Nvidia worker among 9 charged in Taiwan chip smuggling case

Filed 2d ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: shankar s. from Dubai, united arab emirates · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Nine people in Taiwan, including employees of Nvidia, Super Micro Computer, Albatron Technology and Chief Telecom, were charged Monday over the smuggling of 74 AI servers containing advanced Nvidia chips into China, according to the Keelung District Prosecutors Office.

Fifty of the servers were routed through Indonesia and eight through Japan to obscure their final destination, prosecutors said, while an additional 56 were intercepted at Taiwan's border before they could leave. Eight defendants face breach of trust and document forgery charges, and three also face embezzlement charges.

Notably, violating U.S. chip export restrictions is not itself a crime in Taiwan, so prosecutors built their case around trust and forgery statutes instead. Prosecutors are seeking up to five years for seven defendants they say acted for 'exorbitant profits,' with lighter treatment for two who cooperated. Nvidia and Super Micro did not respond to requests for comment.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A legal system that can only nail smugglers for lying on forms, not for the smuggling itself, is a legal system with a hole in it the size of 74 servers. Taiwan's lawmakers apparently know this and haven't fixed it, which is its own small comedy running alongside the big one.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Amazing Plan · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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