According to multiple reports, Yih-Shyan 'Wally' Liaw, 71, a U.S. citizen and senior vice president and board member of Super Micro Computer, was arrested in California Thursday. Ting-Wei 'Willy' Sun, 44, a company contractor, was also arrested, while Ruei-Tsang 'Steven' Chang, a sales manager for the company in Taiwan, remains a fugitive. Liaw was released on bail, while Sun was held for a bail hearing Friday.
The indictment alleges that Liaw and Chang directed executives of a company in Southeast Asia to place orders for $2.5 billion worth of servers from Super Micro Computer between 2024 and 2025. At least $510 million worth of those servers were diverted to China after assembly in the United States. FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle Jr. said the defendants used fabricated documents, staged bogus equipment to pass audit inventories, and utilized a pass-through company to conceal their misconduct. According to a single report, the servers, equipped with sought-after graphics processors from Nvidia, were formally sold to the Southeast Asian company but in practice sent on to China. The setup is described as systematic and sophisticated.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said schemes such as this pose a direct threat to U.S. national security. The smuggling operation is alleged to have involved advanced AI servers in violation of U.S. export controls, according to the indictment. The deal reportedly caused Super Micro's stock to fall sharply in after-hours trading. The identity of the Southeast Asian company used as an intermediary has not been disclosed.
In a separate case, two Chinese nationals face charges in the U.S. for managing a compound in Myanmar where workers were forced to participate in cryptocurrency investment fraud scams. The suspects, Huang Xing Shan and Jiang Wen Jie, are charged with wire fraud conspiracy. The Shunda Park compound in the village of Min Let Pan was seized in November 2025 by armed forces in Myanmar. Both suspects are in government custody in Thailand for illegally entering that country. They had relocated to another scam compound in Cambodia but were arrested by Thai authorities on immigration charges earlier this year.
FBI agents reviewed thousands of electronic devices found at the Shunda compound and interviewed some of its former workers. Scammers posed as law-enforcement or bank officials and used fraudulent websites to defraud victims across the globe by duping them into sending cryptocurrency. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said the type of scam perpetrated at the Shunda compound is among the fastest-growing and most financially devastating forms of cybercrime, costing Americans billions of dollars in losses. Compound workers told the FBI that they were held against their will and forced to participate in the scams under threat of violence. Pirro announced that authorities have taken down hundreds of scam-related websites and seized a Telegram channel used to recruit human trafficking victims to a compound in Cambodia. The number of victims and total financial loss from the Shunda compound scam remain unknown.