Apple Loses Iphone 5 in a San Francisco Bar... AGAIN

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Apple Loses Another iPhone Prototype at a Bar

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It feels like dejavu all over again. It was just a year ago that an employee at Apple lost an Iphone 4 prior to it's unveiling.

An Apple employee has lost a prototype iPhone at a bar, again. The iPhone was lost in late July at Cava 22, a Mexican restaurant and bar in San Francisco's Mission District, according to CNET:

A day or two after the phone was lost at San Francisco's Cava 22, which describes itself as a "tequila lounge" that also serves lime-marinated shrimp ceviche, Apple representatives contacted San Francisco police, saying the device was priceless and the company was desperate to secure its safe return, the source said. Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like.

Apple tracked the iPhone to a home in San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood. San Francisco police and Apple investigators reportedly spoke to a man in his twenties about the device, but he denied knowing about the lost phone. After a search, they found nothing. There is no word if Apple ever got the phone back. A spokesperson for the San Francisco Police Department told CNET that Apple did not file a police report about the missing phone.

Readers will remember that last year Apple lost an early prototype of the iPhone 4 at a bar in Redwood City near the company's headquarters. That device was picked up by another customer and sold to tech site Gizmodo. That sequence of events triggered a criminal investigation which ended just this month.

A late-July iPhone in field testing would presumably have been the upcoming iPhone 5 or perhaps the low-cost iPhone 4.
 
Seems like lost might be a loose term at Apple....
 
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you prefer the word "planted"? ;)
 
It seems like a routine from Apple. It's either done by accident or on purpose.
 
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The plot thickens

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Apple in late July had once again lost an iPhone prototype in a bar, mirroring an event that took place in 2010 ahead of the iPhone 4 launch. According to the report, Apple and San Francisco police tracked the device to a home in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco and conducted a search, but were unable to find the device.

That account was quickly called into question yesterday after the San Francisco Police Department reported that it had no records of such an investigation. SF Weekly follows up with a new report today interviewing the man whose home was searched and suggesting that Apple security personnel may have posed as police officers during the search, a criminal offense. Alternatively, police officers may have improperly assisted in the investigation without properly documenting their work.

[Sergio] Calderón said that at about 6 p.m. six people -- four men and two women -- wearing badges of some kind showed up at his door. "They said, 'Hey, Sergio, we're from the San Francisco Police Department.'" He said they asked him whether he had been at Cava 22 over the weekend (he had) and told him that they had traced a lost iPhone to his home using GPS.

At no point, he said, did any of the visitors say they were working on behalf of Apple or say they were looking for an iPhone 5 prototype.

Calderón claims that he allowed the investigators to search his home and car and to examine a computer to determine whether the lost iPhone had been synced with it. Coming away from the search empty handed, the investigators reportedly offered Calderón $300 to return the phone and left a phone number for him to contact them if he could offer further information on the device.

As the visitors left, one of them -- a man named "Tony" -- gave Calderón his phone number and asked him to call if he had further information about the lost phone. Calderón shared the man's phone number with SF Weekly.

The phone was answered by Anthony Colon, who confirmed to us he is an employee of Apple but declined to comment further. According to a public profile on the website LinkedIn, Colon, a former San Jose Police sergeant, is employed as a "senior investigator" at Apple.

A San Francisco Police Department spokesman has expressed concern about the purported series of events, noting that the department will investigate the incident.

Anthony Colon's LinkedIn profile has been deleted but we've saved an image of it.
 
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Contrary to previous statements, SFWeekly now reports that the San Francisco Police Department did assist Apple investigators with the search of a lost iPhone 5. An earlier report suggested that Apple had acted on its own without the participation of the police department.

Contradicting past statements that no records exist of police involvement in the search for the lost prototype, San Francisco Police Department spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield now tells SF Weekly that "three or four" SFPD officers accompanied two Apple security officials in an unusual search of a Bernal Heights man's home.

The four plainclothes San Francisco Department Police officers accompanied two Apple investigators to the home of Sergio Calderón. According to the most recent report, only the two Apple employees entered the home and searched while the four police officers remained outside.

SFWeekly suggests that there are some questions now why this incident was not recorded as per standard procedure. San Francisco Police Department spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield now says "Apple came to us saying that they were looking for a lost item, and some plainclothes officers responded out to the house with them. My understanding is that they stood outside. They just assisted Apple to the address."

The previous report had suggested that Apple investigators may have impersonated the police which is a criminal offense. It seems now that this was not the case.

An Apple employee reportedly lost this iPhone prototype in a restaurant/bar in late July. It seems, so far, that CNet's original account of the tale was accurate.
 
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