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Apple Investigators Posed as Police in New Lost iPhone Prototype Search?

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MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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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.

cava22-sf-0445-500x333.jpg



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

Article Link: Apple Investigators Posed as Police in New Lost iPhone Prototype Search?
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/02/apple-investigators-posed-as-police-in-new-lost-iphone-prototype-search/
Macopotamus

Macopotamus

macrumors regular
Jun 22, 2010
186
0
edit: ok never mind I read the report from SFWeekly and something is clearly going on
 
Last edited:
arn

arn

macrumors god
Staff member
Apr 9, 2001
16,362
5,795
Macopotamus said:
What's more likely is that CNET ran with some fictitious story without corroborating any evidence because they knew it would get attention, and ran a massively successful campaign to advertise for Cava 22 the ceviche bar. Maybe the writers of Cnets article are friends or were paid by Cava 22? Remember, they have lime flavored shrimp ceviche!
Click to expand...

I think you need to read the story before knee-jerk continuing this meme.

arn
 
Popeye206

Popeye206

macrumors 68040
Sep 6, 2007
3,148
836
NE PA USA
THis is really sounding outlandish. Either a). whoever runs Apple security is a numbskull, or b). this story is false.

Seems very unlikely a company security department would go out on a which hunt for a prototype. Why would they not contact police first? Makes no sense and when things don't make sense, they usually are not true.
 
C

chainprayer

macrumors 6502a
Feb 10, 2008
638
2
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

Sir, I'm going to need to see some ID...

... No, not your license. Your Apple ID.
 
B

Bchagey

macrumors 6502
Feb 10, 2011
266
2
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_10 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E600 Safari/6533.18.5)

This is getting good.
 
arn

arn

macrumors god
Staff member
Apr 9, 2001
16,362
5,795
Popeye206 said:
THis is really sounding outlandish. Either a). whoever runs Apple security is a numbskull, or b). this story is false.

Seems very unlikely a company security department would go out on a which hunt for a prototype. Why would they not contact police first? Makes no sense and when things don't make sense, they usually are not true.
Click to expand...

Why would Apple, the most secretive company in the world, not contact the police who would make a police report?

hmm...

arn
 
bb426

bb426

macrumors 6502
Jun 7, 2011
421
131
California
He's probably the one who lost it, if it was indeed a lost prototype, and came back searching for it in hopes to save his a*s. If they really did pose as the police, they're in for it.

I feel bad for him either way, but we need to learn some responsibility here. Why the bars though?

And how stupid is this guy? At least use a spoofed number or even a frekin Textfree number and don't give him your real name. Jeez.
 
soco

soco

macrumors 68030
Dec 14, 2009
2,840
119
Yardley, PA
Macopotamus said:
OK now THIS is getting interesting, but I do have a very hard time believing that Apple lost yet another iPhone prototype in another bar
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Is it really that hard to believe? Their testers are a bunch of young kids, my age, who don't appreciate what's necessary to be responsible with their jobs the way Tim Cook-level guys do. They're just getting into the game. They're still enamoured by the joy of landing a job at Apple and living the life. In their youth, they're going out and spending some I-work-for-Apple-dammit cash on drinking with their buddies. So in a year's time, two of them left their test phones at the bar while doing so.

Also this:

arn said:
Why would Apple, the most secretive company in the world, not contact the police who would make a police report?

hmm...

arn
Click to expand...

It's not that crazy to believe. Especially given the craziness over last year. I wouldn't put it past Apple to try to avoid police involvement this time around as it did them little good last time. Sure, justice was served to a degree, but it was such a headache.
 
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