Aussie coppers are warning of a bloke posing as an Apple sales rep who has been flogging bags of cornflour and Chinese newspapers pretending that they are iPads and iPhones.

Normally we would have thought that it would be a tough sale to convince an Apple fanboy that bags of cornflower and old newspapers were shiny Apple gear, but it seems the conman thinks that if you wave something with an Apple logo on it, you will have a queue of fanboys in front of you in seconds. Fair enough, as this has been Jobs' Mob's business model for a while.

Police say the scammer went to a restaurant at suburban Smithfield on Monday with what appeared to be a genuine Apple identity card and offered Apple iPads and iPhones for sale at a discounted rate for a bulk purchase. His victim inspected looked at some genuine goods then negotiated a $6000 deal for five iPads and 10 iPhones.

The fake salesman handed over what appeared to be the identical packages and left with the cash. Inside the packages were the corn flour and Chinese newspapers, which were unable to connect to iTunes. According to the Sydney Morning Herald the bloke had a heavy European accent, was of Mediterranean appearance aged about 30 to 35, 165 centimetres tall and with a stocky build and short brown to grey hair.

More here.