Chinese customs have intercepted a person attempting to cross to mainland China while transporting boxes of GPUs without disclosing them to avoid paying import taxes. After passing the package through a scanner, the images coming out were abnormal, prompting further investigation.
According to Kuai Technology, on March 22, Chinese customs discovered an undisclosed shipment of graphics cards while conducting checks on flights at Shanghai Pudong International Airport. During their search using an inspection machine, the officers noticed abnormal luggage from a passenger going through the no-declaration channel.
After further inspection, they discovered a bunch of graphics cards in cardboard boxes. When asked about them, the passenger confessed that they were second-hand graphics cards he was planning to refurbish and sell them. In total, the customs seized 44 graphics cards of unknown models.
According to some Chinese forum users and from the looks of it, these seem to be AMD Radeon RX 580 graphics cards. These potentially come from a crypto-mining farm, which explains why the smuggler said he needed to refurbish them before selling.
If this is correct, one may wonder why someone would risk going to jail for so little. While this is not the first time we have heard about such attempts in China, many previous smugglers chose smaller items such as CPUs. Notably, we saw a woman hiding 202 Intel processors inside a fake pregnant belly, another person with 306 CPUs strapped into his belly, not to forget the one crossing with 780 chips worth about $137,000.
In any case, the smuggler had his reasons to give it a try. Unlucky for him, he got caught and is now probably facing legal pursuits. So don’t try this at home.