A trio of warehouse workers in Russia decided to steal 20 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics cards, but while initially successful, the heist did not end well for them.
With sanctions starting to bite, highly-desirable products in Russia are becoming increasingly scarce and therefore more expensive. As Videocardz reports, some Russians are clearly viewing the situation as an opportunity to make some fast money, including three employees of Russia’s largest online retailer Wildberries.
As the video above shows, the employees decided to grab 20 graphics cards, carrying them to an upper window of the warehouse before dropping them out to be loaded into a waiting vehicle.
Each RTX 3070 Ti is worth 200,00 rubles, which equates to roughly $1,900, so their total value was around $38,000. What the thieves didn’t bet on was the suspicion raised when they attempted to sell the cards at a local pawnshop. The owner decided to contact the authorities after being approached with so many expensive cards, and the suspects have now been detained. All the graphics cards are back in the possession of Wildberries.
With Nvidia having stopped all product sales in Russia, the price of graphics cards is going to continue to rise in the country. This Wildberries heist may end up being the first of many attempts to grab the soon-to-be unaffordable cards.