A Seller Loses iPhone To A Scammer Who Paid With Fake Notes, ‘PROPS’ Stamped In Plain Sight Rohail Saleem • at EDT Add on Google You should always enter into peer-to-peer transactions with circumspection and a fair degree of cautious wariness. That's the painful lesson a guileless Australian is now learning after being scammed out of his Apple iPhone by a crafty trickster. A quick-to-trust Australian becomes a victim of obviously fake bank notes, loses his Apple iPhone to a scammer Imagine you put up your old iPhone for sale on an online marketplace. After a while, you get a ping along with a fairly good offer. Everything checks out, and you ask the buyer to come by your home to collect the iPhone after paying in cash. Related Story Apple Gets A Shout-Out And Prime Airtime At Google’s Cloud Next 2026 Event As Siri Quietly Switches to GeminiSo far so good. However, Alex Hart, a resident of an Adelaide suburb called Lightsview, stumbled at a critical point in what should have been a fairly ordinary exchange: he failed to examine the bank notes to judge their authenticity. Hart sold his iPhone for AUD 350. However, what he actually received were six manifestly fake AUD 50 bank notes, replete with the text "PROPS" printed on each counterfeit note. To be fair, the buyer handed Hart these notes in an arrangement that tried to hide their paper-like texture, interspersing them with genuine AUD 10 and AUD 20 bills. Even so, had Hart gone through even a perfunctory of exercise of examining those bank notes prior to closing the deal, he could have sidestepped this crude fraud fairly easily. This episode goes to show that a little common sense combined with some skepticism and caution in such deals can go a long way in protecting oneself from blatant fraud. About the : Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur. Follow on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds. Further Reading Apple’s 200MP Telephoto and Variable Aperture are Coming to iPhone, but Digital Chat Station Warns of a “Staggered Rollout” Tim Cook Explains His Apple Exit As John Ternus Doubles Down On AI In Internal Workflows The Upgraded 14-Inch M5 MacBook Pro With 24GB Unified RAM And 1TB SSD Becomes A Mouth-Watering Deal On Amazon Thanks To A New $140 Discount Apple to Downgrade The Base iPhone 18 With M12+ Display Tech From 2023 to Fund Pro-Tier Flagships Read all on A Seller Loses iPhone To A Scammer Who Paid With Fake Notes, ‘PROPS’ Stamped In Plain Sight
