The US crackdown on chip exports to China has continued with the arrests of four people accused of a conspiracy to illegally export Nvidia chips. Two US citizens and two nationals of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all of whom live in the US, were charged in an indictment unsealed on Wednesday in US District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
The indictment alleges a scheme to send Nvidia “GPUs to China by falsifying paperwork, creating fake contracts, and misleading US authorities,” John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a press release yesterday.
The four arrestees are Hon Ning Ho (aka Mathew Ho), a US citizen who was born in Hong Kong and lives in Tampa, Florida; Brian Curtis Raymond, a US citizen who lives in Huntsville, Alabama; Cham Li (aka Tony Li), a PRC national who lives in San Leandro, California; and Jing Chen (aka Harry Chen), a PRC national who lives in Tampa on an F-1 non-immigrant student visa.
The suspects face a raft of charges for conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, smuggling, and money laundering. They could serve many decades in prison if convicted and given the maximum sentences and forfeit their financial gains. The indictment says that Chinese companies paid the conspirators nearly $3.9 million.
Suspect was CTO of an AI company
Raymond was briefly the chief technology officer of the Virginia-based Corvex, which describes itself as an AI cloud computing company and is planning to go public. Corvex listed Raymond as its CTO and part of its leadership team in a press release on November 10.
Corvex told CNBC yesterday that it “had no part in the activities cited in the Department of Justice’s indictment,” and that “the person in question is not an employee of Corvex. Previously a consultant to the company, he was transitioning into an employee role but that offer has been rescinded.”
The indictment comes amid debate over Chip Security Act legislation that would require exported chips to be built with “location verification” technology. Nvidia Chief Security Officer David Reber Jr. has warned that requiring so-called kill switches or backdoors in its chips would be an overreaction and “a gift to hackers and hostile actors” who could take advantage of “a permanent flaw beyond user control.”
US Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), who is chair of the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and a sponsor of the Chip Security Act, used the occasion of the arrests to call for passage of the bill. “China recognizes the superiority of American AI innovation and will do whatever it must to catch up,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “That’s why the bipartisan Chip Security Act is urgently needed.”
400 GPUs sent before scheme thwarted
The Justice Department said the conspiracy consisted of four attempted exports, of which two were completed. The first and second exports sent 400 Nvidia A100 GPUs to China between October 2024 and January 2025. Exports were allegedly sent to either Malaysia or Thailand before reaching China.
“The third and fourth exports to the PRC were disrupted by law enforcement and therefore not completed,” the Justice Department said. “These attempted exports related to ten Hewlett Packard Enterprises supercomputers containing Nvidia H100 GPUs and 50 separate Nvidia H200 GPUs.”
Citing export controls that took effect in 2022, the indictment said the US is trying to disrupt China’s plan to build exascale supercomputers for military and surveillance use. “These capabilities are being used by the PRC for its military modernization efforts and in connection with the PRC’s weapons design and testing, including for weapons of mass destruction, as well as in connection with the PRC’s development and deployment of advanced AI surveillance tools,” the indictment said.
The Justice Department said the conspirators used Janford Realtor, LLC, a Florida-based company that was not involved in real estate despite its name, “as a front to purchase and then illegally export controlled GPUs to the PRC.” Ho and Li owned and controlled Janford Realtor, while Raymond operated an Alabama-based electronics company that “supplied Nvidia GPUs to Ho and others for illegal export to the PRC,” the Justice Department said.
Kickbacks, money laundering
The conspirators paid each other “kickbacks” or commissions on the sale and export of the Nvidia chips, the indictment said. The money laundering charges involve a variety of transfers from two Chinese companies to Janford Realtor and the Alabama electronics company, the indictment said. The indictment lists nine wire transfers in amounts ranging from $237,248 to $1,150,000.
Raymond was reportedly released on bond, while the other three alleged conspirators are being detained. “This is an extremely serious offense. At the time these were being exported, these were Nvidia’s most advanced chips,” US prosecutor Noah Stern told a magistrate judge in Oakland, California, yesterday, according to Wired.
Stein also said in court that “text messages obtained by authorities show Li boasting about how his father ‘had engaged in similar business on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party,'” Wired reported. Stern said that in the messages, Li “explained that his father had ways to import” the Nvidia chips despite US export controls.
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