They clearly knew the engineer's name and information, since they went ahead and posted it on their website. So they could have easily tried to contact him and return it.
According to them, they didn't learn his name until after they had taken the pictures of the phone. Once they had learned his name they contacted him, confirmed that he'd lost the phone and made arrangements to return it.
He said he tried to call Apple's main line, which kind of sounds like the worst possible way to go about it, in fact it sounds like an intentionally ineffective way to do something so you can say you tried to do it. It sounds like a lame excuse, in other words. There are a lot of ways it could have easily been returned with some level of assurance that it would find it's owner.
Besides, the guy sold the thing for $5k and apparently reached out to Gizmodo and Engadget, I find it hard to believe he ever actually tried to return it.
Since 37prime doesn't have any evidence to prove the finder was lying about repeatedly attempting to return the phone to Apple, I'd like to assume he's not.
Lest, you know, someone make a similar accusation about either:
- me
- you
- 37prime
sometime in the future. This is one of the basis' upon which society works.
Yeah, that hypothesis seems a little fishy to me. 4 reasons:
1. He took money for the phone. You gotta know this is wrong.
2. He shopped around trying to dump the phone.
3. Unless the bar is keeping quiet, he didn't try to return it.
4. Apple seemed to reclaim it in a huge hurry once it got public on Gizmodo. That suggests they were taking its disclosure seriously. Did they think it WOULDN'T cause a huge uproar before it showed up on Gizmodo and then say, "Oh wait, the press _tells people about things!_ Duh, we should have seen this coming."
The story we've got so far has some pretty bizarre turns, and they really don't seem consistent with a bunch of unfortunate coincidences besetting good samaritans.
Fortunately, our opinion is meaningless. The whole point of these investigations is to determine wrongdoing.
The "owner" of the phone, which the finder of the phone knows the name of, where it was found etc, was actively looking for the phone.
The words of the finder was published by none other than Gizmodo, who definitely has everything to gain if the statements were true. That's conflict of interest.
To cite some others who had found this specific California Law:
California law regulates what you can do when you find lost property in the state. Section 2080 of the Civil Code provides that any person who finds and takes charge of a lost item acts as "a depositary for the owner." If the true owner is known, the finder must notify him/her/it within a reasonable time and "make restitution without compensation, except a reasonable charge for saving and taking care of the property."
Now, where was the name dropping by Gizmodo came from? The finder of the phone claimed that the phoned was "remotely bricked" the day after. Certainly someone knew who the phone was assigned to.
