Imagine spending $3,000 on Nvidia’s latest GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card only to unbox a pile of backpacks instead. That’s what happened to one unlucky consumer who encountered a bizarre case of product tampering with his GPU purchase.
The buyer, who goes by JamesFerg650 on Reddit, purchased an RTX 5090 unit from Micro Center’s new store in Santa Clara, California. It opened this week, with plenty of GPUs in stock, including the hard-to-find RTX 5090.
However, when JamesFerg650 unboxed a Zotac RTX 5090 model, he realized it contained three backpacks—no GPU. “It hurts. I work damn hard for my money and this is a painful one to deal with,” he wrote on Reddit, noting the box was heavy enough to make him think it contained actual PC hardware inside.
Fortunately, Micro Center moved quickly to exchange the purchase with an actual graphics card. During that process, JamesFerg650 learned that Micro Center had discovered 31 additional Zotac RTX 5090 units with backpacks inside instead of GPUs.
“They tracked it back to the supplier level,” he wrote. “It was like this before it ever got to their store and the 32 total, including mine, were considered ‘new in box.’ Once they began searching and nit picking the difference, it helped them filter and find the others that were tampered with.”
Micro Center also said it suspects the Zotac units were compromised at a factory in China before the boxes were sealed. The retailer believes it’s found all the tampered units.
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In addition, Zotac USA wrote to JamesFerg650 on Reddit, saying: “Well, this is definitely not okay. Would you mind answering a few questions via DM? We’d like to look into this.”
The incident demonstrates how the pricey RTX 5090 is a target for fraudsters, although supply chain-level scams are rare. In the meantime, JamesFerg650 is advising in-store customers to consider opening their GPU boxes before they leave the location.
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About Michael Kan
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