Perhaps there’s a perfectly logical reason why the owner of a cell phone store would need to buy a bunch of brand new, still wrapped iPhones from a group of teenagers. I haven’t the foggiest clue what it might be mind you, but it could happen, I guess. But logical or not, happen it did over the summer outside of Detroit. And as you’ve probably already guessed if you’ve been here before and know what happens when somebody makes an odd sounding business deal to acquire something electronic, he didn’t exactly get what he paid for.
The three male teenagers, plus a fourth who has not been charged but remains under investigation, on Thursday sold a Metro PCS store owner in Auburn Hills, outside Detroit, what appeared to be brand new iPhones still in the box and sealed with factory plastic, the Auburn Hills Police Department said.
When the owner opened the box, however, they were filled instead with Play-Doh bricks.
But unlike most of these stories, this one has a happy ending in that our business man friend appears to have invested in the multiple brain cell market at some point, so had the presence of mind to get some contact information from the little brats. Little brats who, it appears, hadn’t yet gotten around to sinking any of their newly gotten fortune into lessons on how you should always give fake contact information to someone you’re ripping off. And so a second sale was arranged, one to which the local authorities were invited.
The four men returned to the store on Saturday with “more phones,” but fled before the deal was closed, police said. They were located and arrested shortly after that.
In a search of the teens’ rental car, police found a backpack with phone boxes filled with Play-Doh, about $500 in cash and clothes.
The three suspects have since entered not guilty pleas to charges of larceny by false pretenses and attempted larceny by false pretenses.
If this is what it looks like, I wonder if there are more cases floating around or if he was the first and they were planning to do it again. they pretty clearly had the makings of a decent little operation going here if everything is as it seems.