The global chip shortage has also allowed bad businessmen to find new gold mines. Downstream players who are out of stock are facing the risk of fakes that have never appeared before. Fake sellers are advertised to attract buyers with hard-to-find goods, driving X to detect fake chips. Sales of optical machines doubled compared with last year.
In addition to general consumer goods, even chip parts are now facing a crisis of fake products. The main reason is the global shortage of semiconductor parts. It also reflects that under the global economic recovery, the shortage of chips is putting home appliances, automobiles and other manufacturers into an embarrassing state.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that BotFactory, a 3D printer manufacturer dedicated to the manufacture of electronic parts, was unable to obtain microchips and eventually purchased chips from an AliExpress seller. However, the delivered goods were packaged in plastic instead of ordinary chips. Anti-static packaging.
Although the platform seller claimed that the microchips shipped were legal, Andrew Ippoliti, chief software engineer at BotFactory, suspected that some of these parts were fake, and the seller also had no news after the company raised questions.
Kristal Snider, vice president of ERAI, which oversees bad behavior in the electronic supply chain, said that almost every day there are new complaints, including remittance fraud incidents from buyers in more than 40 countries.
These unscrupulous companies used search engine advertisements to lure victims to purchase, and they disappeared after receiving the remittance. ERAI has now flagged dozens of high-risk websites, many of which are headquartered in Hong Kong.
Industry insiders and experts say that chip fraud incidents are often underestimated because the victimized companies are unwilling to publicly admit that they have been defrauded, and it is difficult for criminal litigation channels to provide justice, especially in transnational cases.
Before the chip shortage eases, fakes may still exist. Chip experts said that many buyers have improved their detection capabilities to avoid the potential risks of fakes. Bill Cardoso, CEO of Creative Electin Inc, which produces X-ray machines for detecting fakes, said that sales of monitoring equipment with an asking price of $90,000 this year have doubled from last year.
Dane Reynolds, vice president of electronics operations at Astute, an electronic component distributor, said that a total of five testing instruments have been purchased recently. With the surge in testing demand from customers, the company is analyzing more parts and discovering more defective products.