CEO Accused Of Illegally Shipping Restricted AI Tech To China In LA County Case

LOS ANGELES, CA — The owner of a San Gabriel Valley technology company was arrested Thursday on federal charges accusing him of smuggling more than $300 million worth of export-controlled computer servers to China, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Greg Lui, 38, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, of San Gabriel, is charged with conspiracy to violate federal export laws, outbound smuggling and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He was expected to make his first court appearance Friday in downtown Los Angeles, authorities said.

Federal prosecutors claim Lui used his City of Industry-based company, Earthmade Computer Inc., to buy high-end servers containing U.S.-manufactured graphics processing units, or GPUs, and send them to China without required export licenses.

"According to U.S. government regulations, such high-end GPUs could make significant contributions to the military potential of other nations," prosecutors said in a statement.

According to prosecutors, Lui and others shipped the servers to Malaysia and Singapore before rerouting them to China. Prosecutors said they also provided U.S. manufacturers with false documents identifying permissible destinations and end users.

From January through October 2024, Earthmade received more than $176 million from two Malaysia-based shipping companies as part of the alleged scheme, prosecutors said.

In one instance, prosecutors allege Lui ordered 27 restricted servers worth about $7.6 million that were shipped from Los Angeles to Malaysia in January 2024. A co-conspirator later told a Malaysian government official that the servers had been forwarded to a buyer in China, according to prosecutors.

If convicted on all charges, Lui could face up to 20 years in federal prison on each of the conspiracy and money laundering counts and up to 10 years on the smuggling count.