Colin Marsh’s newly-purchased ‘iPad’ which was discovered to be clay (Picture: Masons)

A shopper who parted with £470 for an iPad only to find the inside of the box stuffed with clay had wanted an explanation but instead found himself being arrested on suspicion of fraud.

Colin Marsh, 47, bought the tablet at Tesco in Whitstable as a present for his ten-year-old daughter Maddie.

However, the family was shocked to discover that the inside of the box contained anything but the latest tablet.

Swindled Mr Marsh stormed back to the supermarket to demand a refund but was instead thrown in a cell for three hours.


‘I took it back to Tesco, but they said they couldn’t give me a refund and would need to carry out an investigation,’ he said.



‘Two days later, I got a call at about 8pm from the police asking if I could come down to the station to answer some questions.

‘I just thought they wanted to know what had happened, but the next thing I know I’m being bundled into a cell.’

Staff thought Mr Marsh, who runs a bakery in Herne Bay, had activated the tablet in his name and staged the stunt himself.

Colin Marsh pictured with his wife Sam and daughter Maddie, whom he bought the gadget for (Picture: Masons)

‘I just thought “how can that possibly be?”. It didn’t make any sense,’ he mused.

‘I’ve run my own successful businesses for 22 years, and I own my own house. Why would I want to scam Tesco out of a £470 iPad?’

He remained on bail for almost two months until police discovered that the tablet was activated under a different name in Wales.

The father-of-two has since got his money returned to him and had his bail cancelled but has been spared an apology. No further action was taken against him.

‘You just can’t treat people like that. It’s absolutely disgusting,’ he added.

Tesco has said that it is ‘disappointed’ the product was tampered with.

‘We would of course never knowingly have sold it to Mr Marsh and we apologise sincerely for the problems this has caused him,’ a spokesman said.

‘We immediately launched an internal investigation into how this happened and shared the information we gathered with the police, which we believe was the right thing to do.’