Four men have been indicted on federal criminal charges for allegedly planning a scheme to illegally export millions of dollars worth of restricted Nvidia chips to China and Hong Kong, bypassing strict US export controls designed to limit access to advanced AI and supercomputing technology, a report has said. Citing court documents, CNBC reported that the indictment reveals a complex operation that routed the highly controlled chips through Malaysia and Thailand to evade detection. The defendants failed to obtain required licenses from the Commerce Department for the exports, prosecutors said.Brian Curtis Raymond, 46, of Huntsville, Alabama, owned a technology products distributor called Bitworks that has been licensed to sell Nvidia GPUs. Just last week, Raymond was announced as the chief technology officer of Corvex, a Virginia-based AI cloud company planning to go public through a merger. Following the indictment, Corvex rescinded his job offer and confirmed he was never an employee, only a consultant transitioning to a full-time role.
The three other defendants – Mathew Ho (also known as Hon Ning Ho), Jing Chen (Harry Chen), and Cham Li (Tony Li) – were all born in China or Hong Kong. Ho, 34, is a US citizen living in Florida who served as registered agent for Janford Realtor, a Tampa company that prosecutors say never conducted real estate transactions but instead facilitated illegal chip exports.All four defendants face conspiracy charges for violating the Export Control Reform Act of 2018. Raymond faces additional charges including money laundering related to over $3.4 million in wire transfers, smuggling, and multiple export control violations. If convicted, each defendant faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.The alleged scheme involved submitting false documents about shipment consignees, chip values, and export licenses.
What Nvidia chips were involved in illegal export
According to the US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, 400 Nvidia A100 chips were successfully exported to China between October 2024 and January 2025 in two separate shipments. Law enforcement disrupted two additional attempted exports involving 10 Hewlett Packard Enterprise supercomputers with Nvidia H100 GPUs and 50 separate Nvidia H200 GPUs.The indictment emphasises that China “is rapidly developing exascale supercomputing capabilities and has announced its intent to be the world leader in AI by 2030.” These advanced chips enable capabilities being used for military modernisation and weapons design and testing, including weapons of mass destruction, according to prosecutors.
