Nine indicted by Taiwan over illegal export of Nvidia B300 GPUs to China — details reveal five-point strategy to exploit and avoid customs controls

Just days after Supermicro revealed it had terminated several employees following an internal investigation into U.S. smuggling, nine people have been indicted by Taiwan's Keelung District Prosecutors' Office in the ongoing investigation into the illegal smuggling of Nvidia B300 GPUs to China. According to a new report from Digitimes, details of the indictment reveal an intricate five-step scheme designed to subvert various export restrictions.

According to the report, the indictment sets out how "a compliance regime designed to track every unit was defeated from the inside," thanks to a scheme setup to run through five different points in the supply chain.

Per the report, Supermicro's Taiwan subsidiary only sells its B300 systems to whitelisted buyers, who must sign an end-user agreement promising they won't re-export or sell the GPUs to sanctioned parties, such as customers in China. Order enough servers — eight units or more — and an on-site inspection led by representatives from both companies is triggered.

To that end, Taiwanese server trading firm Flying Tiger Tech reportedly obtained whitelist status and then placed a 130-unit order, declaring that it was the end user for the servers, which would be installed in Taiwan. That order was placed on behalf of Flying Tiger by a listed Supermicro distributor, Albatron Technology. Per the report, this "kept Supermicro from ever examining where Flying Tiger's money came from," because Albatron is listed on the Taiwan stock exchange and is a listed Supermicro distributor, presumably not raising too many flags.

The report says that, in order to pass the inspection, Flying Tiger leased colocation space from Chief Telecom, another TPEx-listed firm, but presented a quotation instead of an actual lease. Inspectors of the site in September 2025 reportedly found the site operational, but crucially incapable of running the 130 B300 servers the firm had asked for. Despite not having the racks, power, or bandwidth for that kind of hardware, no one spoke up.

The report then turns to a group it dubs "The insiders," likely the nefarious parties working inside the various points of the supply chain to help push through the transaction. One such individual listed is a sales manager at Nvidia Taiwan who "pushed the quota through," emailing headquarters to state the inspection was complete. A senior sales manager at Supermicro's Taiwan subsidiary had reportedly coached Flying Tiger through the review process, possibly revealing how its Chief Telecom lease passed muster on inspection. A second Supermicro manager reportedly caught wind of where the servers were really ending up, but was cut in on the commissions rather than speaking up.

All of this meant that Supermicro ultimately approved the sale of the 130 B300 units in three tranches of 2, 64, and 64. Of the first 74 units, sixteen were sent directly to China in January 2026. A further fifty were sent to Indonesia and then transshipped to China. Eight reportedly went to a Japanese entity controlled by the defendants, before going to Hong Kong and then China. This set of shipments was said to be worth $21.21 million in profit.

The scheme was given up shortly after 56 units were declared to Japan and flagged by customers, who demanded a "strategic high-tech commodities export permit." The defendants in the case filed for one, including fake mockups of Supermicro's website created by splicing together real parts of the site. Once word of the scheme came to light, the servers were not allowed to leave the country.

According to prosecutors, investigations have also uncovered a second scheme cooked up by the GM of Albatron, a manager from Supermicro, and the head of a small electronics firm, which billed Albatron $39 million Taiwanese dollars for installation work that was never carried out, splitting the money with the other perps. The head of the latter firm reportedly turned himself in, confessing alongside Albatron's GM and naming other participants in the scheme in exchange for leniency. Despite this, they reportedly still face up to five years on counts of export and six years for looting.

As per above, Supermicro has announced the findings of its own investigation in a US smuggling scheme, claiming that senior management had no knowledge of the matter and no evidence that controlled products were sold to banned entities.

As the report notes, this latest Taiwan sales channel was uncovered by Taiwanese prosecutors, rather than Supermicro's audit.