In January 2024, Greg Lui requested 70 export-controlled servers. He ordered 27 of them for $7,614,000. By March, all 27 had been transshipped through Malaysia to China. That was one shipment.
The total was $300 million.
Lui, 38, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, ran Earthmade Computer Inc. out of the City of Industry in California's San Gabriel Valley — a quiet stretch of suburban Los Angeles that looks more like a logistics park than a national security threat. Federal prosecutors say that between 2023 and 2024, Lui orchestrated the smuggling of approximately $300 million in advanced semiconductor servers to China, routing them through Malaysia and Singapore to dodge U.S. export controls designed to keep that exact technology out of Beijing's hands.
A three-count federal indictment unsealed this week in the Central District of California charges Lui with conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, outbound smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy. Between January and October 2024 alone, Lui received $176 million — the kind of cash flow that makes "tech executive" feel like a generous job title.
John A. Eisenberg, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, framed the stakes in terms that didn't leave much room for interpretation. Advanced semiconductor technology, he said, must be protected "from illegal diversion by our economic and military adversaries." Bill Essayli, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, was more direct: "Protecting America's national security means keeping our advanced" technology "from being used to strengthen our adversaries' military capabilities."
The scheme worked like this: Lui's company would acquire the servers domestically, then route them to transshipment points in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore before final delivery to China. The layering wasn't sophisticated — it was just enough to create paperwork separation between buyer and destination. The FBI's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, led by Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky, investigated alongside the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General under Special Agent in Charge John E. Helsing.
The penalties tell you how seriously the feds are treating this. Conspiracy carries a maximum of 20 years. Money laundering conspiracy carries another 20. The smuggling charge adds 10 more. Lui is looking at a potential 50-year ceiling, as reported by Townhall.
China doesn't need to run a spy ring through a government agency when a company in a suburban office park will move $300 million in restricted technology for them. The CCP's chip acquisition strategy isn't cloak-and-dagger — it's commercial. Find someone willing to place the orders, set up a routing chain through Southeast Asia, and let the money do the recruiting.
Four prosecutors are assigned to the case: Colin S. Scott, Joseph S. Guzman, and Alexander Su from the Central District of California, plus Eli Ross from the National Security Division. That's not a white-collar fraud team. That's a national security prosecution.
