In a classic case of caveat emptor, an Australian woman looking to buy Apple iPhones online ended up paying A$1,500 (S$1,700) for pieces of fruit.
The Herald Sun reported that the 21-year-old received a call shortly after she placed a 'want-to-buy' ad on classifieds website Gumtree.
The caller said she had two iPhones for sale, and the pair arranged to meet at a McDonald's restaurant for the transaction.
Upon payment, the buyer was handed two iPhone boxes that seemed new. She then left without checking their contents.
When she got home and opened the boxes, all she found in each were cut apples.
Also in the vicinity of a McDonald's restaurant, this time in a Spartanburg, South Carolina parking lot, a woman was conned into paying US$180 (S$230) for a piece of wood that had an Apple logo.
The 22-year-old was approached by two men who told her that they had bought some iPads in bulk and were looking to resell them at a cut-rate price, reported the Los Angeles Times in August 2011.
The buyer returned home to open the FedEx box she was handed, and, instead of an iPad, pulled out an iPlank.
The timber tablet came complete with mock app icons taped onto the screen as well as a Best Buy sales ticket.
In another parking lot in Manchester, a man thought he snagged a cheap iPad for £250 (S$490), only to discover that he (over)paid for a bag of potatoes.
The Manchester Evening News noted similar scams in the region. In April last year, a man was approached to buy two laptops for £1,400, but was, too, given a pack of potatoes by the scammers who drove off immediately after taking his money.
In May, another man who thought he was getting a laptop and an iPhone for £900 was given a rucksack containing bottles of water.
Back in Spartanburg, the city of the Wooden iPad, two women paid US$250 for a laptop and got a stack of paper instead. The con man was kind enough to include a power cord in the package.
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