Federal prosecutors say an organization co-founder, a Taiwan-based supervisor, and a contractor often called a “fixer” orchestrated an elaborate plot to sneak cutting-edge American expertise to Chinese clients.
New York federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment Thursday charging three males tied to Super Micro Computer with conspiring to illegally ship billions of {dollars}’ price of AI-powered servers to China, in violation of strict US export controls.
The accused are Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, 71, Super Micro’s co-founder and board member; Ruei-Tsang “Steven” Chang, 53, a gross sales supervisor on the firm’s Taiwan workplace; and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun, 44, an out of doors contractor described by prosecutors as a “fixer.” Liaw, a US citizen, and Sun, a Taiwanese nationwide, have been arrested on Thursday and appeared in federal courtroom in San Jose. Chang stays a fugitive.
Together, the three face prices of conspiring to violate the Export Control Reform Act, which carries as much as 20 years in jail; conspiring to smuggle items from the US; and conspiring to defraud the US authorities, every punishable by as much as 5 years in jail.
How the alleged scheme labored
According to the indictment, the scheme relied on an organization based mostly in Southeast Asia, recognized solely as “Company-1,” that acted as a entrance.
Liaw and Chang directed Company-1 executives to put buy orders with Super Micro for high-performance servers geared up with superior Nvidia GPUs, servers that would not legally be bought to China with no US Department of Commerce license.
The servers, typically assembled within the US, have been first shipped to Super Micro’s amenities in Taiwan after which delivered to Company-1 in Southeast Asia. From there, a logistics agency eliminated their unique packaging, positioned them in unmarked packing containers, and routed them to their remaining locations in China.
Between 2024 and 2025, Company-1 bought roughly $2.5 billion in servers beneath this association. In a three-week window between late April and mid-May 2025, roughly $510 million in servers, together with these geared up with Nvidia’s newest B200 and H200 chips, have been diverted to China.
To cowl their tracks, the defendants and their co-conspirators used encrypted messaging apps to coordinate cargo volumes, remaining locations in China, and methods to maintain Super Micro’s compliance staff at the hours of darkness.
The ghost servers and hair dryers
When Super Micro’s compliance staff deliberate an inspection, the defendants allegedly staged 1000’s of “dummy” servers: non-working, bodily replicas of the true merchandise. These have been positioned in warehouses the place Company-1 was supposedly storing the servers it had bought. The precise servers, prosecutors say, had already been unlawfully shipped to China.
But the deception didn’t cease there.
When US Department of Commerce officers deliberate their very own inspection of Company-1’s purchases, the defendants allegedly ready the dummy servers as soon as once more. According to the indictment, surveillance cameras captured Sun and an unnamed dealer utilizing a hair dryer to fastidiously take away labels and serial-number stickers from real server packing containers and dummy servers, then reattach them, making the fakes seem genuine.
Company response
Super Micro Computer, based mostly in San Jose, California, issued a press release Thursday emphasizing that the corporate just isn’t named as a defendant within the indictment.
“Supermicro was knowledgeable immediately that the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has unsealed an indictment of three people…
