Technology

Supermicro employees accused of smuggling $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia hardware to China — perps used a hairdryer to move serial numbers between real hardware and thousands of dummy servers

Source

Tom's Hardware

Published

Mar 20, 2026

TL;DR

AI Generated

Three Super Micro employees are accused of smuggling advanced U.S. AI technology worth $2.5 billion to China using a middleman company to fake paperwork and swap Nvidia-powered servers with dummy ones. The indicted trio includes a Super Micro co-founder and a sales manager, with one currently a fugitive. The operation involved using hair dryers to move serial numbers and fabricating paperwork to deceive inspectors. Super Micro and Nvidia have distanced themselves from the accused, emphasizing compliance with export laws. The employees face serious federal charges that could result in lengthy prison sentences and fines.

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Supermicro employees accused of smuggling $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia hardware to China — perps used a hairdryer to move serial numbers between real hardware and thousands of dummy servers

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Supermicro employees accused of smuggling $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia hardware to China — perps used a hairdryer to move serial numbers between real hardware and thousands of dummy servers

TL;DR

Similar Articles

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Amazon employees admit to using AI unnecessarily to pump up internal usage scores — workers complain of intense pressure to use AI tools

Compromised Mistral AI and TanStack packages may have exposed GitHub, cloud and CI/CD credentials in 'mini Shai Hulud' malware infection — supply-chain campaign spreads across npm and AI developer ecosystems like wildfire

Dell SupportAssist update is crashing PCs with constant blue screens and reboot loops — the boot service built for system recovery is the culprit of unending instability