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PC desktop cases contain ample room to install a motherboard, GPU, and other components. But one Malaysian man took PC building to a new level when he packed 220 pounds of methamphetamines into several PC cabinets and attempted to smuggle them into Australia.
Australian authorities discovered the drugs while investigating an air cargo shipment that came in from Malaysia back on Oct. 16. According to a photo released by the Australian Federal Police (AFP), it looks like Australian border agents x-rayed the cargo, which revealed the mysterious packages inside the PC cases.
Those packages contained a mysterious white substance, which returned “a presumptive positive result for methamphetamine,” the AFP and Australian Border Force said in a joint statement. Another photo suggested the drugs were stashed inside 12 boxes of PC cases.
To catch the culprit, Australian police on Wednesday delivered the PC cases to their intended destination, a storage unit. That’s when a 45-year-old unnamed Malaysian man came to pick up the cargo, which led to his arrest. He was charged with attempted drug possession, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
“This amount of methamphetamine could have been sold as about one million street-level deals,” AFP Acting Superintendent Stuart Millen said in a statement. “It would have caused widespread harm, with the negative impact felt in domestic violence, in our hospitals and the road toll.”
The case highlights how consumer electronics are often used for creative smuggling schemes. Last year, a pair of men in Hong Kong used shipments of live lobsters to smuggle out Nvidia GPUs.
