Federal authorities have arrested California businessman Greg Lui and indicted him with conspiracy to smuggle more than $300 million worth of controlled AI servers to China.
The scheme, detailed in an indictment document published on Thursday, involved shipping AI servers to Malaysia and Singapore, where the Lui falsely represented those countries as the servers’ final destinations.
Lui’s company, Earthmade, received more than $176 million from Malaysian transhipment companies between January and October of 2024. In one specific instance, 27 servers worth about $7.6 million were shipped from Los Angeles to Kuala Lumpur before reaching a Chinese buyer based in Hangzhou.
Lui is the only named person in the indictment. Earthmade and two other companies incorporated in the City of Industry called Topmost and Coindigger are the only named companies. But the indictment also references three U.S. manufacturers of AI servers, two U.S. freight forwarders, two Malaysian transshipment companies and five co-conspirators. Cross-referencing details in the indictment with public records in the U.S. and Malaysia offers clues to the identities of the other unnamed entities involved.
The indictment identifies Co-Conspirator 4 as “the purported Chief Technology Officer for Malaysian Transshipment Company 1,” who “in reality was an international broker of export-controlled servers and the incorporator of Topmost.” The incorporator of Topmost is an individual called “Tingwei Sun,” according to public records. This is the same name as the Taiwanese national Tingwei Sun (孫廷瑋) who was indicted earlier this year along with two employees of the American server company Supermicro for conspiracy to illegally smuggle $2.5 billion worth of Supermicro servers equipped with AI chips into China.
According to the indictment, Topmost is involved in the scheme to the extent that Lui allegedly used fraudulent documentation to characterize Topmost as the supposed buyer and an unnamed Malaysian front company as the supposed destination in order to carry out business transactions as part of the scheme. Topmost’s registered address is down the street from Earthmade in the City of Industry, California.
The indictment documents describe both Tingwei Sun and Co-Conspirator 4 as third-party brokers or “fixers” of export-controlled servers. Another notable overlap between the two cases is that Earthmade, Lui’s California-based company that shipped export-controlled servers to transshipment companies Malaysia, lists five Supermicro products in its list of 12 products.
The indictment states that “Malaysian Transshipment Company 1,” which paid Lui’s company Earthmade over $80 million between January and October of 2024, was established on or about October 22, 1999 and primarily focused on the lumber, plywood, millwork and wood panel industries. A review of Malaysian corporate records of the more than 100 companies formed on that day found that a company called “Indah Plywood” was the only company that fit that description.
Indah Plywood’s financial records from the past five years are noteworthy. In the financial year ending on October 31, 2023, Indah Plywood went from posting a 78,067 Malaysian ringgit ($19,099) annual loss to a 10,501,710 ringgit ($2,569,100) gain. The profit was more than double Indah Plywood’s revenue that year, suggesting that it may not have come entirely from ordinary operations. 2023 was the only year in the past five years that the company yielded a profit. It is now in the process of winding up operations.
In terms of whether Indah Plywood truly is one of the Malaysian transshipment companies involved in the case, it is perhaps confounding that the company recorded its 10,501,710 ringgit profit in 2023, as the indictment describes shipments of millions worth of AI servers to “Malaysian Transshipment Company 1” as occurring in 2024. Earthmade wasn’t established until October 2023, although Coindigger, which Lui also operated and which the indictment says did business as Earthmade, was established in 2021.
Finally, California records show that Lui created multiple companies around the same area in the City of Industry. A company called LEOTAC USA, registered at the same address as Topmost, listed Lui as a chief executive in 2025. The company purportedly manufactures duty gear and tactical equipment. Another company registered at that same address is Noble Defense Academy LLC, which was incorporated by Lui in October 2025. Lui transferred registered agent status to an individual named Samuel Lui one month later. Samuel Lui was named as an agent for another company registered at the same address called Vantage Movement Corp., which was incorporated by Lovette Dobson in February 2025. Lovette Dobson is reportedly an agent at Bizee — a company that helps clients form business — whose name has appeared on more than 70,000 business filings in the U.S., according to a report by Inc.
If convicted of all charges, Lui could face a combined statutory maximum of 50 years in prison.
Leave a Reply