Lost $4,000 due to RTX 5090 component swapping scam.

The practice of "mining" GPUs is not new, but it is expected to surge in 2026 due to a severe shortage of VRAM chips.

Amidst the exorbitant prices of Nvidia's top-of-the-line graphics cards, an eBay seller suffered a bitter experience when trading a ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 5090. At $4,000 (double the list price of the Founders Edition), what seemed like a bargain turned out to be an elaborate scam.

The sophisticated 'cicada corpse' trick.

According to the victim, the RTX 5090 was working perfectly when it was shipped. However, after receiving a return request from the customer and checking it again, the seller was shocked to discover that the card was "clinically dead".

It wasn't until the heatsink was removed to inspect the motherboard (PCB) that the horrifying truth was revealed: the entire Blackwell GPU chip and the expensive 32GB GDDR7 VRAM modules had been detached from the board. The scammer had used professional solder-soldering techniques to remove the most crucial components – which account for 80-90% of the card's value – and returned the aluminum frame and "empty" circuit board to the seller.

The thirst for AI chips and the ruthless underground market.

The practice of "GPU theft" is not new, but it is escalating in 2026 due to a severe shortage of VRAM chips. These stolen components are often smuggled to clandestine "laboratories" for recycling and installation on custom boards to power AI server systems that are desperately in need of computing power.

Disassembling the GPU and GDDR7 chips requires specialized equipment and high skill, suggesting this wasn't a spontaneous act by an individual user but rather an organized scam. For platforms like eBay, buyer protection policies sometimes become loopholes that criminals exploit, shifting all the losses onto the sellers.

This incident serves as a costly warning to anyone considering trading high-end components on e-commerce platforms. Until the supply of GPUs and memory stabilizes, "junk graphics cards"—shells without internal components—will remain a constant threat to the global supply chain.