Officials on China’s border with Hong Kong caught a smuggler with 96 iPhones strapped to his body like a hi-tech suit of armour. They took photos of him, released them on the internet and now the pics have gone viral.
Chinese customs officers say they pulled the young man aside when they noticed that his “gait was weird, with still joints and tense muscles, as if he was carrying a heavy load,” the state-run newspaper People’s Daily reported on Monday.
Although the officials didn’t find anything suspicious in the man’s luggage, they made him walk through a metal detector, which produced a loud alarm, iPhone 5, 5S, 6 and 6 Plus models wrapped in clear plastic and taped to his chest, abdomen, thighs and calves were then discovered on him.. The newspaper estimated the devices’ total cost at £32,000. They weighed at least 12kg.
While Apple’s iPhone is manufactured in China, Beijing’s taxation policies make the device more expensive on the mainland than in Hong Kong and the west.
Customs officials said the man was from Hong Kong and that he was a “typical smuggler” with a record of past offences, according to the People’s Daily. The maximum penalty in Hong Kong for exporting items without properly declaring them is a £1.3m fine and seven years in prison
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