iPad scammers swindle $180 from South Carolina woman

If a stranger approached you in a McDonald's parking lot and offered to sell an iPad on the cheap, how would you react?

For Ashley McDowell, the answer was an immediate yes.

According to the sheriff's office in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, the 22-year-old McDowell was picking up food Monday night at a McDonald's when two men approached her in the parking lot.

After showing her a new iPad, the police report said, the guys told McDowell that they had purchased the tablet computers in bulk and were reselling them for $300 apiece.

McDowell evidently jumped at the chance to snag a cut-rate iPad but explained that she had only $180. The men decided to sell her one iPad at that price, she told police.

McDowell handed them the money and then waited to open the FedEx box supposedly containing the iPad until she got home -- where she proceeded to pull out not a shiny new Apple tablet, but a "piece of wood painted black with an Apple logo," the police report said.

The so-called "screen" is filled with mock iPad icons for email, photos and Safari -- all held down with black tape. The studious con men even included a "Best Buy sales ticket," police said.

McDowell told police that the swindlers were driving "a white Impala with no rims and no tint." One of the guys, she noted, had "a gold tooth."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/08/wooden-ipad-scam.html

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Thought this was pretty damn funny.  I suppose some people will buy anything with an Apple logo on it...  Too bad she wasn't smart enough to check it out till she got home...  I especially like the last sentence saying that one of the guys had a gold tooth. 

Enjoy your Apple product!

What an idiot, who buys something without looking at it first. The article says a FedEx package I'd be very suspicious unless it was in actual I-Pad packaging. Even then I wouldn't just trust someone on the street to be giving me a functional device I would want to see the device itself and turn it on.

Even with the device turned on I would still be sceptical, though I must admit at a cheap enough price I may buy that story if I saw the turned on device with the origional packaging.

You have to f*cking stupid to buy something from a stranger for $180 without even checking what's inside the box.

Was she blonde? :)

LMFAO, when I read the article, all I could think about was this:

Re-read the article, and laugh with me! hahahahaha

No, but I hear she is a female which is almost as bad.

Never buy electronics from a white van.

Actually it was an Impala. 

McDowell told police that the swindlers were driving "a white Impala with no rims and no tint." One of the guys, she noted, had "a gold tooth."

I get what you are implying though.  How about don't buy electronics from a vehicle from a person with a gold tooth without even looking/trying the device out?

Lol same here! Funny movie.