Four charged over alleged plot to smuggle Nvidia AI chips into China

Four people have been charged in the US with plotting to funnel restricted Nvidia AI chips into China, allegedly relying on shell firms, fake invoices, and covert routing to slip cutting-edge GPUs past American export controls.

According to an indictment unsealed this week, Hon Ning “Mathew” Ho, 34, of Tampa; Brian Curtis Raymond, 46, of Huntsville, Alabama; Cham “Tony” Li, 38, of San Leandro, California; and Jing “Harry” Chen, 45, of Tampa, were arrested this week and now face federal charges tied to the unlawful export of high-end AI hardware.

Prosecutors say the quartet conspired between September 2023 and November 2025 to push restricted Nvidia GPUs into the PRC via Malaysia and Thailand, despite knowing that Commerce Department rules had tightly restricted such exports since October 2022. The DOJ says that China is aggressively pursuing US AI technology to fuel military modernization, weapons development, and large-scale surveillance systems, making the chips subject to strict license requirements.

At the heart of the operation, prosecutors claim, was Janford Realtor LLC, a Tampa-based company owned by Ho and Li. Despite the name, Janford didn’t sell a single house, but rather allegedly served as a front to buy and ship controlled Nvidia silicon overseas. Raymond, via his Alabama electronics business, allegedly supplied GPUs to Ho and others knowing that they were headed for China.

The government says that the plot involved four export attempts. Two succeeded. Between October 2024 and January 2025, the group allegedly moved 400 Nvidia A100 GPUs into the PRC. The next two failed. The DOJ says law enforcement disrupted an attempted shipment of ten HPE supercomputers containing Nvidia H100 accelerators, as well as a separate batch of 50 Nvidia H200 GPUs.

Prosecutors say none of the defendants ever applied for the licenses required to export that hardware. Instead, they allegedly lied about the chips’ intended destination and pocketed more than $3.89 million in wire transfers from China to finance the scheme.

The DOJ also plans to seize the 50 H200 GPUs recovered during the investigation, calling them technology intended for unlawful export.

Officials described the case as part of a broader push to disrupt black-market pipelines for advanced US AI hardware. Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg said the indictment outlines a “deliberate and deceptive effort” to channel GPUs into China by “falsifying paperwork, creating fake contracts, and misleading US authorities,” adding that the government intends to hold anyone participating in such trade “accountable.”

The four defendants now face a slate of charges including conspiracy and export-control violations, and face a possible maximum sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted.

The charges land just months after it was revealed that over $1 billion of top-shelf Nvidia silicon had already seeped into China via smugglers and resellers, underscoring just how porous the export controls have proved. ®

READ MORE HERE