On June 21, news from China Hong Kong Customs revealed that on June 11, they intercepted a chip smuggling case involving up to 596 high-end CPU processors, which were intended to be smuggled into mainland China.
Customs officers at the time discovered a suspicious vehicle heading to the Shenzhen Bay control station. Upon stopping it for an X-ray inspection, they found many CPUs hidden within the vehicle’s compartment.
Customs assessed that these smuggled CPUs are high-end products capable of supporting AI-accelerated computing and cloud services, with a total value of approximately 12 million Hong Kong dollars, equivalent to about 11.2 million RMB.
The smuggler could face a tax evasion fine of 3 million Hong Kong dollars, equivalent to about 2.8 million RMB.
These CPUs appear to be Intel Xeon processors from the photos released, but the exact model cannot be determined since the front serial numbers are not visible. They might be from the earlier Xeon E7 series.
Just last year, a smuggler was caught at Macau Customs with many Intel 13th generation Core i5 processors strapped to their body.
Earlier in 2021, another smuggler wrapped 256 Intel i7-10700 and i9-10900K processors in plastic wrap and hid them on their bodies, but was also caught on the spot.
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