iPlank! Woman pays $180 for a black market iPad... and all she gets is a piece of wood

A woman thought she got a bargain when she bought what she thought was an iPad in a McDonald’s parking lot.

Ashley McDowell, 22, only discovered after she got home that she’d splashed out $180 – for an iPlank.

Instead of the cutting edge tablet, she got a block of painted wood with an Apple logo.

Ashley McDowell spent $180 for iPad, but when she got home she discovered she's bought a piece of painted wood with an Apple logo on it

Miss McDowell told the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s office in South Carolina that she was scammed by two men who approached her on Monday night and offered to sell her a cheap iPad.

The men claimed they bought the computers in bulk and were selling them at a cut rate $300 each, well below the regular list price of $499.

Although Miss McDowell said she only had $180, the men quickly agreed to the additional discount and she paid out the cash without checking inside the box.

It was only later that she opened the FedEx packaging to find she’d been duped.

The screen was painted, framed with black tape and had pasted icons for a web browser, email inbox and iPhoto. A fake Best Buy sales receipt was also in the box.