The spectacularly stupid Ashley McDowell was approached by two men in a McDonald's parking lot where they offered to sell her an iPad for $300. She only had $180, but they gave it to her anyway. When she got home, she found out it was really just a block of wood with an Apple logo painted on the back.

But it's sort of an amazing block of wood. This story is just too comical in so many ways. There's McDowell, thinking she scored the deal of a lifetime at the South Carolina Mickey D's and paid $180 for a piece of wood in a FedEx box. Apparently the con men selling her the goods claimed they bought them in bulk and were selling them at a discount. Then she calls the cops and they launch in investigation into her stupidity. Sorry, lady, but if you bought this story, the $180 should be considered a Stupid Tax and the crooks should get to keep it.

The crooks are totally crazy, too. Didn't they realize that they didn't need to make the block of wood look like an iPad? They even painted on a screen and some fake icons so that it would look like the real deal. Did they realize that the success of their felonious enterprise was contingent on the mark not taking it out of the box? This wasn't going to fool them! I mean, if you swipe the screen and get a splinter, you have to know something's up. I can just picture the two men sitting around for hours making all these fake iPads like Santa's elves in the workshop thinking they're going to strike it rich. Either that or they just painted it up to fuck with the people who they just ripped off. Actually, that's pretty badass.

[The Smoking Gun]