Scammers Exploit Shortages, Cost Thermal Grizzly $40K+ In Fake Materials

Scammers Exploit Shortages, Cost Thermal Grizzly $40K+ in Fake Materials

Last updated: 2026/03/10 at 11:12 AM

News Room Published 10 March 2026

Material shortages and price hikes are encouraging more nefarious market tactics, as Thermal Grizzly found out. After ordering €40,000 worth of copper and aluminum from new sellers, the thermal interface maker found they were actually sheets of steel, coated with thin layers of the material it actually purchased.

The global AI infrastructure buildout is affecting memory and GPUs, as well as PCB drill bits, glass cloth, and prime production materials like copper. That’s driving up prices and incentivizing smuggling and scamming.

In this case, Thermal Grizzly was having difficulty sourcing enough copper and aluminum for its products, so it turned to Alibaba. Although it did its due diligence, researching the sales history of the companies it was dealing with, only paying 30% of the list price up-front, and spreading the order across two different suppliers, Thermal Grizzly still got burned.

The copper order appeared good at first glance; Thermal Grizzly snipped a corner off to test its purity, and it came back as pure copper. But when it tested its thermal properties, the results were poor. However, milling through the copper coating, it discovered cheap steel beneath.

In the aluminum order, the problem was similar, but hid its scam inside the box rather than the material. There were aluminum plates on top of the order, which helped it pass a quick visual inspection. Underneath, however, Thermal Grizzly found layers of steel plates and then large voids in the packaging—because steel weighs more than aluminum.

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“I still can hardly believe…that this happened twice at this scale. Embarrassing and also, it’s a financial problem,” says Roman Hartung, CEO of Thermal Grizzly, who estimates he’ll get back only about €3,000 from scrap. Hartung said he was hesitant to discuss the loss but hopes it helps prevent others from being scammed.