China and various 3rd world countries have been "recycling" components this way for decades now. Problem with it is that there have always been a large market of counterfeit or remarked chips and there's no quality control anywhere. You could have a trustworthy agent getting you stuff, but even they can be duped with fake/relabeled parts.
It's quite profitable for brokers, and there are entire towns dedicated to recycling electronics. Because there are no environmental laws and parts are paid for per diem, the labor cost associated with recovering scrapped chips is pennies. All the while they poison the water, land and air they breathe with toxic substances and heavy metals like lead, cadmium and arsenic, among other things.
China has slowed way down in the recycling though, since they stopped accepting the world's eWaste being shipped back to them around a decade ago. Now it goes to poor African countries.