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Authorities arrested 26 suspects who used drones to fly two
200-meter (660-feet) cables between Hong Kong and the mainland
to transport refurbished iPhones with a total value of 500
million yuan, the paper said in a report on the crackdown by
Shenzhen and Hong Kong customs.
"It's the first case found in China that drones were being used
in cross-border smuggling crimes," the Legal Daily reported,
citing a news conference held by Shenzhen customs on Thursday.
The smugglers usually operated after midnight and only needed
seconds to transport small bags holding more than 10 iPhones
using the drones, the report quoted customs as saying. The gang
could smuggle as many as 15,000 phones across the border in one
night, it said.
Regulating the use of drones has become an important task for
China, the world's largest manufacturer of consumer drones.
China published strict rules last year to tackle incidents of
drones straying into aircraft flight paths, including requiring
owners of civilian drones to register craft up to a certain
weight under their real names.
Shenzhen customs was quoted by the Legal Daily as saying it
would closely monitor new types of smuggling with high-tech
devices and enhance their capability with technical equipment,
including drones and high-resolution monitors, to detect
smuggling activity.
(Reporting by Lusha Zhang and Se Young Lee; Editing by Paul Tait)
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