Forty containers of RTX 3090 cards worth over $330,000 stolen in China

[midian182]

WTF?! Getting hold of an RTX 3090 without paying over the odds on eBay is an almost impossible task right now, which partly explains why 40 containers of Nvidia’s flagship Ampere graphics cards, worth around $336,500, were stolen from an MSI factory in China.

Tom’s Hardware reports that MSI believes the heist was an insider job. The factory’s shipping area is covered by video surveillance, and the trucks that arrive and depart campus are inspected frequently, all of which point to an insider being behind the crime.

MSI is desperate to retrieve its products, obviously, and has offered a 100,000 Yuan (~$15,300) reward for any information that may help recover the stolen items. It has notified police about the matter and is even offering clemency to anyone involved in the scheme if they come forward and help locate the containers.

MSI Chinese mainland factory was stolen, stolen 40 boxes RTX3090, the total value of 2200000RMB ......😓
MSI has been officially announced and informed to the police ,Reward of 100000 RMB for reporting effective information. pic.twitter.com/JWw8hOMioG

— 夕惕若厉 (@GoFlying8) December 7, 2020

Tom’s notes that the RTX 3090 currently has a median selling price of $2,250, way above its $1,499 MSRP, and eBay is packed with cards over $3,000, so you can understand why they make for a valuable target among criminals. It’s estimated that the stolen haul equates to around 220 units. That’s not a huge number, but it could mean a (further) shortage of MSI RTX 3090 cards in some areas.

RTX 3090 cards going for a fortune on eBay

Every one of the big tech releases this holiday season has suffered from availability problems, mostly due to scalpers using bots to buy products in bulk before anyone else. One scalper group bragged about securing almost 3,500 PS5 consoles for resale, saying it had “no regrets” over its actions. It also bought up to 1,000 Series X consoles over Black Friday weekend.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/87883-forty-containers-rtx-3090-cards-worth-over-340000.html

 

[MajorZod]

Guessing they will be all over Ebay soon enough under the guise of "Starlit Partner".....

Dont worry, MSI wont lose any money.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Thank Goodness they weren’t Founders Editions or EVGA models!

 

[psycros]

Build everything in China, expect to get robbed.

 

[Irata]

40 stolen boxes (not containers) causing a shortage ? Sure.

Besides, last I checked the 3090 was available, just not every model.

 

[CBTex]

It's more likely that MSI allowed them to get "stolen" so some third party can sell them on the open market and they can split the profits. Remember, it was MSI who has already been caught scalping 3080s.

You suck MSI.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Xbox, PS5, Video cards, Switch...

Going forward, how is the industry going to ensure that electronics aren't getting stolen and scalped?

EBAY could disallow these things from being sold by limiting asking prices to MSRP - thereby cutting off the point of sale. Amazon could do the same. Then it would become increasingly difficult, if not impossible to move the units.

Scalpers love the certainty and protection afforded to them by online auction sites.

The only other way to beat the scalpers is to overproduce these cards to meet demand.

Apple essentially killed the scalping of new iPhones by #1 making you preorder online, #2 limiting orders to 2 units per purchase and #3 overproducing to widen availability.

 

[Ren128]

40 stolen boxes (not containers) causing a shortage ? Sure.

Besides, last I checked the 3090 was available, just not every model.

True, last few times I checked my fav stores here in Australia, they always had a few models (not all) in stock, after the initial shipment got sold out. Everything else new aside from 3060 Ti is out of stock.

 

[SirDigby]

40 stolen boxes (not containers) causing a shortage ? Sure.

Besides, last I checked the 3090 was available, just not every model.

The article says estimated 220 units were stolen based on total value divided by average MSRP price off 3090.
Given how hot these devices are and the niche they fill, 220 is not an insignificant number.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Playstation Network is banning consoles marked stolen.

If this were done to GPU, CPU, Consoles and other equipment like Phones, it would completely disincentivize stealing - except for parts...

 

[ZackL04]

What about the ship that lost 1900 containers last week in route from China to California? That cant help...

https://gcaptain.com/one-apus-update-new-details-on-dangerous-goods-cargo/

 

[Nobina]

I guess people are actually buying these cards from scalpers for 8 grand since they're willing to risk stealing them. Just tells you more about people who buys these cards.

 

[Shadowboxer]

I wonder what the Nvidia board meetings are like. They massively messed up by pricing far far too low. Now scalpers are making most of the profit and the customer base is furious.

Yeah I’m pretty certain we can kiss goodbye to flagship GPUs under $999 going forward. It’s a shame but look at the mess the industry is in right now. This can’t carry on forever, the demand is far too high for the supply.

 

[Uncle Al]

Well of course it was an inside job ..... inside of China ..... legendary for stealing technology in both soft and hardware ........

 

[grumblguts]

188 gfx cards take up 40 containers.

 

[grumblguts]

330,000 / £1750 = 188
188 / 40 = 5

so 5 cards per container. BIG FRIGIN DEAL.

 

[Homerlovesbeer]

A 40ft container holds approx 50 m2 of goods. I'm sure 2000 m2 of graphics cards weren't stolen as that would have to number in the hundreds of thousands.

 

[loki1944]

Xbox, PS5, Video cards, Switch...

Going forward, how is the industry going to ensure that electronics aren't getting stolen and scalped?

EBAY could disallow these things from being sold by limiting asking prices to MSRP - thereby cutting off the point of sale. Amazon could do the same. Then it would become increasingly difficult, if not impossible to move the units.

Scalpers love the certainty and protection afforded to them by online auction sites.

The only other way to beat the scalpers is to overproduce these cards to meet demand.

Apple essentially killed the scalping of new iPhones by #1 making you preorder online, #2 limiting orders to 2 units per purchase and #3 overproducing to widen availability.

They won't. Profit first. As long as fools and their money are easily parted, it will not stop.

 

[Sorileus86]

What needs to be done is Ebay and similar sites need to ban the sale of any product that is 6 months or less in age. Sure they will loose some revenue from sales, but at the same time should stop most scalpers from using public sales sites etc.

That's my 2 cents on this scalping bullsht anyway >.>

 

[CybaGirl]

Personally I don't know who in their right mind would pay such outrageous prices for a video card?

None the less if you are not happy with scalpers? Just do what I do and report them to eBay and eBay will remove the listing. I know as I did this when the parasites tried selling toilet paper and other items for inflated and greedy pricing when no one could buy them due to COVID-19 and let me tell you every item I reported was taken down and removed from eBay .

I religiously searched every morning for these over priced items on eBay and when I saw something listed I would just report them using the report feature and within a day their listing(s) were removed.

So get your own back and stop these cretins in their tracks by reporting them and lets hope they end up being stuck with every card that they cannot sell!

 

[Ben Myers]

If MSI has serial numbers of cards stolen (and why not?), simply go on eBay and buy a few, then trace back to the seller. Follow the money.