The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday accused a group of four individuals led by an Alabama entrepreneur of illegally shipping restricted high-performance Nvidia GPUs and HP supercomputers to China. The alleged transactions — which included buying restricted hardware from official channels and then smuggling it to China using various schemes — spanned several years and reached roughly $3.89 million in total value. The defendants now face up to 200 years in prison.

The operation was led by Brian Curtis Raymond, founder of Bitworks, a Huntsville, Alabama-based AI hardware distributor that sells products from AMD, Nvidia, PNY, and Sapphire, among others. Bitworks legally acquired restricted hardware — including Nvidia A100, H100, and H200 accelerators for AI and HPC workloads and 10 HPE supercomputers — and then sold it to Tampa, Florida-based Janford Realtor, which was controlled by Hon Ning 'Mathew' Ho, a U.S. citizen born in Hong Kong.

Janford Realtor then organized illegal exports of restricted GPUs and other hardware to China through Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand. According to the accusations, Hon Ning Ho would submit or direct false paperwork, fake contracts, and fraudulent export declarations; Cham Li would route actual shipments through Malaysia and Thailand (bypassing U.S. export controls); and Jing Chen would arrange China-side reception and payments. Proceeds for restricted hardware would be wired to Janford Realtor, which would launder the money for Bitworks.

The operation ran from September 2023 to November 2025 after the U.S. government imposed export controls on A100, H100, and more advanced GPUs. The conspirators have successfully smuggled 400 A100 GPUs to China between October 2024 and January 2025, and then attempted to export an additional 10 HPE supercomputers containing H100 GPUs and 50 standalone H200 GPUs to China, but failed as law enforcement intervened.

The DOJ states that the group had received over $3.89 million in wire transfers from China to fund the purchase and illegal export of these GPUs. The money flow, combined with false contracts, falsified shipping paperwork, and deceptive routing, is now used to form the basis for the conspiracy and money-laundering charges.

$3.89 million in wire transfers from China over a little more than two years is hardly a considerable sum given the context of the AI hardware market, where AI accelerators retail for $20,000 - $50,000 a unit. Last year, the DOJ began investigating Supermicro for shipments of restricted hardware to China and Russia that bypassed U.S. export controls . Just two episodes of alleged shipments to Russia through Turkey and Hong Kong were valued at $76.3 million. Given the scale of Supermicro — which earned $21.053 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year — the potential violations could be very significant. That probe is still ongoing.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News , or add us as a preferred source , to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.