According to the case files, federal prosecutors have charged four people with illegally smuggling Nvidia graphics processors and HP supercomputers equipped with Nvidia graphics processors from the U.S. to China. spotted by Court watch. The US government has imposed restrictions that prevent Nvidia from selling its most powerful AI training chips to China, but Chinese companies such as DeepSeek continue to create competing AI models. After DeepSeek launched the R1 earlier this year, Scale CEO Alexander Wang he said he was thinking China has a lot more Nvidia H100 AI chips than you might think, despite export controls, and operations like this may assist explain how.
Nvidia, which on Wednesday announced quarterly profits of a record $57 billion.
The documents show that only one person has been arrested so far, and four have been charged with, among others, smuggling, conspiracy and money laundering. The four defendants – Mathew Ho, Brian Curtis Raymond, Tony Li and Harry Chen – allegedly conspired to export GPUs starting in tardy 2023, which included shipping 50 desirable Nvidia H200 GPUs and several batches of earlier H100 GPUs without a license.
The report explains that one part of the scheme was an alleged front company called Janford Realtor, LLC:
Despite its name, Janford Realtor, LLC has never been involved in any real estate transactions. Instead, the company facilitated several illegal and unlicensed exports to the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) of advanced and tightly controlled U.S.-sourced graphics processing units (“GPUs”) with artificial intelligence (“AI”) and supercomputing applications.
Ho, a U.S. citizen, was the company’s registered agent, and Li, a Chinese national, was identified as the company’s manager.
Bryan Curtis Raymond of Huntsville, Alabama, is listed in the filing as the CEO and sole owner of “US Company 1,” to which Janford Realtor paid nearly $2 million. ON his LinkedInRaymond says he is the CEO of Bitworks, which he describes as an AI infrastructure company that “provides sales and support for Nvidia and AMD solutions.” Ho and other co-conspirators purchased GPUs from suppliers, including Raymond and his company, using money wired from bank accounts in China, while also using false bills of lading and contracts to avoid export controls.
“The export system is rigorous and comprehensive,” Nvidia spokesman John Rizzo said in a statement Edge. “Even small sales of legacy products on the secondary market are subject to strict scrutiny and review. Trying to connect data centers with smuggled products is not a good idea, both technically and economically. Data centers are huge and complex systems, making any smuggling extremely difficult and risky, and we do not provide any support or repairs for restricted products.”
IN recent post, Raymond said he was hired as a CTO at another AI cloud computing company, Corvex. Corvex spokesman Anthony Steel, however, says Raymond is not employed by the company. “Corvex did not participate in the activities listed in the Department of Justice indictment,” Steel says Edge. “The person in question is not an employee of Corvex. He was previously a consultant for the company, he was transferred to an employee position, but this offer was withdrawn.”
Update, November 20: Added statement from Corvex.