Woman Scammed: Expects iPads, Gets Wood

Two men from Mississippi approached a woman in the Quick Trip gas station parking lot in Hazelwood and told they would sell her iPads and other electronic equipment.

Instead, she got a box with two photo frames made to look like iPads, a computer box with a wooden cutting board inside, and a box filled with bubble wrap and a USB cord. They took her $800.

Robert D. Williams, 28, of Jackson, MS, was charged Tuesday with physically taking property; Jarrod Buchanan, 25, also of Jackson, MS, was charged Oct. 11 with the same charge.

Florissant Police said after the men approached her at the QT at 7400 North Lindbergh, the woman asked them to follow her to Schnucks grocery store at 13987 New Halls Ferry Road in Florissant, where she withdrew money from an ATM.

The men told her to take a box from the back of their car that supposedly contained the electronics. As she did so, Buchanan grabbed the $800 from her wallet and the two men drove off in their car, police said.

The woman then discovered the phony merchandise.

Florissant Police said they were able to get Williams fingerprints from the fake iPad. He was arrested in the city of St. Louis.

Williams denied participating in the scam but couldn’t tell police how his fingerprints came to be on the fake iPad.

The woman and another witness picked Williams and Buchanan out of a photo lineup.

Williams and Buchanan are being held in St. Louis County jail on a $20,000 bond.

For more crime information on Hazelwood Patch, see the following articles: