(CNN) -- If you're handing over cash for a heavily discounted iPad from some random guy in a McDonald's parking lot or at a gas station, then yes, you should consider your purchase a risk. But when you're like Suzanne Nassise and you buy Apple's popular tablet from a well-known retailer, you expect it to be legit. Nassise says she walked out of a Walmart in Brockton, Massachusetts, last month with what she believed was a new $499 iPad. When she got home and opened the box, she told CNN affiliate WCVB, she thought, "'Wow, it's a little on the light side -- Apple's an elegant product.'"
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A Massachusetts woman says an iPad she bought from Walmart was fake
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A rash of similar cases have been reported in the past six months
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Walmart is aware of the problem and is working to address it
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Advice: Open the box in the store and check the serial number on the box as well
@placeholder at first declined to offer Nassise, the Massachusetts woman, an exchange or refund because of a policy against returned merchandise that has been unwrapped.