
Before that, in November 2025, prosecutors charged four people in a separate plot to smuggle Nvidia AI chips into China, a case detailed by The Register. And in August 2025, the Justice Department charged a group of Chinese nationals in yet another chip-smuggling scheme. Three major cases inside of 14 months, each involving a different company and a different route, points to a sustained enforcement push rather than a one-off prosecution.
Comparing the Major 2025-2026 Nvidia Export Cases
Laid side by side, the recent cases show a consistent playbook: order hardware domestically, misdirect it through a country with lighter export controls, then move it to its real destination. The dollar values vary enormously, but the mechanics rhyme.
| Case | Alleged Value | Hardware Named | Announced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earthmade Computer / Greg Lui | $300 million+ | A100, H100, RTX 4090, RTX 5090 | October 2026 |
| Super Micro / Yih-Shyan Liaw | $2.5 billion | H200, B200 (in Supermicro servers) | March 2026 |
| Four-defendant smuggling plot | Not fully disclosed | Nvidia AI chips (unspecified models) | November 2025 |
| Chinese nationals case | Not fully disclosed | Nvidia chips (unspecified models) | August 2025 |
The pattern also shows up in cases this site has covered that never reached formal charges but drew regulatory scrutiny, including the Inspur-Aivres export loophole and the broader tightening described in our look at China’s export control standoff. Taken together, they suggest the Earthmade indictment is a data point in a much longer enforcement curve, not a standalone event.
Why Gaming GPUs Keep Showing Up in Export Cases
Nvidia’s A100 and H100 were purpose-built for data centers and have been on export restriction lists in some form since 2022. The appearance of RTX 4090 and RTX 5090 cards in a federal indictment is the more striking detail for consumer tech readers, because those are the same cards sold at retail for gaming PCs.
The RTX 4090 carries 24GB of VRAM and the RTX 5090 doubles that to 32GB, specs this site has benchmarked repeatedly for gaming and rendering workloads. Those VRAM pools, combined with thousands of CUDA cores, make both cards capable of running smaller AI models even though neither was designed as a data center product. That dual-use nature is exactly what export control rules try to capture, and it is why high-end consumer cards keep surfacing in smuggling cases alongside dedicated AI accelerators.
PNY’s Role as a Named Manufacturer
Reporting on the case has specifically named PNY GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 5090 units as among the products Earthmade allegedly ordered from US manufacturers before shipping them overseas. PNY is one of Nvidia’s board partners for the US market, and there is no indication in current reporting that PNY itself is accused of wrongdoing. The allegations center on how the hardware was represented and routed after purchase, not on how it was manufactured or sold at the point of origin.
Market Impact: Nvidia, Resellers, and the GPU Supply Chain
Nvidia itself is not a defendant in the case and has not been accused of facilitating the alleged scheme. Still, each new smuggling prosecution adds pressure on the company to tighten how its board partners and distributors track where high-end cards end up. That pressure already shaped the market earlier this year: when prosecutors unveiled the Super Micro case in March 2026, Super Micro shares dropped roughly 30% in a single trading session, a reminder that enforcement actions can move stock prices for companies adjacent to a smuggling scheme even when the companies themselves are not charged.
For the broader GPU resale and server integration business, cases like this one raise the cost of doing business legitimately. Smaller resellers and system integrators that buy Nvidia hardware in bulk for export now face more scrutiny on paperwork and end-use certificates, since the government has shown it will pursue mid-sized operators like Earthmade, not just large, publicly traded manufacturers. That filters down to pricing and lead times across the RTX 40 and RTX 50 lineups that gamers and AI hobbyists rely on, an effect worth tracking alongside existing coverage of RTX 5090 pricing and availability.
The Compliance Gap: How Controls Get Bypassed
US export rules generally require licenses for shipping the most advanced AI chips directly to China. What the Earthmade case, the Super Micro case, and the earlier Apex Logistics and Megaspeed episodes all describe is a workaround: buy the hardware domestically, ship it first to a country where no license is required, then move it onward. On paper, the first leg of the journey looks compliant. The second leg is where the alleged violation occurs, and it is also the hardest part for US authorities to monitor directly, since it happens outside American jurisdiction.
That structural gap is why the Bureau of Industry and Security, the Commerce Department office that administers these rules, has leaned on criminal referrals and joint investigations with the Justice Department rather than relying solely on paperwork audits. More background on how the agency enforces these rules is available on the Bureau of Industry and Security’s website.
Historical Context: Washington’s Chip Export Crackdown Since 2022
The current wave of prosecutions traces back to October 2022, when the Commerce Department first imposed sweeping restrictions on advanced AI chip exports to China. Those rules have been revised multiple times since, each round narrowing the list of chips that can ship without a license and widening the net of companies and countries that fall under scrutiny.
