Abs of Steel: 6 Hong Kong women caught with iPhones strapped to torso at Chinese border in 3 weeks

One woman had a whopping 102 iPhones and 15 Tissot watches strapped to her body. Photo: Luohu Customs
One woman had a whopping 102 iPhones and 15 Tissot watches strapped to her body. Photo: Luohu Customs

It seems like girdles have become all the rage among Hong Kong women — not for fashion so much as circumventing the authorities, mind you. In the last three weeks, six Hong Kong women have been caught attempting to smuggle iPhones (among other things) into China by attaching them to their midsections with girdle-like garments.

Five of the aforementioned women were arrested within half an hour on Wednesday (July 19) by Shenzhen customs authorities. According to Oriental Daily, the first suspect was searched at 6pm after customs officers noticed that she was “walking strangely” and seemed suspicious.

After a search of the woman’s bag yielded nothing, a female officer noticed that she was standing “very stiffly” and frisked her, finding 10 new iPhone 7s strapped to her torso in a girdle. Four other women wearing similar contraptions were apprehended in the next 30 minutes.

The five women, who were all in their 20s, were found to be carrying a combined 18 iPhone 7s and 688 Intel brand computer processor chips, worth a total of around RMB8 million (HKD9.2 million). Their prize? Between RMB200 to RMB 500 (HKD230 to HKD576) each.

Despite the combined worth of their stash, however, the five women’s parallel trading attempts pale in comparison to that of the Hongkonger who tried to smuggle over a hundred luxury gadgets through Lo Wu customs last month.

Last week, local media outlets reported that a Hong Kong woman was caught at the border with 102 iPhones and 15 Tissot watches bound to her torso on June 30. Unsurprisingly, she set off the metal detector. The unidentified woman’s hijinks even made it onto US talk show Late Night with Seth Meyers (2:28 minute mark).

The smuggler had a combined 20 kilograms worth of undeclared items strapped to her body, resulting in a “bulky” appearance and abnormal gait which first alerted authorities at the checkpoint, Mingpao reports.

It seems like clunky electronics aren’t the only thing parallel traders are smuggling nowadays, however — on July 4, a local woman was found to have 124 diamonds (worth HKD2.4 million) taped to her breasts while passing through Sha Tau Kok Control Point, HK01 reports.

Importing or exporting unmanifested cargo bears a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment and a HKD50,000 fine.



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