In China, people regularly try to smuggle hardware across the border. Again someone has been caught trying to smuggle 306 processors.
In China, a user was arrested who wanted to smuggle hardware components across the border. The current case involves a total of 306 processors that he hid in order to smuggle them past customs. This isn’t the first case of smuggled processors in China.
306 processors were located all over the smuggler’s body
How was he arrested? On June 29, the man was arrested trying to cross into mainland China from Macau (via tomshardware.com). Customs officials who observed travelers entering the country thought the man “walked in an abnormal posture”.
During the subsequent search, officers discovered 306 processors wrapped in plastic wrap and duct tape, placed across the man’s waist, legs and back.
The customs officials noticed him because of his strange posture and gait. If he had run “normally” he would not have been noticed in the end, which is not certain either. Because the Chinese border authorities are currently looking closely, as such smuggling cases are currently increasing.
There are now high fines and imprisonment for smuggling, and yet people regularly try to smuggle electronic components such as processors, SSDs or even graphics cards.
What are these processors? The Chinese authorities did not comment on the processors, but you can see from the pictures that they are CPUs for the LGA 2066 chipset. These are therefore no longer state-of-the-art or current CPUs.
Smugglers to China are regularly caught
It happens on a regular basis that people get caught when smugglers try to bring hardware through customs.
Only recently someone was caught who wanted to transport 84 SSDs to China in an electric scooter. Again, the local authority was amazed at the ingenuity some people have.
At the peak of Bitcoin and Co., some people even smuggled expensive graphics cards. Here, the Chinese authorities caught a gang with a loot worth over 200,000 euros. This also shows what a great need there was for such graphics cards at the time:
Nvidia graphics cards are now being smuggled like cocaine is known to be