{"id":1319,"date":"2026-03-21T02:49:28","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T18:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/21\/three-people-have-been-charged-with-illegally-exporting-nvidia-gpus-to-china\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T02:49:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T18:49:28","slug":"three-people-have-been-charged-with-illegally-exporting-nvidia-gpus-to-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/21\/three-people-have-been-charged-with-illegally-exporting-nvidia-gpus-to-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Three people have been charged with illegally exporting NVIDIA GPUs to China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The US Attorney&#8217;s Office for the Southern District of New York <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/three-charged-conspiring-unlawfully-divert-cutting-edge-us-artificial-intelligence\" data-i13n=\"cpos:1;pos:1\">has charged<\/a> three people with illegally exporting NVIDIA GPUs to China in violation of the Export Control Reform Act. NVIDIA&#8217;s chips have become a critical component in the rush to train and run increasingly complex artificial intelligence models, one the US has sought to manipulate with <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/big-tech\/nvidia-says-the-us-has-put-export-restrictions-on-h20-ai-chips-224822930.html\" data-i13n=\"cpos:2;pos:1\">export controls<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/ai\/nvidia-may-give-us-government-a-cut-of-its-profits-to-sell-ai-chips-to-china-120003260.html\" data-i13n=\"cpos:3;pos:1\">profit-sharing schemes<\/a> with NVIDIA.<\/p>\n<p>The three people, Yih-Shyan &#8220;Wally&#8221; Liaw, Ruei-Tsang &#8220;Steven&#8221; Chang and Ting-Wei &#8220;Willy&#8221; Sun, two employees and one contractor working for US IT company Super Micro Computer, allegedly circumvented export control laws via a multi-step scheme that involved creating fake orders for servers with NVIDIA chips from Southeast Asian companies, that were then secretly sent to China. The plan involved paying a logistics company to repackage the servers in Taiwan, staging dummy servers to be inspected by Super Micro Computer&#8217;s compliance team and falsifying records so Liaw, Chang and Sun&#8217;s employer was unaware where the servers were actually being sent.<\/p>\n<p>The DOJ claims Liaw, Chang and Sun facilitated the illegal purchase of $2.5 billion worth of servers between 2024 and 2025 in direct violation of US export laws. Super Micro Computer is not named as a defendant in the US Attorney&#8217;s indictment, but the company&#8217;s stock price has been impacted by the scheme, <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"no-affiliate-link link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/03\/19\/us-tech-execs-smuggled-nvidia-chips-to-china-prosecutors-say.html\" data-i13n=\"elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:4;pos:1\"><em>CNBC <\/em>writes<\/a>. In <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/ir.supermicro.com\/news\/news-details\/2026\/Super-Micro-Computer-Issues-Statement-on-Action-by-U-S--Attorneys-Office\/default.aspx\" data-i13n=\"cpos:5;pos:1\">a statement<\/a> released on Thursday, Super Micro Computer announced that it&#8217;s distancing itself from Liaw, Chang and Sun. &#8220;The individuals charged are Yih-Shyan &#8220;Wally&#8221; Liaw, Senior Vice President of Business Development and a member of the Company&#8217;s Board of Directors; Ruei-Tsang &#8220;Steven&#8221; Chang, a sales manager in Taiwan; and Ting-Wei &#8220;Willy&#8221; Sun, a contractor,&#8221; the company writes. &#8220;Supermicro has placed the two employees on administrative leave and terminated its relationship with the contractor, effective immediately.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t the first time people have attempted to illegally smuggle NVIDIA&#8217;s products out of the US, and it likely won&#8217;t be the last time. <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/ai\/1-billion-of-nvidia-ai-chips-were-reportedly-sold-in-china-despite-us-bans-143119762.html\" data-i13n=\"cpos:6;pos:1\">Reportedly $1 billion worth<\/a> of NVIDIA&#8217;s AI chips were illegally sold in the three months after the Trump administration tightened export controls, and back in December 2025, <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/big-tech\/texas-authorities-have-made-multiple-arrests-in-an-nvidia-gpu-smuggling-operation-144749526.html\" data-i13n=\"cpos:7;pos:1\">Texas authorities seized<\/a> more than $50 million worth of NVIDIA GPUs bound for China. As long as there&#8217;s demand for AI, there&#8217;ll be demand for the hardware that makes it possible.<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/ai\/three-people-have-been-charged-with-illegally-exporting-nvidia-gpus-to-china-184928430.html?src=rss<\/p><p>Please credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/obagg.com\">OBA Blog<\/a> &raquo; <a href=\"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/21\/three-people-have-been-charged-with-illegally-exporting-nvidia-gpus-to-china\/\">Three people have been charged with illegally exporting NVIDIA GPUs to China<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Attorney&#8217;s Office for the Southern District of New York has charged three people with illegally exporting NVIDIA GPUs to China in violation of the Export Control Reform Act. NVIDIA&#8217;s chips have become a critical component in the rush to train and run increasingly complex artificial intelligence models, one the US has sought to manipulate with export controls and profit-sharing schemes with NVIDIA. The three people, Yih-Shyan &#8220;Wally&#8221; Liaw, Ruei-Tsang &#8220;Steven&#8221; Chang and Ting-Wei &#8220;Willy&#8221; Sun, two employees and one contractor working for US IT company Super Micro Computer, allegedly circumvented export control laws via a multi-step scheme that involved creating fake orders for servers with NVIDIA chips from Southeast Asian companies, that were then secretly sent to China. The plan involved paying a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-share"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}