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| Image credit to temblor.net |
Southern Metropolis Daily via REUTERS Smugglers use all of
the means at their disposal to avoid paying the dues required by law to legally
clear products and while they are often able to get away with it for quite some
time, eventually they do get caught.
That’s what happened to a group of smugglers in Chine that
used drones to smuggle almost $80 million worth of iPhones from Hong Kong to
Chine’s technology hub of Shenzhen. Customs officers in Shenzhen busted the
group earlier this week.
Authorities in Shenzhen arrested 26 suspects who were using
drones to fly two 200 meter fables between Hong Kong and mainland China. They
then smuggled refurbished iPhones valued at $79.8 million.
According to local news reports, this is the first case found
in China where drones were being used to facilitate cross border smuggling. The
smugglers used to operate after midnight and only needed a few seconds to
transport small bags that contained more than ten iPhones.
They could smuggle as many as 15,000 iPhone across the in one
night. Chine introduced some strict rules for drones last year to prevent
incidents of drones crossing into the flight paths of aircraft.
The rules requiring civilian drone owners to register their
crafts up to a certain weight under their real names. Shenzhen customs has said
that it’s going to closely monitor new types of smuggling with devices such as
drones and will themselves use drones to detect smuggling activity. Filed in
Gadgets.
