Caught a memory smuggler and hundreds of SSD drives strapped to his waist

Photo: China Immigration Inspection HKEPC

“The Memory Smuggler” sounds like something an artificial intelligence trained on award-winning literary fantasy novels would come up with, but it’s actually This guy who tried to mule 420 (!) M.2 sticks. SSD storage, strapped to his waist, to China from Macau. The chips were valued at $32,984.94 (about $80 each) by authorities, but the total in terabytes was not announced.

Usually, smugglers attempt to smuggle high-value goods, such as processors or graphics cards. One last attempt at concealment 70 video cards for 617 pounds of live lobster comes to mind. On the contrary, the SSD smuggler chose to sneak in low-value hardware instead. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen M.2 SSDs shipped to China. A recent bust from this year held a man who was hiding 84 SSD disks inside the scooter. M. 2 SSDs still contain metal parts, so it’s nearly impossible to bypass metal detectors without sounding the metal detectors’ alarm.

Instead of hiding the SSDs inside a package, the perpetrator chose to tape the drives around his body for a greater distance. The seized reward was 420 M.2 drives, which equates to a combined value of approximately $32,984.94. At $78.53 apiece, the culprit can be smuggling 1TB or 2TB PCIe 4.0 drives.

I’ll be thinking all day now about the possibility of a Wachowski remake of Johnny Mnemonic in the Pearl River Delta.