Without Gizmodo, The 4G Would Still Be "Stolen"

Main Point: Diving a little deeper into the law, you can see that in California, a legal defense against receiving stolen property is claiming innocent intent. Simply put, you can’t be convicted of a California Penal Code 496 charge if you intended to return the property to its owner or the police when you bought or received the stolen property.

Think about it another way, the only chance that Apple had for getting the phone back (if the person who found it didn’t give it back), was for Gizmodo to buy it before another, less well intentioned buyer emerged (think chinese knockoff factory).