Organized bandits make off with $12 million worth of PC components
By Evan Blass 
posted Nov 21st 2006 2:18PM
posted Nov 21st 2006 2:18PM
In a daring early morning heist that could just as easily have been a scene from a movie like, um, The Heist, 20-plus well-organized robbers infiltrated a Malaysian warehouse complex on Monday, immediately subdued all 17 employees, and proceeded to steal over $12 million worth of microchips and motherboards. The thieves were able to gain access to the facility through a classic Trojan horse maneuver, wherein drivers of a truck that rolled up to the MASKargo Complex gate in Batu Maung, Penang tricked customs officials into believing that they were doing an undercover sweep for illegal immigrants. Once inside, the rest of the bandits lept out of the back of the vehicle and used chloroform to knock out the passive workers and sticks to beat down the non-compliant ones. It took the team nearly an hour to load up an astounding 18 pallets and 585 cartons full of components belonging to an unnamed multi-national corporation based out of Bayan Lepas, after which they sped off into the night with their valuable, high-tech booty. Police claim to have already captured two suspects in the case -- both were, shockingly , workers at the complex -- and are in the midst of hunting down the rest of the gang that pulled off what was clearly an inside job. As for the copious amount of missing PC hardware, officials speculate that the bandits will either sell them to shady OEMs on the black market, or, more likely, use them to build a supercomputer for leapfrogging to the top of the Folding@Home rankings.[Via The Inquirer]
that picture is from The Usual Suspects, a waaay better movie than The Heist, imo :)
YES!!! An amazing movie - Kaiser Soze is my hero.
I guess we'll know when we see 'Dellways' on the market.
It appears that the thieves have made a grievous error. Those parts were headed toward the construction of a nuclear missile, a deal which would have been very profitable for mister Söze.
The only other person I've seen use chloroform to knock out victims is Homer J. Simpson... and there was that one time he got it mixed up with Colorforms.
Watch some old school spy/heist movies.
Kids these days with their fancy chemicals.
HEY! GET OFF MY LAWN!
chloroform? I call bs. It only works in the movies. in real life, the amount of cloroform it would take to knock some out is also a lethal dossage. And it's not instantaneous. It takes a good amount of time. The workers would be vomitting for a while before they passed out.
from wikipedia:
"Chloroform once appeared in toothpastes, cough syrups, ointments, and other pharmaceuticals, but it has been banned in consumer products in the United States since 1976.
The NTP's eleventh report on carcinogens implicates it as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen, a designation equivalent to IARC class 2A. It has been most readily associated with hepatocellular carcinoma."
Good way to give someone cancer!
The last bit took the cake. "use them to build a supercomputer for leapfrogging to the top of the Folding@Home rankings." I can't belive they beat me to it!
Keep your eyes open folks...ebay.com should be having some black friday sales ;)
this is the best thing ive ever heard of !
Hmm.... if memory recalls, only 3 companies that had that kind of stuff sitting around in Penang. It could be either AMD, Intel or Dell. But then again, I haven't been to Penang for ages.
Morons, that's The Usual Suspect, not that crappy The Heist movie.
Hmm...Saucy. Can't wait to get a 8800GTS for £90 off eBay!
Haha, that picture is perfect. Damn, 12 million dollars worth.. that is a lot of computer parts.
And I thought that sampling parts online was bad...
Maybe it wasn't chloroform maybe it was a powerful Ammonia or base. You can make someone pass out with those, just a swift waft under a nose and bam lights out.
This link says the losing company was Intel: http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/nst/Wednesday/Frontpage/20061122072150/Article/index_html
The "unnamed multi-national corporation" is Intel.
http://www.hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?id=6006&cid=12
i think these guys are the unnamed multinational corporation: http://www.wpi.com.sg/
they're a distributor and probably manufacturer FOR intel, though, i guess..