Two individuals have been stopped at Hong Kong customs on April 28 while trying to smuggle an estimated £60,400 worth of Quadro GPUs and lobsters. Food for thought.
After 160 CPUs, and 84 SSDs, enterprising folk have tried to smuggle Quadro cards through Chinese customs. 70 Nvidia Quadro K2200, to be exact, were being illegally imported, each worth about £300 on Amazon UK, tightly packed alongside, wait for it, 280kg of lobster which is found around £25/kg, bringing the tally to some £28,000 (£21,000 + £7,000) – so a bit lower than the official figures. Funny coming from a marine crustacean that once was considered peasant or prison food by European colonists in North America.
With that said, Nvidia’s Quadro K2200 can be found much cheaper, as low as £30 on second-hand markets like eBay, since they launched nearly ten years ago, back in July 2014.
With correct pricing, this begs the question of why someone would risk prison for this little. Mainland China’s 13 per cent tax on goods contrasts with Hong Kong’s zero sales tax, so it naturally tempts nefarious individuals to maximise the discrepancy.
The official press release ends by reminding that smuggling is a serious offence, and that under the import and export ordinance, any person found guilty of importing or exporting unmanifested cargo is liable to a maximum fine of 2 million Hong Kong dollars (about £201,592) and imprisonment for seven years. Lobsters may no longer be included in the prison diet.
