Greg Lui Charged in $300 Million Nvidia Server Export Case

Case status, checked October 4, 2026: This story covers allegations in a federal indictment. Greg Lui has not been convicted and is presumed innocent. Nvidia has not been charged.

There are three dollar figures in this indictment, and they do not mean the same thing. More than $300 million is the government’s description of the servers involved. More than $176 million is what prosecutors say two Malaysian companies sent to Earthmade Computer. About $42.6 million is the minimum value of three orders described in detail. None of those figures is a profit figure.

Those figures answer different questions. The indictment explains how prosecutors say servers moved from the United States through Malaysia and Singapore. It never gives the final price paid in China or says how much any participant kept. The public filing cannot answer who collected a markup.

The charges

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Greg Lui, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, on September 29. Lui, 38, owns Earthmade Computer Inc., a technology company based in City of Industry, California.

The three counts charge him with conspiracy to violate U.S. export-control laws, outbound smuggling and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Outbound smuggling means illegally sending goods out of the United States. Prosecutors allege that the conspiracy began no later than October 2023 and continued through at least August 12, 2026.

The dates also differ between the Justice Department’s announcement and the indictment. The October 1 announcement describes conduct during 2023 and 2024. The conspiracy count in the indictment extends into August 2026. Most of the detailed purchases and shipments in the filing took place in 2024.

According to the indictment, the servers contained Nvidia A100 and H100 processors. Other transactions involved PNY GeForce RTX 4090 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 processors. Prosecutors say the equipment required a Commerce Department license before it could be exported to China. They allege that Lui and Earthmade never applied for or received one.

How prosecutors say the servers moved

The government says Earthmade presented companies in Malaysia and Singapore as buyers or end users. Prosecutors allege that the servers were then sent on to China, while U.S. manufacturers and government filings were given false information about the destination.

One example begins with a January 2024 request for 70 servers containing H100 processors. Later that month, Earthmade bought 27 of them for about $7.614 million, according to the indictment. They traveled from Los Angeles County to Kuala Lumpur. In March, prosecutors say, a co-conspirator told a Malaysian government official by email that all 27 had been sent to the Chinese purchaser.

A second example follows 92 servers. The filing says they left San Francisco for Kuala Lumpur in June 2024 and continued to Hong Kong. The shipping documents listed the Chinese purchaser as the recipient. The indictment values that shipment at about $13 million.

A third example concerns 100 H100 servers worth more than $22 million. Prosecutors say another U.S. business placed the order at Lui’s direction to disguise the real buyer. They allege that records named “Jackie Lui” as the chief executive of Topmost Corp. Prosecutors also say Lui had purchased the identity documents used for that name in 2021.

A judge or jury has not ruled on those allegations.

The $176 million in Earthmade’s accounts

From January through October 2024, prosecutors say, Earthmade received more than $80 million from one Malaysian shipment company and $96 million from another. Together, those transfers exceeded $176 million.

The indictment says Earthmade used payments from the Malaysian companies to buy servers from three unnamed U.S. manufacturers. In a separate paragraph, it says Earthmade introduced the two Malaysian companies to the manufacturers and arranged almost $300 million in server sales.

Money arriving in a company’s bank account can include funds needed to pay suppliers. Profit is what remains after those costs. The filing says the money was used to purchase servers, and it gives no complete accounting for the companies involved.

The three detailed orders add up to at least $42.6 million: $7.614 million for 27 servers, about $13 million for 92 and more than $22 million for 100. That sum comes from adding the examples in the filing. Prosecutors did not present it as a separate total or as profit.

The missing number is the final price paid by the purchaser in China. Without that invoice, the public record cannot show Earthmade’s margin or any amount kept by the Malaysian companies or the Chinese purchaser. It also cannot show that Nvidia received a higher price because the servers were restricted.

Nvidia’s role

The indictment names Nvidia as the maker of the processors inside the servers. Nvidia has not been charged. The companies that sold the finished servers to Earthmade stay unnamed in the filing as Manufacturer 1, Manufacturer 2 and Manufacturer 3.

A server is a complete machine, while an H100 or A100 is one of the high-value components inside it. Dividing the server price by the number of machines tells us the average cost of a finished system. It does not tell us what Nvidia received for each processor.

The processors are valuable because they can handle the heavy computing used to train and run artificial-intelligence systems. They are still only one part of a much larger build. Our earlier look at the queue every data center waits in explains why both chips and electricity can delay new computing capacity.

An Nvidia spokesperson told California Insider that the company works with law enforcement and called smuggling “a losing proposition.” Earthmade was not charged in the indictment. California Insider reported that the company had not responded to its request for comment by publication time. The Los Angeles Times reported that no attorney for Lui was listed in the court records it reviewed and that it could not reach him for comment.

The unnamed Chinese purchaser

The indictment identifies the alleged purchaser as an unnamed industrial company in Hangzhou, China. It does not name the company.

An FBI official quoted in the Justice Department announcement described the alleged sales as going to the Chinese government. The indictment made public is narrower. It does not explain whether the unnamed industrial company had a government connection. Until another court filing supplies that link, those descriptions should not be treated as interchangeable.

The indictment supports the alleged export route and the payment figures above. It does not support the original claim that the markup landed with the forwarders.

Next steps in court

The Justice Department says the export-control conspiracy and money-laundering conspiracy counts each carry a statutory maximum of 20 years in federal prison. The outbound-smuggling count carries a statutory maximum of 10 years. Those are the legal ceilings. A sentence would be decided by the court only after a conviction.

The case is United States v. Lui, No. 2:26-cr-00618-ODW, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Public records and reporting reviewed on October 4 did not show a plea or trial date. The government must still prove every charge beyond a reasonable doubt.

Sources & Further Reading

• Indictment, United States v. Lui, filed September 29, 2026, for the charges, alleged timeline, companies, transactions and payment figures.
• U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California, October 1, 2026, for the arrest announcement, charging summary and statutory maximum penalties.
• California Insider, updated October 3, 2026, for Nvidia’s response and the reported effort to reach Earthmade.
• Los Angeles Times, October 2, 2026, for its reported effort to reach Lui and its court-record check.
• The Frontier, October 3, 2026, for its docket check and comparison of the dates and dollar figures in the public filing.

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