WTF? ! Chinese customs have arrested a woman who was returning to the country with 202 Intel processors and nine iPhones wrapped around her torso and hidden under a pregnant belly prosthesis.
The potential smuggler was a young woman crossing the border between Macau, an independent territory, and Zhuhai, a city in Guangdong province near Hong Kong (via mydrivers). She was going through customs at Gongbei Port when an official noticed that she was behaving strangely.
A woman was going through customs in a simple brown maternity dress when an official noticed her posture was atypical for a pregnant woman (obviously) in her third trimester. She was separated from the crowd and asked about her pregnancy and said she was 5-6 months pregnant despite looking almost due. They knocked on it and found a prosthetic belly and a cache of equipment underneath.
She wrapped 202 processors and nine iPhones in cling film bricks and duct-taped them over her stomach. In a product photo posted on social media, the processors are identified as Intel models based on the LGA 1700 chassis, i.e. Alder Lake or Rocket Lake. The iPhones look like the black iPhone X or XS models. If all processors are high-end, the total cost could approach $100,000.
Smuggling is common at the Chinese border due to high import taxes. Previously, several potential smugglers tried to cross the border with processors and phones strapped to the body.
In March, a man with 160 processors and 16 foldable phones was arrested in Gongpei Port. The record for near-smuggled processors is currently held by a pair of truck drivers returning from Hong Kong with 256 processors strapped between their limbs, and the record for phones with 146 iPhones is also held by a person who traveled from Hong Kong.
It looks like Gunpei Port could use metal detectors to deter would-be smugglers. But so far, the detained smugglers had either Intel processors or phones. If you want a piece of the pie, consider sticking AMD Ryzen processors or DDR5 memory sticks to your stomach and give it a try.