She strapped 102 iPhones to her body and, surprise, was caught by customs
If you're going to try to smuggle dozens of iPhones, maybe taping them to your body and trying to hide them under your clothes isn't the best way to get through customs.
One woman found this out the hard way while trying to sneak 102 iPhones from Hong Kong into mainland China, specifically Shenzhen--where, ironically, many iPhones are made at the gigantic Foxconn plant. Apparently, this is not an uncommon occurrence because the devices are cheaper in Hong Kong.
According to XMNN, custom officials suspected the woman might be smuggling something because she was wearing a cardigan over her blouse despite the heat and she had an awkward bulky look to her upper body despite "arms and legs [that were] relatively slim."
Sure enough, a search revealed that the woman had strapped the phones to her body underneath her clothes. All those phones wound up giving the woman an extra 40-plus pounds of weight, which is what happens when you strap a bunch of smartphones to your body.
Photos show different models and colors, so it's hard to guess the total value of the haul, but it is Apple so rest assured we're talking tens of thousands of dollars.
One final note: This smuggler doesn't even hold the unofficial record most smuggled iPhones caught at Shenzhen. That notoriety belongs to man who, according to Kotaku, was arrested in 2015 with 146 iPhones strapped to his body which ... how?
Topics iPhone
Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
