JACKSON, MS (Mississippi News Now) -
Authorities in the Dallas Texas metro have uncovered a ring of criminals peddling fake iPads. What's more alarming is that the criminal organization has ties to Jackson Mississippi. Detectives in the Dallas area working this case say they were able to track down some of the perpetrators using descriptions of their cars.
Lenardo Wilson, 26, and 29-year-old Reginal Course are in a Texas jail, charged with selling fake iPads. Now authorities there are looking deeper into their Mississippi crime ties.
Detective Alex Chasteen of the Grand Prairie Texas Police Department says, were seeing the links come back to Jackson on almost everything we think we have 10-15 players that are coming out of Jackson Mississippi and they're using either their wives, girlfriends or mothers or aunts to go rent the cars."
Police say Wilson and Course rented a car from Enterprise in Jackson, then drove to Texas to hawk their fake iPads, swindling residents out of thousands. They believe they're part of a large ring of criminals who hit cities across the south, based here in Jackson.
Chasteen says, "Just in my city we have 40-45 cases were a city about 170,000 that doesn't include the several hundred that come from Arlington, Dallas Fort Worth."
The victims were really just getting Fed Ex boxes, with a neatly wrapped picture frame. The only apple was the sticker on the back. This Dallas area case very similar one in Jackson a year ago when these two men were busted for selling a fake laptop to an off duty highway patrolman. The laptop, was really just a slab of plywood in bubble wrap.
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