Tampa men charged with smuggling AI technology to China

Two Chinese nationals and two U.S. citizens have been arrested for allegedly illegally exporting cutting-edge artificial intelligence applications from their Tampa operations to the People’s Republic of China. 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida announced the arrests on Friday in a release that states the four men have been charged with conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, smuggling and conspiracy to commit money laundering after illegally exporting NVIDIA graphics processing units to the Communist government in China. That sophisticated computer equipment possesses advanced artificial intelligence capabilities and is often used by the military for surveillance, cybersecurity and communications and deployment systems, the release states. 

Those arrested include Hon Ning “Matthew” Ho, 34, Brian Curtis Raymond, 46, Cham “Tony” Li, 38, and Jing “Harry” Chen, 45. 

Ho and Chen were arrested in Tampa Nov. 19 and appeared in court in the Middle District of Florida, while Raymond was arrested in Huntsville, Alabama and Li was arrested in San Leandro, California Nov. 21. Ho and Raymond are U.S. citizens, the release states, while Li was identified as a PRC national and Chen a PRC national staying in the U.S. on a F-1 nonimmigrant student visa. 

If convicted, the men could face up to 20 years in prison for each charge of money laundering and violating the Export Control Reform Act, and up to 10 years in prison for each smuggling charge.

According to the indictment, the PRC “seeks to become the world leader in AI by 2030 and seeks to use AI for its military modernization efforts and in connection with the design and testing of weapons of mass destruction and deployment of advanced AI surveillance tools.” 

In response, the U.S. Department of Commerce implemented new license requirements in 2022 for exporting these technologies, which include NVIDIA GPUs, to the PRC. 

Authorities allege that from September 2023 to November 2025, Ho, Raymons, Li and Chen conspired to violate those U.S. export restrictions by illegally sending the advanced AI GPUs to China by way of Malaysia and Thailand. Instead of acquiring the proper licensing required for Chinese shipments, the men attempted to evade U.S. export controls by lying about their packages’ final destinations, officials contend.

Federal investigators have also accused the men of receiving more than $3.89 million in wire transfers from the PRC to fund the operation. 

The four men allegedly used an entity called Janford Realtor LLC, a Tampa-based company owned by Ho and Li, as a front to purchase the computer equipment from Raymond, who owned an electronics company in Alabama, prosecutors say. Despite its name, federal investigators say Janford Realty has never conducted a real estate transaction, the release states. 

The men attempted to make four large shipments to the PRC over the course of the operations, the indictment states. The first and second exports resulted in 400 NVIDIA A100 GPUs successfully being shipped to the PRC sometime between October 2024 and January 2025. The third and fourth shipments, which contained ten Hewlett Packard Enterprises supercomputers equipped with NVIDIA H100 GPUs and 50 individual NVIDIA H200 GPUs, were intercepted by law enforcement officials, the release states. 

“As demonstrated by this indictment, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida is firmly committed to safeguarding our country’s national security,” U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida Gregory Kehoe says in the release. 

This case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the Department of Commerce — Bureau of Industry and Security. It will be prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph K. Ruddy and Lindsey N. Schmidt from the Middle District of Florida, as well as Trial Attorney Menno Goedman of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control section.