In a new variation on the “brick in a box” scam, a South Carolina woman who thought she purchased an iPad from two men in a McDonald’s parking lot discovered yesterday that the purported tablet was actually “a piece of wood painted black with an Apple logo.”
According to a Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office report, Ashley McDowell, 22, told deputies that she was approached by two black males who claimed to have purchased iPads in bulk and were selling them for $300 apiece. After McDowell explained that she only had $180, the duo agreed to sell her the device at a cut rate.
But when McDowell drove home and opened the FedEx box containing the iPad, she instead discovered the wood with the Apple logo. The “screen”–which was framed with black tape–included replicas of iPad icons for Safari, mail, photos, and an iPod. It also had what cops described as a “Best Buy sales ticket…”
Deputies have dusted the phony iPad for fingerprints. McDowell told probers that the swindlers were driving “a white Impala with no rims and no tint.” One of the men, she noted, “had a gold tooth.”
Har.
How could she tell the difference?
you get what you pay for.
I wonder what part of the parking lot their customer service center was located.
Looks legit to me.
Gee… she bought an ipad at more then half off from two guys selling them from the trunk of the car. Who would have thought that it was a scam?
What? No puns about bugs/termites?
If only it was a crime to be stupid.
#7 – It can be if your crime of stupidity involves receiving stolen property.
Genius!
What did you expect? A woman shopper was offered an item “On Sale”. 😉
And in a related story, thousands of people have recently purchased HP TouchPads for between $99 and $149 even though HP has abandoned the platform.
Remarkably, many people are also bidding as high as $300 for the same obsolete piece of junk on ebay.
It still works though – obsolete or not!
That’s leaving aside the people who are simply installing Android on it.
Think of it as; Mercedes were selling off E class limousines for $5000 announcing they are getting out of the taxi businesses. People were buying them to drive themselves
Apple fanboys would pay $180 for an iPlank.
I’m sure it works just fine… the dumb buyer probably forgot to plug it in.
Moral: Never trust a man with a gold toof.
At least she doesn’t have to worry about it getting bricked.
I have 8 Ipads for sale. Half Price!!
http://i.imgur.com/j4X8e.jpg
Get em b4 theyr’e gone!!!
Wow! What an iFool.
This wouldn’t happen if we were regulate parking lot salesmen.
What’s that about a fool and their money being lucky to get together in the first place.
I have great respect for the sellers for taking the time to half ass some apple logo stuff and paint it black.
They didn’t have to put that much effort in but they did.
You know what.
She’s 22 years old.
Old enough to vote.
iWood
In some respects the odd thing is that these guys went to the trouble of making their wooden Ipad vaguely resemble the real thing. Of course anyone who opened the box was going to know it wasn’t the real thing so why bother? A sense of humor?
I would have assumed based on the offer that it was stolen but then I’d have assumed that anyone with a brain would have demanded to see the unit before parting with the cash even if they were willing to purchase stolen property.
I for one feel very sad for the lady and hope that Apple PR can somehow find a way for this poor unfortunate.
I heard that Apple is going after the two sellers for copyright infringement and some patents!
Holy Cow! I just read 26 posts and nobody commented about how the article noted that the salesmen were black. Some of the “low side of the bell curve” (former) habitues here must have left.
Another Apple employee ‘accidentally’ left another prototype electronic device in another bar… aaaand there it is!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hP0kWqJJZa4
Recently I bought a “Modification Kit” for $5 from Craigs list. It was supposed to have a metal nipper which is all I wanted from the kit. The guy said he had never even openned the box. We met at his place at work ((a salesman of some kind of service)) and the box looked unopened, original, and legit. I handed him 5 bucks and then said: “Let’s open it up and make sure everything is there.” and he said he had never opened it. I laughed and said I was joking–on my way to Fry’s for a hard drive after all.
Got home. Everything was in the kit except the metal nipper. I called the guy up and told him we should have opened the box just to confirm that HE had not been ripped off when he had bought the modification kit.
I’m still kinda “shocked” that somebody would scam someone else for 5 – five – dollar while letting the victim know where they worked.
So, I actually check all my large dollar purchases at the store to protect against the brick scam. Large dollar used to be about $50 and I’ve never found a brick==in a store.
I still wonder what is more important: 5 bucks or taking life easy, as it comes?
5 bucks. Guy had all his teeth too.
Ha, ha.