Online iPhone Scam Serves Up Real Apples

An Australian woman reportedly received real Apples instead of the iPhones she thought she was purchasing from a seller met through online classifieds site Gumtree.

The 21-year-old from Brisbane arranged with a female seller to purchase a pair of iPhones after posting an ad on the site, the Herald Sun reported last week. After meeting the seller at a McDonald's and handing over $1,500 Australian ($1,335), the scam victim was "handed two iPhone boxes that looked new but she did not check inside."

The buyer only discovered that the boxes contained apples of the fruit variety and not Apple smartphones when she returned home.

The Herald Sun did not specify the make and model of iPhone the woman thought she was purchasing. Apple sells unlocked versions of its latest handset, the iPhone 5 ( at Amazon), for prices ranging from $799 for the 16GB model to A$999 for the 64GB edition.

However, a statement from a local police official who sought to warn others to be wary of such scames indicated that the buyer believed she was getting a pretty good deal on the phones.

"Don't stay away because most people are doing the right thing, but be smart about what you buy. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is," Senior Constable Jess Hopkin from the Upper Mt. Gravatt Crime Prevention Unit was quoted as saying by the Herald Sun.

The paper didn't offer any details about the state of the fruit sold to the woman, but given the size of an iPhone box, they must have either been very small or else sliced up to fit inside.

The scammer's motivation for placing apples in the boxes, whether a calculated ploy or simply a sense of whimsy, was also unknown. It seems possible she thought she might avoid legal consequences by selling "apples" as promised, but given the buyer's clear request for "iPhones" and not simply "Apple products," that seems like a dubious defense.