Feds charge 3 linked to Supermicro in $2.5 billion AI export scheme
Federal prosecutors charged three men linked to Super Micro Computer Inc. in a scheme to divert $2.5 billion worth of U.S. artificial intelligence servers to China, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said.
Prosecutors said Yih-Shyan Liaw, 71, a U.S. citizen, and Ting-Wei Sun, 44, of Taiwan, were arrested Thursday. Ruei-Tsang Chang, 53, of Taiwan, remains at large, prosecutors said. The indictment alleges the defendants diverted $2.5 billion in servers, including about $510 million in a few weeks in 2025.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in a statement that the indictment “details alleged efforts to evade U.S. export laws through false documents, staged dummy servers to mislead inspectors, and convoluted transshipment schemes” aimed at hiding the true destination of restricted technology. “These chips are the product of American ingenuity, and NSD will continue to enforce our export-control laws to protect that advantage,” he said.
Supermicro said it was informed by the Southern District of New York that three individuals associated with the company had been indicted and that the company is not named as a defendant. The company identified Liaw as a co-founder, senior vice president of business development and board member, Chang as a sales manager in Taiwan and Sun as a contractor. Supermicro said it placed the two employees on administrative leave and ended its relationship with the contractor, adding that the alleged conduct “violates the company’s policies and efforts to comply with export control laws.”
The indictment alleges Liaw and Chang directed a Southeast Asia-based company to place orders with a U.S. manufacturer for servers with specific GPUs, then repackaged and shipped the equipment to China. Prosecutors said the defendants staged thousands of nonworking “dummy” servers to fool compliance inspections, used surveillance footage shows them preparing the replicas, and that they allegedly removed and reapplied labels and serial numbers ahead of a Commerce Department inspection. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton called the scheme a “systematic” effort to divert servers that posed a threat to national security. Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said controlling exports of sensitive AI technology “is essential to safeguarding our national security and defending the homeland.”
Prosecutors charged the defendants with conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, and with conspiracy to smuggle goods and conspiracy to defraud the United States, each carrying up to five years, according to the indictment.
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