In late 2021, a literal truck theft over GPUs took place in California. EVGA Product Manager Jacob Freeman confirmed at the time that a shipment of EVGA GeForce RTX 30 Series cards was actually stolen from a truck on its way from San Francisco to Southern California.
The cards are said to have a retail value of between $ 329.99 to $ 1959.99 USD, so there were some pretty high-end cards in that mix. When they were confirmed stolen, EVGA also warned that the serial numbers were registered so anyone trying to register them for warranty or potential sale would run into trouble.
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As reported by VideoCardz, it turns out that some of these cards are now popping up on the other side of the world in Vietnam. A Vietnamese retailer, known for packing GPUs into mining rigs, has potentially been caught distributing some of these stolen cards.
Customers have reported after purchasing the cards that the serial numbers are among those marked by EVGA and therefore could not be registered for warranty claims. Someone allegedly bought two Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPUs and had the same problem with each. Customers said the cards got a 1-month warranty in the store, as well as a decent price, which can be expected from illegally imported cards.
VideoCardz did not disclose the dealer’s name, no doubt to prevent more customers from buying stolen cards. However, they say it is not a small local retailer, which means we could look at a well-known chain store, which is a bit worrying. It is very likely that many ignorant customers, perhaps not so knowledgeable about current pc games and prices, have thought themselves lucky to come across a sweet GPU deal without even knowing the potential issues.
The chip shortage combined with avid cryptocurrencies continues to make a new GPU feel more like a dream than a reality. It’s hard to get excited about something new when scarcity is such a big issue. That said, we are set to see GPU shipments increase by 10% by 2022, so hopefully theft of trucks for illegal import into Vietnam will be a little less common.
