Asus and Chinese police thwart $5 million dollar extortion attempt

Beijing (China) - Asus and the Beijing police have thwarted a $5 million dollar extortion attempt. A man and women threatened that Asus had been using engineering sample CPUs in their laptops and demanded cash in return for not going to the media.

The women had bought an Asus laptop for 20,000 RMB or about $2480 and complained three days later - when returning the laptop - about stability problems. Asus technicians fixed the laptop and returned it to her.

The woman, this time with a male friend, returned to Asus’ support once again : They presented the laptop that contained an engineering sample CPU and demanded $5 million in exchange for not tipping the media with an information bit that Asus regularly sells grey market CPUs in their laptops.

Asus began their own investigation and said that it was able to discover several original Intel CPUs available for private purchase on the Internet. The company believes that the couple replaced the laptop’s CPU with an engineering sample and sold the original CPU on the Net.

Both suspects have been arrested by the Beijing police.