Thieves steal stash of GPUs worth $336,000

Picture of Nvidia's RTX 3090 graphics card

Gamers and cryptocurrency miners are avid consumers of the latest hotrodded "graphics processing units," computer cards designed specifically to crunch massive amounts of math at screaming speeds.

The price people will pay rapid math for is pretty wild. When Nvidia released its new RTX 3080 in September, the cards — which retailed for $699 — were immediately put up for resale on Ebay for as much as $2,500.

With prices like that, and a potential cryptominining edge to whoever can crunch math faster, criminals are now eyeing big stacks of GPUs the way bank robbers in the 1920s regarded large piles of gold bricks.

According to a leaked internal document from the gaming-hardware maker MSI, someone stole 40 containers full of Nvidia's RTX 3090 cards from them — an amount worth about $336,000 USD. Over at Ars Technica, Jim Salter did a rough auto-translation of the internal MSI memo …

Ensmai Electronics (Deep) Co., Ltd.
Announcement
Memo No. 1-20-12-4-000074
Subject: Regarding the report theft of the graphics card, it is appropriate to reward.

Explanation:

  1. Recently, high unit price display cards produced by the company have been stolen by criminals. The case has now been reported to the police. At the same time, I also hope that all employees of the company will actively and truthfully report this case.
  2. Anyone providing information which solves this case will receive a reward of 100,000 yuan. The company promises to keep the identity of the whistleblower strictly confidential.
  3. If any person is involved in the case, from the date of the public announcement, report to the company's audit department or the head of the conflicting department. If the report is truthful and and assists in the recovery of the missing items, the company will report to the police but request leniency. The law should be dealt with seriously.
  4. With this announcement, I urge my colleagues to be professional and ethical, and to be disciplined, learn from cases, and be warned.
  5. Reporting Tel: [elided]


Reporting mailbox of the Audit Office: [elided]
December 4, 2020