Being a customs officer must be an exciting and intriguing job. Indeed, these people must see a lot at border crossings. Once again, Chinese customs are in the news with two reports published after smuggling attempts.
First case: a woman arrested at Chinese customs with 200 RAM bars!
The first case is rather banal: a woman tried to pass through customs with no less than 200 bars of RAM wrapped around her. The incident took place at the Shenzhen border crossing at Huanggang port. The person in question attempted to cross the border with the merchandise wrapped around his chest and abdomen. Once again, when you walk around with so much material around you, it affects your gait, your figure- in short, something’s not right, even with loose-fitting clothes. That’s what tipped off the officers on duty. After inspection, bingo, 200 RAM bars.
What the authorities aren’t saying, however, is what type of memory we’re dealing with, or how much the shipment costs.
Second case: 360 CPUs hidden in a cross-border bus!
This time, we’re still on the Sino-Hong Kong border, but on the Macau side, at the port of Gongbei. There, a cross-border bus driver also tried to smuggle some hardware, but it was CPUs. Here, a total of 360 CPUs were seized by customs authorities. Their hiding place? After scanner inspection, it turned out that the goods were hidden in the side wall between the driver and passenger seats.
Once again, we have no idea of the amount of the loss or the exact listing of the processors. However, we can tell from the shape of the IHS that it’s recent equipment. Again, it would appear that these are twelfth- and thirteenth-generation Core i processors.
Once again, the driving force behind this kind of practice is money, again and again. Indeed, smugglers buy tax-free equipment in Hong Kong and try to smuggle it back to China for resale. Except that the difference between the two is China’s 13% VAT. As they say, if crime pays, crime will pay.
