I found an iPhone 4S

If you cant access the phone then there is no hope of you locating the owner. Nothing you can do.

 

What carrier is the iPhone on? Maybe take out the SIM and see.

If its AT&T maybe you can take it to a place where AT&T has free WiFi hotspot and see if the phone automatically connects and try to see if Siri works.

 

So glad Apple introduced activation lock

 

the imei is printed inside, and the police use that to return to provider.

 

Why not just hand it over to the police or something? If I were you, that's what I would have did. Anyway, great job that you bothered to return it to the owner

 

wha??

First off, he is trying to find out who the owner is, to return it to them, not break into the phone to get whatever is on the phone.

Second, speaking as the son of a police officer, if the OP does turn it into the police, and it is reported as stolen, how is the police going to know that the OP was not the one who stole it? If they have a report of it being stolen, they could easily arrest the OP for possession of stolen property.

Not saying that that would happen, but the situation does exist. So why not play the good samaritan and try to find the owner themselves and get it to them?

In this case, there is more than one way to do the right thing; and the better option, without getting the police involved, would be to try to find the owner and get the iPhone back to them.

BL.

 

Bold above does not make any sense. Why would the thief turn it in ? Why would the police think he is the one that took it from the owner after turning it in. That makes no sense. A found property report would be made and connect it to a thief report if there is one and that would be it.

How do I know ? I'm a retired police detective.

Now, if he did not turn it in, and the OP knew that it was stolen, and the police for some reason stopped him for some reason, saw the phone and ran it in the police data base, and it came back stolen, the OP could be arrested for either receiving stolen property or the original thief unless the OP had some evidence that he did in fact find it.

 

I don't agree with your post:

1. If turning property into the police guaranteed you'll get arrested for possession of stolen property nobody would do do,

2. Unfortunately in today's day and age it is much safer to turn property into the police rather than playing DIY private eye.

 

If the phone is locked then there is nothing OP can do to find the owner. Either he turns it to the police or keeps it.
owner.

 

Every once in a while a thread like this pops up, and I am always astounded at how much faith people put into police to play Sherlock Holmes and find the correct owner of the phone. Maybe if you live in a town of fifty people something like this will happen. More often than not, the police are way busy taking care of actual crime.

It has been established that it's a Verizon phone. Verizon has all of the information necessary to get this phone to its rightful owner, should they choose to do so. The police DO NOT have that information. The only place it would make snese to turn this phone in would be a Verizon store. Leave it to them to do the right thing as you have already exhausted all resources available to you in finding the owner.

 

Good for you. There aren't very many people that find an iphone on the sidewalk and try and locate the original owner. Heck, it's a free 50 dollar bill. Kudos to you and I hope you find the owner. Maybe he'll reward you or something.

 

Are you implying that he's doing the wrong thing? The police won't do anything. They'll stick it in a drawer and let someone come and find it. OP is going out of his way to try get it back home.

What about this has you so annoyed?