Three people have been charged with illegally exporting NVIDIA GPUs to China
Three people have been charged with illegally exporting NVIDIA GPUs to China
Publish Date: 2026-03-20 14:49:00
Source Domain: www.engadget.com
- The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has charged three individuals—Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, Ruei-Tsang “Steven” Chang and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun—with illegally exporting NVIDIA GPUs to China, violating the Export Control Reform Act.
- The three individuals, associated with US IT company Super Micro Computer, allegedly circumvented US export control laws through a complex scheme to repackage servers and falsify documents.
- The scheme involved creating fake orders from Southeast Asian companies and staging dummy servers to deceive inspections and compliance teams.
- The DOJ claims that Liaw, Chang, and Sun facilitated the illegal purchase of servers worth $2.5 billion between 2024 and 2025, directly in violation of US export laws.
- Super Micro Computer distanced itself from the charged individuals and took actions against them, including placing the employees on leave and terminating contracts.
- The illegal export of NVIDIA’s AI chips is not a new issue, and there have been incidents of smuggling amounting to over $1 billion after stricter export controls were implemented, along with a notable seizure of $50 million worth of GPUs in 2025.
