In China, Thieves Were Swapping RTX 5080 for RTX 3060 in Cyber Hotels

Two men in China were stealing expensive graphics cards from computers at cyber hotels, swapping RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 units for significantly cheaper RTX 3060 cards. The scheme worked until a random power outage exposed the criminals.

The men would book rooms at hotels equipped with high-end gaming PCs, then open the cases, remove the expensive GPUs, and install RTX 3060 cards they had brought with them. Since the computers continued to function after the swap and the cards looked similar from the outside, staff initially noticed nothing unusual.

The scheme unraveled on July 18 after a power outage occurred in one of the rooms. When guests reported the issue to the front desk, an electrician discovered signs of tampering on the PC case. An inspection of another room the men had rented revealed that two RTX 5080 cards had been replaced with RTX 3060s.

According to Wuhan police, the thieves had pulled off the scheme at least four times. The total value of the stolen hardware amounted to approximately 80,000 yuan — roughly $12,000. The stolen graphics cards were intended for resale on the secondary market.

Police detained the suspects on July 20 and seized two graphics cards that had not yet been sold.