Although we have never been involved in real burglaries, a heist or two has come our way in games like Grand Theft Auto V. We're obviously experts in high stakes robberies now so we know how wild it is to hear that hundreds of dollars worth of RTX 3090s have been stolen. That's a lot of raytracing to be traced.
Reported by Tom's Hardware, it's reported that 40 cargo boxes of graphics cards were stolen from an MSI warehouse in the early hours of December 7. This isn't only a financial blow to MSI and the sellers of the RTX 3090, but it's also a consumer issue as the RTX 3090 is already incredibly hard to come by. $300,000-worth of those cards isn't a small amount of stock to go missing.
According to the original report, because of the high amount of surveillance in the area, as well as the fact that MSI inspects trucks regularly, the company thinks it's an inside job - someone who worked at the warehouse knew how to get the stock out without being noticed.
This situation is a little like the console scalping we're seeing surrounding the PS5 and Xbox Series X at the moment. While console gamers are looking for their next platform, PC players are looking for these graphics cards, their RRP is nothing on the resell value of these bits of tech. Normally selling for $1499, there are cards being sold for $2000, or even $3000 on eBay.
Advert
Although it is unclear how many cards were stolen, as we just have a value of how much the boxes were worth - it's obvious that even selling a few of these cards at a marked up price is incredibly profitable.
MSI is asking for information on the burglary with a reward of over $15,000 to individuals that can help them find the culprits and the company is working with the police to find out who stole its merchandise.
Featured Image Credit: Rockstar Games / Nvidia
