Every now and then, stories of failed smuggling attempts at the borders between China and Hong Kong or Macau pop up, providing us with a varying degree of entertainment through the ways each smuggler tries to evade paying duty on their goods. On that note, the most recent smuggler folly appears to involve alot of SSDs with an electric scooter.
The Chinese customs at the Guangdong-Macao checkpoint recently thwarted the attempts of an individual trying to smuggle a total of 84 Kingston NVMe M.2 SSDs. As for how the electric scooter comes into play, the smuggler had stashed his goods within the hollow of their Yadeo KS electric scooter, Specifically, they hid it within the hollow of the steering rod.
Now, credit where it’s due, the smuggling attempt is clever, although it is not mind-expanding, nor is it anything new to the customs officers at the border. For starters, the officers are actually aware of smugglers using the electric scooter as one of their pack mules, as they tend to hide their packages within the transport’s battery compartment. Second, items like said scooter would have to be scanned by an X-Ray machine, meaning that said SSDs would be effortless to spot on the screen.
Once again, 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 former further restricting access of semiconductor chips and materials to the latter, in an effort to stymie its military’s advancement, technologically.
Had the smuggling been successful, the smuggler would have clearly made a very, very handsome profit off the NVMe SSDs, especially since they wouldn’t have had paid excise duty on the components.
(Source: Chinese Customs Office, Videocardz, Tom’s Hardware)
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