Truck with $1.8M in smuggled electronics seized by Hong Kong Customs — 670,000 undeclared chips and 80,000 PC hardware components

Hong Kong Customs recently stopped a truck containing a mixed load of undeclared electronic components with an estimated market value of $1.8M (HK$14M). The news of this discovery, published earlier today, caught our eye because the haul included approximately 670,000 chips and about 80,000 components, including CPUs, RAM chips, and motherboards. This appears to be a massive amount of electronics; however, the overall market value estimate indicates that most items were very cheap bits and pieces.

As the press release is not very specific about its breakdown of seized components, we pixel-peeped the high-resolution photo shared by the customs authority (embedded above). On the table, there appears to be a tray of Intel CPUs, a selection of RAM DIMMs, some assorted PCBs, smartphone components, (brilliant?)watch components, and spools of tape or cabling. We think these were taken out to represent the contents of the many unpacked boxes. At least one box appears to be packed with HyperX Fury memory modules.

In this $1.8M smuggling case, investigators say undeclared electrics “were found mixed with other properly declared goods inside the [truck] container” last Wednesday. Of course, the 47-year-old man driving the truck is suspected of being connected to this smuggling case. He has been released on bail pending further investigations.

As a reminder, Hong Kong (and Macau) are unique administrative regions of China with zero VAT on consumer goods. That’s great for residents and tourists, but mainland visitors, usually faced with 13% VAT, might be tempted to bring some local HK delights home and forget to declare them to customs.

The extra 13% profit margin smugglers might think they can make from these grey imports must be balanced against the likelihood of getting caught. Hong Kong Customs are pretty sharp. For example, they have previously detected smugglers just for their bloated appearance.

Those caught will also face the prospect of having their smuggled goods seized. However, the legal sting in the tail is a fine of up to HK$2M ($257,000) and enduring up to seven years behind bars.