Connecting the dots: Remember the story last week about the Brazilian hardware distributor that revealed two pallets of Zotac GeForce RTX 5090 cards, worth around $470,000, had gone missing from São Paulo/Guarulhos airport? Two not entirely surprising developments have emerged: a card identified as one of the stolen flagships has appeared for sale online, and authorities say three employees were involved in the heist.
Oderço Distribuidora, a Brazilian importer and distributor of computer hardware, recently revealed that the two pallets of RTX 5090s imported from the US went missing at the São Paulo airport while on the way to the company.
The firm's president, Oderço Matos, said the company decided to go public after receiving no explanation from public authorities or the airport itself. There was also no video footage of the pallets being moved, which seemed especially suspicious, and airport officials were reportedly unwilling to cooperate, either with the press or with Oderço.
A Brazilian TV news network has apparently identified one of the missing Zotac cards for sale on the online marketplace OLX for over $6,000, which is a good deal for an RTX 5090 these days.
In what could be a monumentally stupid error, the images uploaded by the seller included a very clear picture of the card's serial number, which linked it to the missing goods. There is nothing identifying the seller, and the listing has now been taken down.
GMC reports that, according to the police, the pallets arrived in Brazil on September 20 before being registered with customs on September 25. They were supposed to be shipped from Guarulhos to Curitiba, but the pallets could not be found when it was time to move them.
Police reports say that two outsourced forklift drivers were caught on CCTV removing the pallets from the warehouse on September 21. A third employee is alleged to have released the GPUs in the system so they could pass through electronic security checks. The pallets were then loaded onto a truck that has yet to be located.
There have been rumors that the RTX 5090 has been discontinued, with all future supplies of its GB202 GPUs heading to the more lucrative RTX Pro Blackwell cards. Nvidia recently denied this was true, but there are no RTX 5090s on its own US marketplace, and most retailer listings are over $9,300.
There were several incidents of Ampere graphics cards being stolen in 2020, 2021, and 2022, during the crypto craze and pandemic-related shortages. RTX 3090s were selling for around $2,000 to $2,500 at the time. Today, an RTX 5090 for that price would be considered an absolute bargain, illustrating why they're such an appealing target for criminals.