US indicts 4 people suspected of illegally exporting Nvidia chips to China

Washington [US], November 21: The US Justice Department has indicted four people for allegedly smuggling Nvidia's advanced chips to China.
The US Department of Justice announced on November 20 that it had prosecuted two Chinese nationals , Cham Li (38 years old) and Jing Chen (45 years old), and two Americans, Ning Ho (34 years old) and Brian Raymond (46 years old), for conspiring to violate the Export Control Reform Act (ECRA) and money laundering, according to AFP.
All four defendants are accused of conspiring to illegally export Nvidia 's advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) to China via Malaysia and Thailand.
Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg said the group falsified documents, entered into false contracts and deceived US authorities. The group received nearly $4 million from China to carry out the conspiracy.
About 400 Nvidia A100 GPUs were exported to China via Malaysia between October 2024 and January 2025 in two shipments. Two other shipments via Thailand were intercepted by authorities, including 10 HP supercomputers with H100 GPUs and 50 Nvidia H200 GPUs.
ECRA violations and money laundering are punishable by up to 20 years in prison each.
The arrest prompted a key Republican congressman to call for urgent passage of the chip tracking bill, which was introduced in May by Representative John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Communist Party of China, and has 30 co-sponsors.
According to Reuters, the bill would require chip location verification, mandatory reporting by manufacturers and sharing of information on potential diversions, and would seek to prevent U.S. chips from falling into the wrong hands.
"China recognizes America's superiority in AI innovation and will do whatever it takes to catch up. That's why the bipartisan Chip Security Act is so necessary," Moolenaar said.
China has not commented on the above information and accusations.
Source: Thanh Nieu Newspaper