Singapore charges fifth person in server fraud case linked to Nvidia chips

A fifth person was charged in Singapore on Friday, 13 November, in a fraud case involving servers that may have contained chips made by the US company Nvidia, The Straits Times reported. Shi Bingzhe, a 34-year-old Chinese national, faces 41 charges of acquiring the benefits of criminal conduct.

According to the charge sheets, Shi was a director of Superphi and chief operating officer of NJ Global Financial. Between May 2024 and February 2025 the two companies acquired 917 servers from Aperia International in 41 transactions, although police said they had reasonable grounds to believe the servers were benefits of criminal conduct. Superphi faces six charges and NJ Global Financial 35.

Electronic tag

Prosecutors offered Shi bail of S$300,000 and asked for him to be electronically tagged, which the judge granted. His lawyer argued against tagging, saying his client had been cooperating with investigators. If convicted, Shi could be jailed for up to 10 years, fined up to S$500,000, or both, for each charge.

Police said five people and six companies had now been charged in the case, which involves fraud by false representation in the purchase of servers. Those charged earlier include Aperia Group’s chief executive Alan Wei, its chief financial officer Jenny Lim, its head of sales Aaron Woon, and Li Ming, a controller at Luxuriate Your Life. In July four firms were charged over exporting servers to Malaysia.

How the case began

The case came to light after a US investigation into whether the Chinese start-up DeepSeek had got around US restrictions on advanced Nvidia chips by buying them through third parties in other countries, including Singapore. Police have barred the sale of a bungalow worth about S$55 million and seized about S$1 million from bank accounts. The cases of Shi and the two companies will be heard again on 4 January 2027.