Three people affiliated with server maker Supermicro were charged Thursday in connection with allegations they conspired to smuggle advanced Nvidia chips into China, in violation of U.S. export controls barring their sale to China without a license.
The indictment from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York alleges that Wally Liaw, Steven Chang, and Willy Sun conspired to sell $2.5 billion worth of servers to a company based in Southeast Asia, which then repackaged the boxes to send $510 million worth of servers with banned chips to final destinations in China.
The Department of Justice said Liaw, a U.S. citizen who co-founded Supermicro, and Sun, a citizen of Taiwan, were arrested today while Chang, also a citizen of Taiwan, remains a fugitive.
The three men are each charged with a count of conspiring to violate the Export Controls Reform Act, carrying a maximum prison term of 20 years, if convicted.
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