Three people have been indicted with conspiring to commit smuggling and export control violations after it was revealed that they intended to order over $170 million worth of computer servers containing export-controlled chips made by a California-based company. According to the Department of Justice, Stanley Yi Zheng, Matthew Kelly, and Tommy Shad English worked together in an attempt to purchase more than 1,000 servers from an American manufacturer that contained said AI chips. Zheng is a 56-year-old from Hong Kong, China, while Kelly, 49, and English, 53, are both based in the U.S. Zheng was arrested on March 22, 2026, while the two other co-conspirators surrendered to federal authorities three days later. The revelation follows a report last week where Super Micro employees were charged with smuggling $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia hardware to China.
English first tried to purchase 750 servers, worth about $170 million, in October 2023 from the said server manufacturer (dubbed Company-1 in the case), of which 600 contained controlled chips. He was supposedly making the purchase on behalf of a Thailand-based company and even signed an “Advanced Computing Certification” noting that the units were not heading for China or any other country sanctioned by the United States. After transferring $20 million to Company-1 as partial payment for the order, English asked to include Zheng and Kelly in the email thread.
