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super microcomputer Co-founder Yishan “Wally” Liau announced that he has resigned from the server maker’s board of directors after being indicted in the United States on suspicion of smuggling equipment including: Nvidia Artificial intelligence will be introduced to China.
A federal court sealed the indictment on Thursday. The companies were not named, but Liau, Supermicro’s senior vice president of business development, was named, along with sales manager Luei Tsang “Steven” Chan and contractor Tingwei “Willy” Sun. Super Micro announced that it has placed Liaw and Chang on administrative leave and ceased business with Sun.
“Following Mr. Liau’s resignation, our board of directors will now consist of eight directors,” Supermicro said in a press release late Friday. “There are no changes to the composition of the board of directors.”
Supermicro shares plunged 33% in regular trading following the indictment.
The company announced in a statement late Friday that it had named DeAnna Luna, an executive who joined the company in 2018. intel He will be appointed as Acting Chief Compliance Officer in 2024. According to his LinkedIn profile, Luna is vice president of global trade and sanctions compliance.
According to the indictment, a Southeast Asian company acted as an intermediary and created false documents to appear as if it were using a server. Before going to China, I had another logistics company repackage and hide the server.
According to the indictment, the defendants attempted to deceive the server company’s compliance team with “dummy” servers located at the company’s storage facilities in Southeast Asia, but the real servers had already been transferred to China. They allegedly pressured compliance teams to approve shipments and also used “dummy” servers during visits by U.S. export control officials.
The effort generated about $2.5 billion in sales for the server maker starting in 2024, with servers sold for $510 million between late April 2025 and mid-May 2025 going to the company in Southeast Asia and to China, the indictment says. The plaintiffs said the server maker did not have permission from the U.S. Department of Commerce to export servers equipped with Nvidia GPUs to China.
Liau made his first court appearance Thursday in the Northern District of California and was released on unsecured bail, with a bail hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Sun’s first hearing was held on Friday. His detention hearing is scheduled for Monday afternoon.
—CNBC’s Claudia Johnson contributed to this report.
Attention: Prosecutors indict Super Micro executives
