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Four men have been indicted on federal criminal charges related to a plot to export Nvidia chips worth millions of dollars to China and Hong Kong in violation of tight U.S. restrictions, court documents show.
The chips are highly restricted from exports because of their use in artificial intelligence and supercomputing applications, according to the indictment unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Florida.
One of the defendants, Brian Curtis Raymond, a 46-year-old resident of Huntsville, Alabama, was identified last week as the chief technology officer of an artificial intelligence cloud company in Virginia that announced plans for a merger that would allow its stock to be publicly traded.
That company is not implicated in the case, and told CNBC that his job offer has been rescinded.
Raymond and the other three defendants, all of whom were born in China or Hong Kong, are charged with conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 in connection with the export and attempted export of the Nvidia chips to end users in China and Hong Kong, after first shipping the chips to Malaysia and Thailand.
The defendants had not obtained a license or authorization for such exports from the Commerce Department, according to the indictment.
The indictment was first reported by CourtWatch, the court document aggregation news site founded by counterrorism researcher Seamus Hughes.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, which is prosecuting the case, said that 400 Nvidia A100 chips were exported to China as part of the scheme from October 2024 and January in two separate shipments.
“The third and fourth exports to [China] were disrupted by law enforcement and therefore not completed,” the office said. “These attempted exports related to ten Hewlett Packard Enterprises supercomputers containing NVIDIA H100 GPUs and 50 separate NVIDIA H200 GPUs.”
The indictment notes that China “is rapidly developing exascale supercomputing capabilities and has announced its intent to be the world leader in AI by 2030.”
“These capabilities are being used by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] for its military modernization efforts and in connection with the PRC’s weapons design and testing, including for weapons or mass destruction,” the indictment says.
Raymond owned a technology products distributor company in Huntsville, which was “licensed to sell Nvidia GPUs [graphics processing units], among other products,” the indictment says.
Raymond’s LinkedIn page says his company, Bitworks, is or was a “Nvidia Cloud Partner delivering H100, H200, and coming Blackwell / NVL72 clusters for customers.”
Raymond and another co-defendant in the case, Mathew Ho, would “cause freight forwarded to chip Nvidia GPUs to third countries, knowing that the GPUs were ultimately destined for and would be transhipped to the” People’s Republic of China, the indictment alleges.
Ho, a 34-year-old who was born in Hong Kong, is a U.S. citizen who lives in Florida. He is also known as Hon Ning Ho.
Ho was the registered agent of a company in Tampa called Janford Realtor, which, despite its name, was never involved in any real estate transactions, but instead “served as an intermediary for several unlawful and unlicensed exports to” China of the advanced and highly-controlled chips, the indictment says.
As part of the alleged conspiracy, Ho and Raymond would submit documents related to the shipments that contained false information about the ultimate cosignors for the chips, the value of the chips and the licenses required for their export, the indictment says.
Raymond was arrested on Wednesday and later appeared in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. His wife declined to comment.
Raymond’s lawyer, Tae Lee, declined to comment on the charges.
On Nov. 10, three days before the indictment was filed in Tampa, Raymond was identified in a press release issued by Corvex, an Arlington, Virginia-based AI cloud company, as its chief technology officer.
The press release said Corvex and Movano Health, a publicly traded company that sells medical wearables, had agreed to a merger that would enable Corvex to become publicly traded.
A Corvex spokesperson, in a statement to CNBC after being asked about Raymond, said, “Corvex had no part in the activities cited in the Department of Justice’s indictment.”
“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 spokesperson said
In addition to the top count of conspiracy, Raymond is charged with two counts of violations of the Export Control Reform Act in connection with an attempt to export 50 Nvidia H200 GPUs to China through Thailand earlier this year, and the attempted export of about 10 HP supercomputers containing Nvidia H100 GPUs to China through Thailand earlier this year.
He is also charged with one count of smuggling goods from the United States related to the attempted export of the 50 Nvidia H200 chips.
Raymond is also charged with seven counts of money laundering related to wire transfers totaling more than $3.4 million from a bank account for a company in China to a bank account belonging to Raymond’s company in Huntsville, and to Janford Realtor.
Ho and the two other defendants in the case, Jing Chen and Cham Li, were all arrested in recent days, according to court documents.
Those three men, as part of the alleged conspiracy, would identify customers in China who wanted to buy the Nvidia chips, the indictment says.
Ho and Chen, a 45-year-old also known as Harry Chen, were arrested in Tampa. They are being held without bail.
In addition to the conspiracy count, Ho is charged with nine money laundering counts in connection with $4 million in wire transfers from the bank account for the Chinese company to Janford Realtor and to Raymond’s company.
He is also charged with four counts of violating the Export Control Reform Act, and three counts of smuggling.
Ho’s lawyer, Samuel Williams, declined to comment on the case.
Chen is a Chinese national who entered the U.S. on a student visa and who resides in Tampa.
He is charged with conspiracy, one count of violating the ECRA, and one count of smuggling.
Information about Chen’s lawyer was not publicly available.
Li, a 38-year-old also known as Tony Li, was arrested in California and was due to appear in Oakland federal court on Thursday. Information about Li’s lawyer was not available.
A Chinese national who lives in California, Li was identified as a manager of Janford Realtor, according to the indictment.
He is charged with a single count each of conspiracy, violating the ECRA and smuggling.
All four defendants face a possible maximum sentence if convicted of 20 years in prison.
— CNBC’s Samantha Subin contributed to this story.
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