Sharron Laverne Parrish Jr scammed Apple out of $329,237

APPLE may be one of the world’s most hi-tech companies but a guy managed to fleece them 42 times in a very low-tech way.

(FILES) This September 17, 2012 file photo shows the Apple logo on the Apple store in New York. Apple will pay up to $400 million to compensate consumers for illegal price-fixing conspiracy for electronic books, officials said July 16, 2014. The settlement would reimburse consumers in 33 states whose authorities sought damages for Apple's price-fixing, according to a statement from New York's attorney general. But the settlement is contingent on the verdict being upheld in a July 2013 federal court ruling that Apple violated antitrust laws by orchestrating a conspiracy with five publishers to raise e-book prices. AFP PHOTO/DON EMMERT

WHEN you think of Apple, you may think of high technologies and innovation. But that didn’t stop the company from being scammed by one man using a low-key trick 42 times.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, Florida man Sharron Laverne Parrish Jr, aged 24, allegedly defrauded Apple 42 times in 16 states, totalling $A329,237.

In the US, when a debit card is rejected because of insufficient funds, the store can punch in a manual override code which forces the transaction to go through. The code is a specific number of digits but the combination of the code is essentially irrelevant. The EFTPOS terminal will accept any number sequence.

What the brazen Mr Parrish allegedly did was trick an Apple store employee into thinking he was on the phone with the bank and then give her the code “the bank” was reciting to him over the phone.

All the tech in the world couldn’t stop Mr Parrish from tricking Apple’s employees 42 times.

He pulled this off 42 times all over the country, actually hitting one store twice. He also allegedly tried it with a car rental company and hotel in Seattle.

Mr Parrish may have drawn inspiration from a similar case in New Jersey in which a woman was sentenced for three years for pulling the same trick at Victoria’s Secret, Banana Republic and other stores to the tune of $592,952.

Mr Parrish’s case is still before the court but he was held without bail.

Originally published as Sharron Laverne Parrish Jr scammed Apple out of $329,237