Scam Artists Trick Future Shop and Best Buy into Selling Canadians Clay iPads [Edited]

In a bizarre trick, scam artists have been buying iPads in cash from Future Shop and Best Buy, replacing them with clay models, then returning them and bolting for the door - leaving with hundreds of dollars in their pockets AND the real iPad. Future Shop and Best Buy unknowingly restocked and sold the fakes to unknowing consumers.

The customers have had trouble convincing the stores they weren't the scam artists. One by the name of Mark Sandhu bought a clay iPad for his wife for Christmas, and after realizing it was a fake, tried to return it - only to get treated like a criminal. Quoth CTV:

Sandhu said initially his wife Sundeep thought the clay, flattened into the shape of an iPad and housed inside a Ziploc baggie, was actually a protective layer over their new pricey present.

"My wife was excited when she saw this, [saying] ‘oh my God they take care of their stuff,' and then we saw this …and that kind of threw us off a little," Sandhu said, adding that there was also a clay cube where the charger should be in the box. "I was shocked. I did not expect this from Future Shop. When you purchase something from there you expect the product to be there," he said.

Worried that other consumers were at risk, Sandhu brought the fake product back to the downtown Vancouver location on Boxing Day. But he said he was treated like a criminal by the female manager. "Maybe the way I was dressed, I don't know," he said. "She made me feel like I'm trying to scam them out of $700. I was the one getting scammed." 

"Customers don't expect to receive this kind of product from Future Shop, so it's a very serious matter and something we are addressing right away for anyone who has been impacted," spokesperson Elliott Chun said. "It really saddens Future Shop to know that people stoop to this type of level to be opportunistic and make money in this sort of organized way."

The retail giants have launched a major fraud investigation to sort this matter out.

Edited for accuracy.