“These weren’t your cheap, street-level processors,” said Agent Mike Johnson, Director of Silicon Narcotics Enforcement. “This was the high-grade stuff. We’re talking about chips so powerful that one hit of this processing speed could get an AI model hooked for life. They were cutting the product with lower-quality silicon to maximize profits, which is just reckless.”

Authorities claim the operation also involved complex money laundering schemes to hide the profits from the illegal exports. The defendants reportedly tried to wash the money by investing it in legitimate, non-suspicious businesses, such as a chain of laser tag arenas that have zero customers.

“We are shocked to learn that our high-performance hardware is being treated like contraband,” said Sarah Jenkins, Vice President of Looking the Other Way at a major tech distributor. “We assumed the sudden order for 5,000 units delivered to a fishing boat in international waters was for a really advanced fish finder.”

At publishing time, the indicted CTO was seen in the prison yard trying to trade a smuggled stick of RAM for a pack of cigarettes.

Inspired by actual events.