Authorities Indict Nine People Over Alleged Chip Smuggling Scheme
Taiwanese prosecutors have indicted nine people, including a senior manager at Nvidia’s Taiwan branch and two employees of Super Micro’s New Taipei office, over an alleged scheme to illegally export high-end AI servers loaded with restricted Nvidia chips to China.
The Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office said the scheme centred on 130 B300 servers ordered from Super Micro, with false end-user documents drawn up to make it appear the equipment would be installed and used at a rented facility in Taiwan. Of those 130 servers, 74 were successfully shipped to Chinese customers through a mix of routes — 50 sent through Indonesia, 16 delivered directly to China, and eight routed through Japan before reaching Hong Kong and eventually the mainland.
A separate attempt to move the remaining 56 servers, initially destined for a company in Japan, was foiled after Taiwanese customs officials detected irregularities; those units remain in Taiwan.
Prosecutors identified an Nvidia manager surnamed Chang as the central figure in the operation, describing him as the person responsible for authorising the release of the B300 GPUs at the heart of the case. He is among four defendants facing the maximum five-year sentence sought by prosecutors, who noted Chang had shown a poor attitude since the case came to light.
The nine defendants face charges including breach of trust and document forgery, with a ninth suspect charged separately over the alleged siphoning of more than $1 million from a distributor company tied to the scheme.
Prosecutors said the defendants were fully aware that both Nvidia and Super Micro maintain rigorous internal export-control procedures, but “colluded with one another at various levels for enormous profit,” adding that the scheme had increased corporate compliance costs and severely damaged Taiwan’s international image.
Super Micro confirmed in a statement that the arrests of its two former employees stemmed from the company’s own cooperation with Taiwanese authorities, adding that it would continue working to strengthen its export compliance programme.
Nvidia had not issued a public response at the time of the indictment.
Washington has barred the export of advanced AI chips to China without a licence since 2022, as part of a broader effort to slow Beijing’s access to cutting-edge computing power. Taiwan, home to the world’s largest producer of advanced semiconductors, has tightened its own export controls in recent years to prevent restricted technology and expertise from reaching Chinese firms, though enforcement gaps have continued to surface.
The case adds to a string of recent smuggling schemes uncovered across Southeast Asia, including an earlier case involving roughly $1 billion worth of server racks allegedly routed through Thailand and Malaysia to bypass US restrictions.
