Recently, a Chinese national was caught smuggling 160 Intel CPUs strapped to his body. The man was trying to enter China with Intel’s 11th Gen and the latest 12th Gen Alder Lake models. However, he was caught by customs officials.
The customs office found Intel CPUs strapped to the man’s abdomen, waist, and legs. The man was trying to enter through the customs ‘no declaration channel’ to import tariffs on computer components. This way, he could avoid tax tariffs by smuggling the Intel CPUs.
The officials found the man’s walking posture unnatural, so they called him aside for a security check. The man was carrying 160 Intel CPUs, and 16 folded mobile phones taped to the inner side of his calf, waist, and abdomen.
Local media have started calling the smuggler “Walking CPU” or “CPU-Man.”
Smuggling & semiconductor shortage
We already have a semiconductor shortage due to production issues, scalpers, high demand, miners, and covid. As we can see, smugglers are another factor affecting the semiconductor shortage.
Recently Chinese customs officials also seized many AMD Radeon graphics cards. The officials seized as many as 5,840 graphics cards, valued at $3 million.
The AMD graphic cards had incorrect labels on them to evade import taxes. Another case also saw a guy smuggling 304 Intel 10th-gen Core i7 and Core i9 CPUs in 2021.
These are just some of the most recent cases that have come to light. Chip shortages have affected many things, such as high prices and low availability. Therefore many companies have tried to solve these issues.
Nvidia and AMD have also tried to make their GPUs less appealing to crypto miners and have implemented various ways to stop scalpers and bots.
