“If only there were an app to nail black-market extortionists,” Lachlan Cartwright and Kate Sheehy report for The New York Post.
“A cutthroat Asian group has set its crosshairs on the flagship Apple store on Fifth Avenue at 59th — scoring nearly every iPad 2 it can get its hands since the hot gizmo went on sale last week, to re-peddle at exorbitant prices here and in China,” Cartwright and Sheehy report. “The illicit, highly orchestrated scheme was in full gear yesterday, with a ringleader doling out massive wads of $100 bills to about five cohorts. The sidekicks then went up and down a line of about 200 Asians outside the store and around the corner, handing out the money.”
“‘We buy from here, then sell,” one of the organizers gloated outside the store, standing near one of several bulging, oversized shopping bags filled with the hot devices,” Cartwright and Sheehy report. “‘The ones we bought today are already on their way to China,’ where they haven’t gone on sale yet, said the boss. ‘It’s been pretty crazy.'”
Cartwright and Sheehy report, “When asked how much it would cost to buy a top-of-the-line iPad 2, which retails for no more than $829, one of the rogues demanded more than twice what it was just bought for — $1,700. Then, his boss jumped in — and said it would be “best if you bring $2,000. An Apple worker inside the store said he didn’t like what was going on — but he couldn’t do much about it.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No wonder it’s so tough to get an iPad 2 in NYC.