A group of retailers tried to scam gamers by selling old graphics cards as new. Now they have been picked up by the police.
The high depreciation of cryptocurrencies in China caused thousands of miners to try desperately to sell their graphics cards.
A group of scammers took the opportunity and bought their used graphics cards from the miners to later sell them as “new”. These people did it so skillfully that most buyers hardly noticed that they had bought a used graphics card.
Graphics cards worth around 2 million euros were found
Now the police in China have arrested 7 people who sold such old graphics cards as brand new. As VideoCardz reports, a group in China had professionalized their business of selling old graphics cards to people as new.
They have now been tracked down after a year-long investigation by police in the Bincheng District of Binzhou City. The police found numerous mining cases without their graphics card in a warehouse.
Only seven of the 22 people involved in the scam have been arrested and are now facing trial. The counterfeit cards were estimated to be worth over $2 million.
Used graphics cards can be recognized with a keen eye
How do you recognize such a graphics card? YouTuber Iskandar Souza has already provided a few tips. When buying a graphics card, pay attention to the color of the memory. If the graphics card has been used for a longer period of time, the memory will turn yellow. The YouTuber explains that the memory is black on new cards and then slowly discolours.
To hide exactly this, miners color the graphics cards black – this way you can hide the yellowish tone of the memory. But there are also other signs of a used graphics card:
Re-soldering memory to a new circuit board is a common practice in graphics card repair and refurbishment. In this case, however, the retailer often lists the product as ‘Refurbished’ or ‘Refurbished’ rather than ‘New’.
Because in Germany, used items must also be declared as used. Products such as graphics cards are considered new only if they have not been used, installed and made from new materials.
You can read more about the unfair tricks of miners in the following article:
Miners are desperately selling off their used Nvidia graphics cards – using unfair tricks to get you to buy the old GPUs