Customs officials in China apprehended a guy who was attempting to smuggle 84 Kingston solid-state drives (SSDs) over the border in the chassis of his electric scooter.
Wccftech reports that on Friday, March 3, 2023, officials scanned the man's Yadea KS series scooter and discovered an interior bundle of SSDs at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Cross-Border Industrial Zone.
Man Conceals 84 SSDs in Electric Scooter
As seen in a surveillance video provided by Chinese customs, the man entered the checkpoint nonchalantly, pushing the scooter, to which one officer then pointed out that he should run the scooter through the scanner.
The man had stashed the drives in the scooter's axle, wrapped in a way that customs inspectors would not detect. Nevertheless, during the scanning procedure, an unexpected object was identified inside the scooter's front bumper, prompting customs to remove the front area of the vehicle to expose the concealed SSDs.
The man was later detained and is going to be investigated for violating smuggling laws. Wccftech highlights in the report that anybody trying to evade customs by concealing, disguising, or hiding goods when crossing the border, failing to report them, or paying the proper taxes, can be prosecuted as a criminal under Chinese law.
The specifications of the confiscated SSDs were not stated in the report by Chinese customs.
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This is not the only case of attempted smuggling that Chinese customs have reported. Tom's Hardware reports that in March 2022, a man was captured trying to sneak 160 Intel CPUs across the border by taping them to his body. In December 2022, officials discovered a woman harboring 202 Intel Processors and nine iPhones under a fake belly contraption.
A chip shortage in China?
PCGamesN reported in 2021 that a shortage of graphics cards, RAM, and SSD in China had prompted several organizations and individuals to establish smuggling networks in the region.
In the report, PCGamesN said Hong Kong officials captured a speedboat carrying 300 of Nvidia's newest CMP mining-dedicated graphics cards and RAM, SSDs, and cellphones. The Nvidia 30HX GPUs are individually worth $700, for a total value of roughly $210,000.
As the US and its allies maintain their semiconductor curbs against China, the scooter smuggling incident may not be the last.
How Conveyor Belt Scanners Work
How do security scanners work? As you place an object on the conveyor belt, it is carried through an X-ray beam, and a detector on the opposite side of the tunnel detects the quantity of radiation that has penetrated the scanned item. Most airport and terminal security systems employ the same technology.
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), some screening equipment employs ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation has such high levels of energy that it may knock electrons from atoms, a process known as ionization.
Passengers and luggage are screened using ionizing radiation at airports. Depending on the type of machine, ionizing radiation is used to identify items that travelers may have concealed and to make images of the contents of baggage.
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