Hot deal - a new iPlank for only $211

The woman thought she was picking up a bargain, instead she received a poorly decorated piece of wood. Photo / Supplied

If a stranger approached you in a McDonald's parking lot and offered to sell an iPad on the cheap, how would you react?

For one American woman, the answer was an immediate yes.

Ashley McDowell, from Spartanburg County, South Carolina, was picking up food at a McDonald's on Monday night when two men approached her in the parking lot.

According to the sheriff's office 22-year-old Ms McDowell said the men showed her an iPad and told her that they had bought the tablet computers in bulk and were reselling them for US$300 ($353) each.

Ms McDowell evidently jumped at the chance to snag a cut-rate iPad but explained that she had only US$180 ($211).

The men decided to sell her one iPad at that price, she told police.

She handed them the money and then waited to open the FedEx box supposedly containing the iPad until she got home - where she found she had not bought a shiny new Apple tablet, but a "piece of wood painted black with an Apple logo", the police report said.

The so-called "screen" was filled with mock iPad icons for email, photos and Safari - all held down with black tape.

Ms McDowell told police that the swindlers were driving "a white Impala with no rims and no tint".

One of the guys, she noted, had "a gold tooth".

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