A fifth person is charged in Singapore's Nvidia server case. The police release never mentions Nvidia.
Shi Bingzhe faces 41 charges over 917 servers. He's accused of receiving them, not of lying to Dell, Super Micro or Asus.
On November 13, Singapore charged a fifth person in its long-running AI server case, the one tied to suspected Nvidia chips: 41 charges, 917 servers, 41 transactions. The numbers line up one to one, and that’s the first thing worth noticing about the charge sheets.
The Singapore Police Force said a fifth individual, Shi Bingzhe, and two companies he ran had been charged with money laundering offences. Shi was a director of Superphi and chief operating officer of NJ Global Financial. Police say the two firms acquired 917 servers from Aperia International in 41 transactions between May 2024 and February 2025, while having reasonable grounds to believe the servers were benefits of Aperia’s criminal conduct, namely fraud by false representation.
That wording matters. Shi isn’t accused of lying to the server makers. He’s accused of buying from the company that, prosecutors say, did.
Who is charged with what
It began with servers bought from Dell, Super Micro Computer and Asustek. Per the police’s July account, reported by the Straits Times, Aperia’s executives allegedly told those suppliers that an Aperia company would be the end user. That is the alleged false representation. Singapore’s home affairs minister said in 2025 that the servers may have contained Nvidia chips, and prosecutors put the alleged transactions at about $390 million, as Bloomberg recounts.
| Defendant | Role, per police and press | Charged with |
|---|---|---|
| Alan Wei Zhaolun | Aperia Group chief executive | Fraud, money laundering |
| Jenny Lim | Aperia Group chief financial officer | Fraud, money laundering |
| Aaron Woon Guo Jie | Aperia head of sales | Fraud, money laundering |
| Li Ming | Controller, Luxuriate Your Life | Fraud, fraudulent trading |
| Shi Bingzhe | Superphi director, NJ Global COO | 41 counts of acquiring benefits of criminal conduct |
Six companies have now been charged as well. Superphi faces six charges and NJ Global 35, which adds up to Shi’s 41. Each count carries up to 10 years in jail or a fine of up to S$500,000 for him, and fines of up to S$1 million (or twice the benefit, whichever is higher) for the companies, according to the police.
Nobody has been convicted of anything.
Shi’s lawyer told the court, as The Star reported, that his client has cooperated with investigators.
What the release leaves out
The police statement never uses the word Nvidia. The release talks about servers and fraud by false representation, full stop. The chip link comes from earlier statements by the minister (“may have contained”) and from how Reuters and Bloomberg frame the case. So where a headline says “Nvidia chips case”, that’s shorthand for a suspicion, not a charge. Nothing public says which chips, if any, sat inside these 917 machines, or where they ended up.
Small facts don’t match across outlets either. Reuters called Shi Singaporean, while The Star, citing the Straits Times, called him a Chinese national. Reuters said the charge sheets were dated November 10; the police release says he was charged on November 13, and the Straits Times wrote November 12. I’d trust the police date and treat the nationality as unsettled until a court document says it plainly.
Why it landed on this day
Bloomberg put the story next to Jensen Huang’s resignation as Nvidia’s CEO a day earlier, and next to the US suspicion that Alice Huang, a former CEO of a Singapore firm, helped Chinese companies obtain Nvidia chips. I covered that memo in an earlier post, and Huang’s exit here. My read: Bloomberg’s pairing is timing on the page, not a finding. Nothing in the police release connects the Aperia case to Megaspeed or to anyone at Nvidia.
My read
My read: this charge is about the resale end of the chain, which is the hard part to police. Lying to a supplier about who will use a server is one offence. Knowingly buying 917 of them afterward is a different one, and Singapore has now gone after both. That’s a sign the investigators are following the servers, not just the paperwork.
I also think the money-laundering angle is quieter than it looks. Export-control cases usually stall on proving where hardware finally landed. A confiscation-of-benefits charge doesn’t need that answer, only that the buyer had reason to know the goods came from fraud. If the case keeps widening, expect more of these.
What to watch: Shi’s next court date, once his lawyers have taken instructions, and whether prosecutors ever put the word chips in a charge sheet.
Note on sources: the police release is the primary document. I read the Reuters, Bloomberg and Straits Times pieces as search excerpts, not full pages, so details that appear only there (the March 2025 $390 million figure, the bail hearing) are secondhand.
Sources
- Singapore Police Force: Fifth individual and two additional companies charged
- Reuters: Singapore charges fifth person in AI server fraud case
- Bloomberg via The Edge Malaysia: Singapore charges fifth person as Nvidia case expands
- The Star: Singapore court hands Chinese national 41 charges in relation to Nvidia chips case
- The Straits Times: Nvidia chips case, 4 firms charged with false representation
- The Straits Times: Man handed 41 charges in relation to Nvidia chips case