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PC desktop cases provide enough space to install a motherboard, GPU and other components. But a Malaysian man took PC building to a new level when he stuffed 220 pounds of methamphetamine into several PC cases and tried to smuggle it into Australia.
Australian authorities discovered the drugs while investigating an air cargo shipment that arrived from Malaysia on October 16. According to a photo released by the Australian Federal Police (AFP), it appears 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 in twelve boxes of PC cases.
To catch the perpetrator, Australian police delivered the PC cases to their intended destination, a storage space, on Wednesday. At that time, a 45-year-old unnamed Malaysian man came to collect the shipment, leading to his arrest. He was charged with attempted drug possession, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
“This amount of methamphetamine could have been sold as around a million street-level deals,” AFP Acting Chief Inspector Stuart Millen said in a statement. “It would have caused widespread damage, with the negative impact of domestic violence, on our hospitals and road tolls.”
The case highlights how consumer electronics are often used for creative smuggling schemes. Last year, some guys in Hong Kong used loads of live lobsters to smuggle out Nvidia GPUs.