Four People Smuggled NVIDIA GPUs to China, Arrested in the U.S.

U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) building in Washington, July 29, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Dajiyuan)

[People News] The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday (November 20) arrested two U.S. citizens and two Chinese citizens accused of illegally selling NVIDIA’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China through Malaysia and Thailand. They are charged with violating and conspiring to violate the Export Control Reform Act, smuggling, money laundering, and conspiring to launder money.

According to Voice of America, Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg and Gregory W. Kehoe, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida, announced Thursday that the two U.S. citizens and two Chinese citizens, all residing in the United States, are charged with conspiring to illegally export NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) with AI applications to China.

The two Chinese citizens arrested are:
— Li Zhan (Cham Li, transliteration), a 38-year-old man living in San Leandro, California
— Chen Jing (Jing Chen, transliteration), a 45-year-old man living in Tampa, Florida, who holds an F-1 nonimmigrant student visa

The two U.S. citizens are:
— He Anning (Hon Ning Ho, transliteration), a 34-year-old man born in Hong Kong and currently living in Florida
— Brian Curtis Raymond, a 46-year-old man living in Huntsville, Alabama

All four were arrested Wednesday and have already appeared in court.

They are charged with conspiring to violate the Export Control Reform Act, smuggling, money laundering, and conspiracy to launder money. Each violation of the Export Control Reform Act carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison; each smuggling charge carries up to 10 years; and each money-laundering charge carries up to 20 years. The DOJ statement notes that a criminal complaint merely contains allegations, and all defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Assistant Attorney General Eisenberg said in a statement:
“Yesterday’s indictment alleges that the defendants deliberately and fraudulently diverted controlled NVIDIA graphics processors to China through falsified documents, fake contracts, and misleading U.S. authorities. The National Security Division is committed to combating black-market trafficking of sensitive U.S. technologies and bringing participants in such illegal trade to justice.”

According to the indictment, from September 2023 to November 2025, the four men conspired to violate U.S. export-control laws by using a real-estate company in Tampa, Florida—owned and controlled by Ho and Li—as a front, exporting advanced GPUs illegally to China through Malaysia and Thailand. Raymond, through his electronics company in Alabama, supplied NVIDIA GPUs to Ho and others for illicit export to China.

The indictment further alleges that the conspiracy involved four export attempts. The first two resulted in 400 NVIDIA A100 GPUs being exported to China between October 2024 and January 2025.
The third and fourth export attempts were stopped by law enforcement and did not go through. These attempted shipments involved ten Hewlett Packard Enterprise supercomputers, each equipped with NVIDIA H100 GPUs, and 50 NVIDIA H200 GPUs.

The DOJ says that although all conspirators knew a license was required to export these items to China, none applied for or obtained any export license. Instead, they lied about the GPUs’ final destination to evade U.S. export controls. The indictment also alleges that the conspirators received more than $3.89 million in wire transfers from China.

The indictment notes that China (the CCP) seeks to become the global leader in artificial intelligence by 2030, planning to apply AI to military modernization, the design and testing of weapons of mass destruction, and deployment of advanced AI-powered surveillance tools.

For national-security reasons, the U.S. imposes export controls on certain NVIDIA chips destined for China. NVIDIA therefore developed a downgraded H20 chip specifically for the Chinese market. In June, after NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang met with Donald Trump at the White House, Trump allowed the company to sell the H20 chip to China.

In August of this year, the DOJ also arrested two Chinese citizens living in Southern California for knowingly exporting tens of millions of dollars’ worth of sensitive AI-related microchips to China.△