Federal prosecutors have outlined an alleged export-control scheme centered on a California technology company, high-end AI servers, and routes through Malaysia and Singapore. On October 1, the U.S. Department of Justice said it had arrested 38-year-old San Gabriel resident Greg Lui, whose court identification also includes Yiu Kong Lui, under a three-count federal indictment. The charges are conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act and Export Administration Regulations, smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
A federal grand jury returned the indictment on September 29 in the Central District of California, where it is docketed as United States v. Greg Lui, Case 2:26-cr-00618-ODW. Prosecutors allege that Lui owned Earthmade Computer Inc., a closely held technology company based in the City of Industry, and used it with co-conspirators to acquire and send export-controlled equipment to China without Commerce Department licenses. The case remains at the allegation stage. An indictment does not establish guilt, and Lui is presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The January H100 Order and Kuala Lumpur Route
The indictment presents a January 2024 sequence as an early example of the alleged operation. Prosecutors allege that on January 11, Lui emailed a co-conspirator about a Malaysian transshipment company seeking 70 H100 servers. The attached export-compliance materials, according to the indictment, acknowledged restrictions on selling, transshipping, or exporting advanced integrated circuits to China, including Nvidia A100, A8000, H8000, or other advanced chips.
On January 30, prosecutors say, Lui ordered 27 servers containing Nvidia H100 GPUs for approximately $7.614 million. The indictment alleges that the servers left Los Angeles County for Kuala Lumpur the following day. It further alleges that, in a March 12 email to a Malaysian government official, Lui said the 27 servers had been transshipped to a Chinese purchaser. The DOJ frames the alleged scheme’s value as more than $300 million, while the indictment separately alleges that Earthmade brokered almost $300 million in export-controlled Nvidia-GPU server sales from three unnamed U.S. manufacturers.
The filing does not identify the Chinese purchaser, the Malaysian companies, the manufacturers, or an end user. Nor does it establish that every server described in the alleged scheme reached China. Those limits matter because the prosecution’s account combines particular shipment examples with a broader allegation about an operation that it says ran over several years.
June Flights and a July Front-Company Purchase
A second 2024 sequence in the indictment includes both server quantities and air-cargo routing. Prosecutors allege that Earthmade ordered 512 export-controlled servers on May 1 and that 92 of those servers were ready to ship on June 14. The next day, the indictment says, the 92 servers moved from San Francisco International Airport to Kuala Lumpur on Singapore Airlines flight SQ0033, then from Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific flight CX722. The alleged Earthmade purchase associated with that sequence was approximately $13 million.
The indictment characterizes the Malaysian recipient as a transshipment company and names the consignee only as a Chinese purchaser. It does not identify either entity. That description concentrates the government’s allegation on the stated routing and end-use representations rather than on a named Chinese organization.
Prosecutors allege a third sequence began on July 2, when a U.S. front company ordered 100 export-controlled servers, each containing Nvidia H100 GPUs, from another unnamed U.S. manufacturer for more than $22 million. The indictment alleges that Lui directed the front company to represent Topmost Corp. as the buyer and a Malaysian transshipment company as the destination. It further alleges that documentation falsely listed an individual named Jackie Lui as Topmost’s chief executive officer and that Greg Lui had bought that individual’s identifying documents in 2021. Those are prosecution allegations, not findings, and the indictment does not establish a relationship between Greg Lui and Jackie Lui.
Corporate chronology is part of the government’s theory. The indictment alleges that Earthmade Computer Inc. was established on or about November 10, 2023, that Coindigger, another closely held City of Industry corporation, did business as Earthmade, and that Topmost was established on February 24, 2024. Prosecutors say a U.S. front company was used to purchase the servers. The DOJ alleges that transfers from two Malaysian shipment companies to Earthmade exceeded $176 million between January and October 2024. That is an alleged receipt figure, not a determination of loss or a final accounting of delivered equipment.
Charges, Alleged Concealment, and Court Posture
The Central District of California release says prosecutors allege false documents, staged dummy servers intended to mislead inspectors, and complex transshipment arrangements. The release also says prosecutors allege that Lui knew the true end users were in China and that the regulations applied because high-end GPUs could significantly contribute to another country’s military potential. Neither assertion establishes actual military use, and the indictment does not name a Chinese government department or military customer.
The alleged duration requires similar care. The DOJ describes purchasing and shipping activity from 2023 to 2024, while Count One alleges a conspiracy beginning no later than around October 2023 and continuing until at least August 12, 2026. The concrete server-purchase examples in the indictment are from 2024; the later date is an alleged conspiracy period, not proof of physical shipments after 2024. Related archive coverage includes Taiwan’s Nvidia-chip smuggling investigation and China’s effort to work around scarce Nvidia chips.
Reuters independently reported the arrest, the three charges, and the alleged routing through Malaysia or Singapore. Reuters also reported that Lui could not be reached for comment and that Earthmade did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Lui was expected to make an initial appearance and be arraigned on October 2 in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles; the supplied material does not provide a later court outcome.
If convicted on all counts, the statutory maximums described by the U.S. Attorney’s Office are 20 years for the export-control conspiracy count, 20 years for the money-laundering conspiracy count, and 10 years for the smuggling count. Those are legal ceilings, not a recommended or expected sentence. Investigators listed include the FBI Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and the Commerce Department’s BIS Office of Export Enforcement.
For now, the case is defined by prosecutors’ allegations: purchase orders, claimed end-use paperwork, third-country routes, and financial transfers tied to an alleged effort to conceal China as the destination. Whether those allegations withstand court scrutiny, and what evidence can substantiate each claimed route and transaction, will be determined through the judicial process rather than by the indictment itself.