TL;DR: The Justice Department says Greg Lui, 38, and Earthmade Computer Inc. in City of Industry bought controlled servers in 2023 and 2024, shipped them to Malaysia or Singapore, then re-exported them to China without Commerce Department licenses and lied about end users. An indictment returned 29 September 2026 led to his arrest 1 October. Charges are conspiracy, smuggling, and money laundering, not a finished trial. Maximum sentences if convicted on all counts could reach decades in prison.
Status note: Checked 5 October 2026 against the Justice Department Office of Public Affairs release of 1 October 2026. Court filings, plea talks, and trial dates can still change. Everything below about criminal conduct is what prosecutors allege unless a court rules otherwise.
Why AI servers sit on the export control list
High-end servers packed with advanced graphics processing units are not ordinary electronics shipments. Washington treats many of them as export-controlled items because they can train and run large AI models at scale. Selling them to certain destinations, or routing them through third countries to hide the real buyer, can violate the Export Control Reform Act and the Commerce Department's Export Administration Regulations, often shortened to EAR.
Companies need licenses for many China-bound deals. Investigators watch for transshipment: goods that legally enter Singapore or Malaysia on paper, then move onward to a buyer the seller knew was in China. False end-user statements are a classic red flag because they let a reseller claim the hardware stayed with a permitted customer.
What prosecutors say Lui and Earthmade did
According to the 1 October announcement, Greg Lui, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, ran Earthmade Computer Inc., a reseller in the City of Industry east of Los Angeles. From 2023 into 2024, prosecutors say, Earthmade bought export-controlled computer servers in the United States, sent them to Malaysia or Singapore, and arranged re-export to China without the required Commerce licenses.
The indictment, returned 29 September 2026 in the Central District of California, charges conspiracy to violate the export control laws, conspiracy to smuggle goods from the United States, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. If convicted on all counts, the statutory maximums listed in the release include up to 20 years on each conspiracy count, 20 years on the money laundering conspiracy, and 10 years on the smuggling conspiracy. Those are ceiling numbers, not predictions of what a judge would impose.
Between January and October 2024 alone, Earthmade received more than $176 million from two Malaysia-based shipment companies, the department said. That cash flow is part of why money laundering appears on the charging document alongside the export violations.
The Malaysia route in one alleged deal
Prosecutors pointed to a January 2024 email chain about 70 servers. A purchase order covered 27 of those machines, worth about $7.614 million, moving from the Los Angeles area to Kuala Lumpur. In March 2024, the release says, a co-conspirator emailed a Malaysian official that those 27 servers had been transshipped onward to a buyer in China.
That sequence, if proved at trial, is the kind of paper trail export enforcers build cases around: U.S. origin, intermediate hub, Chinese end user, and communications that describe the reroute. FBI Assistant Director in Charge Roger Rozhavsky said in the announcement that the scheme allegedly sold hundreds of millions of dollars in controlled hardware to the Chinese government. That is an allegation in a press statement, not a jury verdict.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen tied the case to protecting sensitive chips and systems. U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California, Commerce Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew S. Peters, and Defense Criminal Investigative Service Director Mark R. Helsing also quoted the release. Investigators included Commerce's Office of Export Enforcement, DCIS, and the FBI. Trial attorneys Scott Guzman and Eli Ross of the National Security Division were listed as handling the case.
Where things stand
Lui's arrest and the unsealed indictment are the public record as of early October 2026. There is no reported conviction, sentence, or forfeiture judgment in the Justice Department summary. Defendants in export cases often contest both the routing story and the knowledge element prosecutors must prove.
Social posts that treat the press release as proof of guilt skip the basic rule: indictment is accusation. The government must prove each charge beyond a reasonable doubt. Until then, Lui remains presumed innocent.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, 1 October 2026.