As long as there have been iPhones, there have been iPhone scams, but this one really beats them all. A woman who paid for a new rose gold iPhone 7 got two relatively worthless old iPhones instead, along with a trollish surprise.
Here’s what Mimi Jiang, in a Facebook post that’s going viral on Chinese social media, said she received:
Yep, it’s a “Polymerization” card from the popular anime and collectible card game franchise Yu-Gi-Oh. This fusion card combines two monsters to make a single, larger, more powerful one.
Yu-Gi-Oh CCG
According to Daniel Ahmad, an analyst in the Asian video games market, the joke is that the buyer can use the card to fuse the junky iPhone 3 and iPhone 4 together to make a single working 7.
Looks like the buyer just activated this scammer’s trap card. Metaphorically, not according to the actual rules of the card game Yu-Gi-Oh or the real-world laws of physics.
Jay Hathaway is a former senior writer who specialized in internet memes and weird online culture. He previously served as the Daily Dot’s news editor, was a staff writer at Gawker, and edited the classic websites Urlesque and Download Squad. His work has also appeared on nymag.com, suicidegirls.com, and the Morning News.
