By Amanda Gerut
Publication Date: 2026-05-13 08:13:00
In March 2024, Matthew Kelly, a 49-year-old marketing executive from New York, allegedly texted his business partner Stanley Yi Zheng what looked to be a draft pitch to drum up new clients.
In the message, sent on Chinese messaging app WeChat, Kelly allegedly wrote he was looking for partners willing to help move Nvidia GPUs to buyers in China, which the U.S. government had banned from receiving the cutting-edge chips. Kelly wrote business was “lucrative” right now, with millions in profits to be made per order. He wanted people who could either find buyers who needed Nvidia chips for “AI, cloud, bit mining etc.” or who could find customers in China to act as a fake front company, according to court records.
A quick 28 minutes later, Zheng allegedly replied: “DO NOT MENTION ANYTHING ABOUT CHINA.”
Delete those lines, Zheng messaged, according to screenshots of their text exchanges in court records. All references to China needed to be struck because, Zheng wrote, “We will draw attention from US government for embargo [sic] violation.”
Kelly wrote back that they had already shared these details with other people. Zheng responded, “We just talk about it, no one can hold it as evidence against us.”
That exchange and more than a dozen others landed in court records alleging Zheng, Kelly, and a third co-conspirator, Tommy Shad English, 53, of Atlanta, conspired to commit smuggling and export control violations in March 2026. The U.S….
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