iPhone Smugglers Use Aerial Drones, Cables to Sneak $80 Million Worth of Apple Hardware Into China
Authorities in China have recently broken up a group of smugglers, along with their novel scheme for sneaking in $80 million worth of iPhones into the country's mainland. Twenty-six people were part of a daring plan to link two high-rise buildings with cables and then use those to pass along thousands of Apple smartphones across the border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
Chinese law enforcement have rounded up 26 suspects believed to be involved in the use of drones to fly a couple of 200-meter cables, or 660 feet in length, between Hong Kong and the mainland city of Shenzhen.
These cables are then used to shuttle across refurbished iPhones illegally. The smuggling gang had used the inventive plan to transport smartphones adding up to 500 million yuan in total value, or about $79.54 million, according to the Legal Daily via Reuters.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
It's a high-tech plan that was the first of its kind they have seen, as Legal Daily summed up a news conference led by Shenzhen customs officials on Thursday, March 29, shortly after the arrests.
"It's the first case found in China that drones were being used in cross-border smuggling crimes," the report noted. The people involved in the scheme would usually act on the plan after midnight, and once the cables are in place, it would only take seconds to send off a small bag across the border.
The aerial drones used in the plan appears to be the Phantom 4 model by DJI, a popular model for aerial photo and video capture, according to Drone Life. These drones look to have been modified to carry cables across the border and thus give the criminals a quick way to transport the contraband iPhones.
Each bag could hold ten iPhones or more, and in this manner, the smuggling gang could illicitly send across as many as 15,000 phones in one night, according to the local customs officers.
It's not the first time drones have been used to smuggle items and contraband. Aerial drones have become an increasingly popular mule for prisoners, with the gadgets being used to secretly carry stashes of cell phones, tobacco, drugs and pornographic materials, as Digital Trends noted.
Even if they are not illegally ferrying items from one point to another, drones could present danger just by being in the general vicinity of protected areas. Late last year in October, the Federal Aviation Authority has started banning drones from operating near some major historical landmarks in the US.
Later in December of last year, FAA has expanded this list to ban drones from flying over or near US nuclear research sites, as well.
China is also home to some of the world's biggest manufacturers of consumer aerial drones and has faced an increasingly urgent need to regulate their use. The country has set out new and stricter rules last year after incidents of drones wandering into aircraft flight lanes.
