Yup, you read the headline correctly. A woman tried to sneak 202 Intel CPUs and nine iPhone X through Chinese customs using a fake pregnant belly made of silicone.
The story starts at Gongbei customs in Zhuhai, China, where a seemingly pregnant woman enters customs walking effortlessly. Finding it weird, a customs officer moved in to check, and after questioning her, she claimed to be five months’ pregnant. The officer found the belly was abnormally large for that stage.
After further inspection, it was found that the ‘pregnant’ woman was wearing a fake silicone belly stacked with contraband. The subsequent unwrapping of the content revealed 202 desktop processors and nine mobile phones. No love for AMD.
The CPUs are definitely Intel models, probably based on the LGA 1700 socket, meaning they’re either Intel Core 12th Gen or 13th Gen. The black smartphones, on the other hand, are most likely Apple iPhones X or XS. Assuming these are Intel Core i9-13900K CPUs costing $589 MSRP and iPhones X starting at $999, the total value could reach at least $128,000.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on which side of the fence you stand, the same thing can’t be pulled with the massive RTX 4090. That’d be some pregnancy bulge!
This is not the first time we find out about people trying to smuggle expensive hardware to mainland China. Last time, it was a man who strapped 160 CPUs and 16 foldable smartphones to his body. And this new one will surely not be the last.
