Singapore police bust major ring smuggling Nvidia GPUs to China-based DeepSeek: Report

Nvidia Hopper H100 GPU and DGX systems
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Singapore Police Force have charged three men with fraud in a case involving allegedly illegal re-export of Nvidia GPUs to Chinese AI company DeepSeek, bypassing U.S. trade restrictions, reports ChannelNewsAsia. The police and customs authorities raided 22 locations, arrested nine individuals, and seized documents and electronic records, reports Reuters.

When Singapore suddenly became Nvidia's second largest geographical source of revenue in 2024, many suspected that this happened because Nvidia's GPUs were illegally re-exported from Singapore to China. Nvidia denied all accusations saying that billing locations do not represent actual destination of GPUs. Still, the U.S. Commerce Department started investigation whether DeepSeek has acquired restricted American GPUs to train its AI models.

"Customers use Singapore to centralize invoicing while our products are almost always shipped elsewhere," a statement by Nvidia reads. "Shipments to Singapore were less than 2% of fiscal year 2025 total revenue."

(Image credit: Nvidia)

However, it looks like the problem with smuggling high-performance Nvidia GPUs from Singapore to China exists and intermediaries in Singapore helped smuggle Nvidia GPUs for AI and HPC to China in violation of U.S. export laws.

The accused include Singaporeans Aaron Woon Guo Jie, 41, and Alan Wei Zhaolun, 49. Prosecutors allege that in 2024, they conspired to deceive a server supplier by falsely claiming the equipment would not be resold to unauthorized parties. A third suspect, Li Ming, 51, a Chinese national, faces separate charges related to a similar scheme in 2023. Authorities claim he misrepresented the intended recipient of hardware, stating it was meant for a Singapore-based company, Luxuriate Your Life.

If convicted, the suspects could face up to 20 years in prison, fines, or both. Authorities have not disclosed details about other arrested individuals or whether additional charges will be filed.

While the arrests clearly indicate the involvement of Singapore-based groups in smuggling restricted high-performance Nvidia GPUs to China, the extent of their operations are yet to be determined. Companies like DeepSeek need tens of thousands of Nvidia Hopper GPUs (H100, H20, H800) to train its large-language models. However, smaller research institutions run smaller clusters containing tens or hundreds of such processors.

Last week Singapore's government emphasized that while it is not legally bound to enforce unilateral export restrictions imposed by other nations, it expects businesses operating within its borders to comply with such regulations where applicable. Authorities have reiterated that the country does not tolerate attempts to exploit its trade networks to circumvent international controls.

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • Misgar
    "If convicted, the suspects could face up to 20 years in prison, fines, or both."

    That's longer than you get for murder in some jurisdictions.

    https://www.flamingotravels.co.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Singapore-chewing-gum.jpg
    Reply
  • 3en88
    Humiliation after humiliation for the CCP regime. Already setting the theme for China's next century.
    Reply
  • phead128
    China is swimming in smuggled H100s, they have enough to last a long time. With the complete bust of GPT 4.5 exposing the diminishing return on more compute, China should have enough Nvidia chips for a long time.
    Reply
  • djfktrlx
    Any source that those GPUs are for DeepSeek? I have read the origin post from CNA and it did not mention that.
    Reply