'One million street-level deals' worth of methamphetamine smuggled in PC case shipment

HardwarePC Cases’One million street-level deals' worth of methamphetamine smuggled in PC case shipmentWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Australian Federal Police)

A large amount of packaged methamphetamine smuggled inside a PC case

Ordinarily when we hear about a PC hardware smuggling story, it’s something like a bunch ofex-crypto mining GPUsmaking their way illicitly over a border, or a collection of CPUsbadly taped to a manattempting to make his way through customs. Here though, the tables have been turned—as this time it’s the hardware itself that’s been used to smuggle something far more valuable.

Australian authorities have discovered a Malaysian man attempting to import 100 kg (200 pounds) of methamphetamine into the country, stashed inside a collection of PC cases (viaTechspot). The offending articles arrived via an air cargo assignment, and on inspection revealed multiple large packages of suspicious white powder stashed inside.

The cases look to be Dell Optiplex models, which should only weigh a few kg each. Adding 100 kg of extra, err, cargo to the shipment is likely to have been the tip-off here, although Australia is known for havingparticularly strict border processing controlsfor many items arriving into the country, so there are multiple ways the drugs could have been discovered.

“ABF officers monitor consignments closely for any anomalies to disrupt these criminal syndicates’ supply chains,” said ABF Acting Commander Matthew O’Conner.

“They will attempt to hide illicit substances in creative cavities to evade our detection.

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“Our officers’ skills in detecting and disrupting this criminal behavior will continue to thrive through our collaboration and information sharing between our federal and state counterparts.”

Creative cavities indeed. While a substantial amount of dangerous substances have now been kept off the Australian streets, it’s possible that these Dell Optiplex cases are now available for sale again, with their potential new owners unaware that their new cheap case purchase was the subject of a significant criminal investigation.

Sort of brings new meaning to the whole"rock in a box"debate with cheap GPU purchases, doesn’t it? We’re sentPC cases for testinghere at PC Gamer on the regular, so here’s hoping we don’t end up with some extra cargo we’d really rather not receive hiding in our next shipment.

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