Oh, smugglers. We get it: their actions and activities in illegally bringing contraband and illicit good across the borders of countries, all so that they can avoid paying excise tax, are globally condemned, it is undeniably a lucrative market when these individuals manage to successfully evade the law. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for one Chinese smuggler, her faux pregnant belly, and hundreds of Intel CPUs.
Here’s the story: recently, a female smuggler heading from Macau into Zhuhai, a city within the Chinese province of Guangdong, was pulled aside by Chinese customs at the port of Gongbei. The reason she was pulled over was that the officials observing her noticed that she looked and behaved oddly, more so for a woman as “heavily pregnant” as she was.
Specifically, the officer noticed that the female smuggler’s posture was unusual for a woman seemingly in her 3rd trimester. What raised even more red flags, though, was that when she was asked about her pregnancy, she claimed that she was only five to six months into it. Not buying her brand of horse dung, the officers immediately began patting her down, and that’s when they discovered her prosthetic belly and CPUs she was hauling on her person.
In total, Chinese officials say that she had 202 Intel CPUs wrapped around her body, along with nine iPhones held tightly with cling film and wrapped around her chest. Based on one picture, you can see that the CPUs have the shape of the LGA1700 package, meaning that those processors are either 12th Gen Alder Lake or 13th Gen Rocket Lake. If those CPUs are indeed either one of those generations, the total value of those CPUs will be at least RM535300 on average.
Smuggling electronic goods into China is more commonplace than you would imagine, and it is actually due to the high import taxes that the country imposes. Of course, it also doesn’t things that the tensions between it and the US are at an all-time high, with the latter having recently imposing fresh sanctions and restrictions against it.
For that matter, this isn’t the first story we’ve written about smugglers attempting to bring PC components into China. back in July last year, some guy did something similar and cling-film wrapped 256 10th Gen Intel CPUs to his body and got caught by Chinese customs.
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