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Comment by danieldon | Hacker News Reader

"That's a coincidence because I sell other people's belongings"

Well put.

IIRC, the guy tried several times to return it to Apple, and they kept ignoring him. And he waited three weeks before selling it, giving them ample time to get in touch with him if it was really theirs. Since Apple remotely bricked it, he had no way of getting in touch with Gray or any of his friends/colleagues directly.

So it really seems like the guy's options were to sell it to Gizmodo, or let it sit in a drawer forever. If the account above is accurate, then I don't think it's fair to imply the guy was acting in bad faith.

Then how did Gizmodo find out it was Gray's? Seems like someone knew that along the way and could have tried that avenue.

  just six pages of applications. One of them was Facebook.
  And there, on the Facebook screen, was the Apple engineer,
  Gray Powell.

Or to send it to Apple in a simple padded mailer. Or to bring it to the police. Seriously, his "only option" was to tell it to a gossip blog for thousands of dollars?

So Apple loses this thing that's worth a lot to them. Critical "trade secrets". He tries to return it, they don't say anything. He could give the super-valuable thing he recovered back to him for free, but why should he? What obligation does he have to work for Apple for free?

Instead, he decided to cash in. Seems reasonable to me.

> "He could give the super-valuable thing he recovered back to him for free, but why should he?"

Because it's illegal to keep it - if he knows who it belongs to he is legally compelled to return it to its owner.

Them pesky laws, always getting in the way of profit.

Arguably, Apple didn't want the phone, since he tried to return it and they didn't care. So, he eBayed it. (Or the moral equivalent thereof.)

It's fundamentally the same as the classic "found wallet". If it isn't claimed, it reverts to "finders keepers". So I have no idea why people are voting you down.

Not from a legal perspective.

If you turn it into the police, and it isn't found...

See, I'm not sure he actually tried to return it.

He didn't give it to the establishment he found it at. He didn't even contact the bar to see if the owner has been around to claim it.

He knew the full name and Facebook profile of the owner, based on the app on the phone before it was bricked. No attempt was made to contact this guy, despite the fact that he's dead simple to find on LinkedIn, Facebook (!), Twitter, etc.

He didn't turn it into any sort of law enforcement or other lost and found service.

What did he do? He called a few numbers where it's practically guaranteed people wouldn't believe he had a prototype iPhone. Any avenue where the phone had a reasonable chance of being actually returned was ignored. This looks highly suspicious. I would argue he is legally culpable for the phone's theft (but IANAL), but in either case I do not think this guy can claim that he tried to return the phone in good faith.

Actually, he admits that he got Gray's full name and facebook account before the phone was bricked. It sounds like he called the Apple places least likely to believe him just so he would have some plausible sob story to tell.

He had the owner's full name for God's sake. This isn't that hard.

If I find something at a bar I give it to the bartender. I mean, come one, the guy either has no common sense or didn't intend on returning it to anyone. My guess is the only reason he called Apple once he figured out it was a prototype was to extort some kind of finders fee.

Do we know "the guy" is not the bartender?

I never considered that, but if I recall correctly the engineer that lost the phone claims to have called the bar repeatedly looking for the phone. Of course, that doesn't rule out the bartender. Since the phone looked like a regular iPhone in a case I suspect no one would have paid any attention to it unless they planned on flipping it.

Also, why didn't Apple use the "Find My iPhone" feature of MobileMe to track it down? Lots of things don't add up in this whole ordeal...

If it was running 4.0 Beta then that feature doesn't work. Not sure about remotely wiping though

"So it really seems like the guy's options were to sell it to Gizmodo, or let it sit in a drawer forever."

Or give it to the establishment where it was found, or give it to the police. You know, the obvious things that everybody else in the entire world has always done with lost and found items instead of taking them home.

ha! you are joking. his options 1. mail it to apple 2. facebook gray 3. take it to the apple store and talk to a manager 4. take it back to the bar where he "found" it and gray called a million times to see if it was returned. 5. sell it to gizmodo for $5000.

ah! i see why he chose option 5.

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