What began as a policy aimed squarely at data center accelerators like the A100 and H100 has, over roughly four years, expanded into a much broader enforcement regime that now touches consumer GPUs, server integrators, freight forwarders, and logistics companies across Southeast Asia. The Earthmade indictment is the latest marker in that expansion, and reporting suggests it will not be the last.
What Happens Next in the Legal Process
Lui’s case now moves through the standard federal criminal process. Reporting states that he has already appeared and been arraigned in federal court in Los Angeles, so pretrial motions and either a negotiated plea or a trial come next. Cases of this complexity, involving international shipping records, falsified export documentation, and multiple alleged co-conspirators, often take a year or more to reach trial. The Super Micro case, by comparison, was still working through pretrial proceedings as of mid-2026, roughly five months after charges were announced.
Prosecutors will also need to pursue the unnamed co-conspirators referenced in the indictment, a process that frequently extends a case’s timeline as additional defendants are identified, arrested, or in some instances remain at large outside US jurisdiction, as has reportedly happened with at least one defendant in the Super Micro case.
Predictions: Where Enforcement Goes From Here
- Expect more mid-sized reseller cases. The Earthmade indictment targets a company far smaller than Super Micro, suggesting investigators are working down the supply chain to smaller integrators, not just headline-grabbing manufacturers.
- Consumer GPUs will keep appearing in indictments. As long as RTX 4090 and RTX 5090 cards offer usable VRAM for AI inference, they will remain attractive smuggling targets even though they are not purpose-built AI accelerators.
- Malaysia and Singapore face continued scrutiny. With at least three reported cases now naming these two countries as transshipment points, expect US regulators to push both governments for tighter re-export tracking.
- Nvidia will face more pressure to verify end users. Even without being named as a wrongdoer in these cases, Nvidia is likely to face continued calls from lawmakers to tighten how its partners confirm where hardware is headed.
- More indictments are likely before year-end. Given the cadence of cases in 2025 and 2026, roughly one major prosecution every few months, additional charges tied to chip export violations are a reasonable expectation heading into 2027.
What This Means for Everyday GPU Buyers
For most people shopping for an RTX 4090 or RTX 5090 to build a gaming rig, this case has no direct effect on availability or price today. But sustained enforcement activity around these specific models could eventually influence how retailers and resellers track bulk purchases, particularly large multi-unit orders that resemble the pattern described in the Earthmade indictment. Anyone buying GPUs in volume for a business, rather than a single card for a personal build, should expect more documentation requests going forward.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Greg Lui?
Greg Lui, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, is a 38-year-old California resident from San Gabriel who owns Earthmade Computer Inc., a server reseller based in City of Industry, California. He was arrested on October 1, 2026, and charged in connection with an alleged $300 million Nvidia GPU smuggling scheme.
What Nvidia GPUs are named in the indictment?
Reporting on the charges names the Nvidia A100, Nvidia H100, GeForce RTX 4090, and GeForce RTX 5090, with the RTX cards specifically identified as PNY-branded units.
Is this the same case as the Super Micro Nvidia smuggling charges?
No. The Super Micro case, announced in March 2026, involved a separate defendant, Super Micro co-founder Yih-Shyan Liaw, and an alleged $2.5 billion scheme. The Earthmade case announced in October 2026 is a distinct prosecution involving a different company and a smaller, though still substantial, alleged dollar value.
What charges does Greg Lui face?
He faces three felony counts: conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, outbound smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to reporting on the Justice Department’s announcement.
How much prison time could he face if convicted?
Based on reported maximum penalties for each count, a conviction on all charges could carry up to 20 years for the export control conspiracy, up to 10 years for the smuggling count, and up to 20 years for the money laundering conspiracy. These are statutory maximums, not predicted outcomes, and Lui has not been convicted.
Why were the GPUs shipped through Malaysia and Singapore?
Prosecutors allege these countries were used as transshipment points because they do not require export licenses for the hardware in question, unlike China. The allegation is that the servers were later re-routed from Malaysia and Singapore to China without the required US authorization.
Has Nvidia been accused of wrongdoing in this case?
No. Nvidia is not named as a defendant, and current reporting does not allege that Nvidia or its board partner PNY knowingly participated in the scheme. The allegations focus on Earthmade Computer and its alleged co-conspirators.
Does this affect RTX 4090 or RTX 5090 availability for regular buyers?
There is no indication in current reporting that this case has disrupted retail supply. The effects, if any, are more likely to show up in added compliance checks for bulk and export-oriented purchases rather than in everyday retail pricing or stock levels.
