Truckload Of GPUs Stolen On Their Way Out Of San Francisco

US-based Nvidia partner EVGA has reported that a shipment of GPUs it was sending to a distribution centre has been stolen from a truck.

A forum post by EVGA product manager Jacob Freeman states “PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that on October 29, 2021, a shipment of EVGA GeForce RTX 30-Series Graphics Cards was stolen from a truck en route from San Francisco to our Southern California distribution center.”

“These graphics cards are in high demand and each has an estimated retail value starting at $329.99 up to $1959.99 MSRP.”

Which probably explains the motivation for the crime – either someone hopes to resell them or a crypto-miner has just built a cut-price rig.

Freeman’s post doesn’t say how many GPUs were stolen, or if the truck was carrying anything else. He did, however, warn that buying stolen property is a crime, as is “concealing selling or withholding” purloined goods.

He then appears to lay a trap of sorts by pointing out that attempts to register products that aren’t stolen will succeed on this page which requires registration. Crooks are probably smart enough to use fake details when registering. Are they also smart enough to use a VPN and/or Tor to hide their tracks?

EVGA has created the email address stopRTX30theft@evga.com in an attempt to find the culprits.

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The RTX-30 range is aimed at gamers and content creators, so this heist will make it even harder to score a GPU for those who suffer from low pixel counts and/or refresh rates. Those who use GPUs for other tasks can already wait months to get their hands on the devices, as COVID-crimped supply chains continue to delay production.

That situation is set to persist for many months: in August Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he expects “a supply constrained environment for the vast majority of next year”. ®