Apparently, the idea of sitting down and grabbing a cup of coffee is so damn exciting that someone decided to use a stolen credit card to try and make it happen.
I’m sure you’ve been following the escalation of a particular charity auction on the site Charitybuzz – the one that offers a 30 minute to an hour-long coffee date with Apple CEO Tim Cook for the winner and a friend. Tim Cook is giving all of the money generated from the auction to the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with auctioning yourself for charity. It’s admirable, actually, and it has the ability to generate a game-changing amount of funding for the center.
The big surprise here is just how much people are willing to bid for the date.
Charitybuzz placed an estimated value of $50,000 on the date, but zealous bidders have eclipsed that mark – and then some. The bid topped $50,000 very quickly, and then exploded as the bidding reached $605,000 by last Friday night. Yep, you read that right. $605,000 for a short break with Tim Cook at Apple HQ in Cupertino.
Well, it turns out, there was something off about that $605,000 bid. Fortune noticed that this morning, the bid had fallen to $600,000. Why did it fall? Was it a glitch?
Nope. Charitybuzz confirmed that the top bid was removed when it was found out that it was placed with a stolen credit card.
But the fact remains, there is a legitimate $600,000 bid that’s currently winning this thing. And there are still 15 days left to go in the auction. To put this all in perspective, Charitybuzz’s previous record for something like this was set back in 2011 when someone paid $255,000 for some time with former President Bill Clinton.