A graphics card from a $470,000 RTX 5090 shipment stolen at a Brazilian airport has turned up for sale online, and police say they have identified three employees tied to the theft.
A Brazilian TV news network appears to have spotted a Zotac Gaming RTX 5090 listed on the marketplace OLX for over $6,000. The seller posted clear photos of the card's serial number, which linked it to the missing cargo. Nothing identifies the seller, and the listing has since been taken down.
Police information reported by Brazilian media lays out how the cards disappeared. The shipment, imported from the United States and valued at nearly $500,000, arrived in Brazil on September 20. Police believe two outsourced forklift operators removed the two pallets from the warehouse on September 21, an act apparently recorded by CCTV. Police said the equipment went onto a truck and has not been seen since. A third employee, described as a "checker", is said to have released the merchandise from the system so it could pass electronic controls.
The target makes sense. The RTX 5090 is the best consumer gaming GPU on the market, but demand for AI computing has pushed it out of conventional retail. It now fetches upwards of $10,000 in the few marketplaces that carry it, nearly always through third-party sellers. A pallet of them is worth more than most cargo its size.
The listing also shows the trouble with stealing a product this scarce. Each card carries a serial number, and a buyer paying thousands of dollars expects proof the card is genuine. The photo that reassures a buyer is the same one that lets investigators match it to a manifest. The $6,000 asking price, well below the $10,000-plus seen elsewhere, suggests the seller wanted a quick sale, though the source does not say why.
Guarulhos International Airport confirmed in a statement that "The investigation of the facts is the responsibility of the competent authorities to clarify the circumstances of what happened."