If you can’t get your hands on an iPad 2, then blame these guys.
Scalpers have been clearing out Apple stores in the U.S. then selling the device in Hong Kong for a $1,200 profit.
Leaders of Asian gangs have been seen doling out $100 bills to 20 ‘shoppers’ who surge into stores when the doors open and clear the shelves.
The iPads are then shipped abroad where the mark up is 250 per cent.
Apple has said the device should be sold for no more than $829 but it is fetching $2,000 in Hong Kong.
The shameful practice has been observed a number of times at Apple’s flagship New York store on Fifth Avenue.
One of the organisers gloated outside the store than they ‘buy from here, then sell’.
‘The ones we bought today are already on their way to China, where they haven’t gone on sale yet.’ the boss told the New York Post. ‘It’s been pretty crazy.’
The demand has been fuelled because the iPad 2 has not been released in Hong Kong where the wealthy elite are prepared to pay through the nose to get theirs early.
‘Hong Kong doesn’t have any iPads, and the people here have money,’ one shopkeeper in the city said.
In New York, legitimate customers have been left empty-handed with some making three trips to try and get their hands in an iPad 2.
‘I walked right up to the guy with all the bags and said: “Shame on you”,’ said one female customer, who declined to give her name.
‘He just laughed at me. I talked to the manager at the store. I said: “They’re dealing them right now upstairs on private property.” They said: “There’s nothing we can do.”‘
According to the Post, an Apple worker inside the flagship store admitted that there was nothing they could do, even if they did not like it.
‘Listen, we all know what’s going on here. I find it sad and disgusting,’ he said. ‘These people are preventing ordinary folks from getting their hands on an iPad.’
Apple stores in major U.S. cities sold out of the iPad 2 within hours of its launch earlier this month.
By two days later the online store was already showing a delay of three to four weeks for all iPad 2 models.
Supplies were also scarce at retailers like Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart.
Analysts estimate Apple sold in the range of 400,000 to 600,000 iPad 2s in three days, roughly the same amount of the original that sold in a week.
Apple did not return calls for comment.
