Guy That Found iPhone G4 “Is A Thief”

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The father of the guy that lost that prototype iPhone 4G is calling the person that found it a thief. So which one is it? Is the guy that lost the phone an idiot or is the guy that found it a “thief” like the father says? It looks like this could turn into discussion of the day.

"The bottom line is the guy (who found Apple engineer Gray Powell's iPhone 4G and sold it to Gizmodo) stole the phone. The guy's a thief." --Robert Powell, Gray's father.
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If you believe the whole story the guy that found it tried to return it to Apple but was rebuffed. It was only then that he sold it to Gizmodo, and he didn't try and disguise the circumstances under which he acquired it either. To me this all seems fine, if you try to return something to its rightful owner and they turn you away it's yours. And once Apple did request it back they got it.
 
Let's say you get sloppy drunk and forget your prototype phone in a bar. Do you:

A.) Tell your boss you got sloppy drunk and forgot your phone
B.) Tell your boss some guy must have stolen it!
 
i have a feeling theres more to it then just "the guy tried to return it to apple" that hes not saying.. especially with the fact that he sold it for 10 grand.. gives me the feeling that he may have tried to black mail apple into buying it back from him.. which wouldn't be out of the norm for this day and age..
 
Both really. Loser guy is an idiot and finder guy was after the money.

He could have tried just a tiny bit harder had would have easily found the guy. How about a facebook message that says "I found your iPhone". Once he came to the conclusion that it might be a prototype he thought of money instantly and probably made up the whole story about trying to find the rightful owner and calling Apple etc. Maybe one phone call to get a ticket number, if he even got one.

Anyways, this father guy should be grateful that it went down like it did. His kid is now in a big fat layer of public protection that Apple would surely hurt themselves with if they tried to fire him.

I'm sure they'll get around to it for some other reason in a few months, but by then this will all be forgotten.
 
Oldie said:
Let's say you get sloppy drunk and forget your prototype phone in a bar. Do you:

A.) Tell your boss you got sloppy drunk and forgot your phone
B.) Tell your boss some guy must have stolen it!
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This. Also, whos dad is going to publicly state that their son is a drunken idiot?
 
Oldie said:
Let's say you get sloppy drunk and forget your prototype phone in a bar. Do you:

A.) Tell your boss you got sloppy drunk and forgot your phone
B.) Tell your boss some guy must have stolen it!
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C.) Swallow cyanide pill. (This or suffer the wrath of Jobs.)
 
I would agree with one point: If you find a phone at a bar, you give it to the bartender to keep safe a reasonable period of time. You do not pocket it and skip out, like that guy did.

Of course, unless you ARE a theif. And...given the circumstances, he did sell it. How can you believe his story over the rightful owners story?
 
Person who left it needs to be more careful, person who picked it up should have tried to return it to rightful owner instead of looking to sell first
 
Oldie said:
Let's say you get sloppy drunk and forget your prototype phone in a bar. Do you:

A.) Tell your boss you got sloppy drunk and forgot your phone
B.) Tell your boss some guy must have stolen it!
Click to expand...

Sort of makes you wonder what an employee was doing with a new unknown prototype phone while out on the town having drinks.

His daddy sounds just a bit too defensive…
 
I may be an odd man out here, but if I found someones phone (let alone iPhone), I would do everything within my power to return it back to them. Losing a phone is annoying and devastating, depending on the amount of information contained.

Why didn't the guy who found it ask the bartender / waitress / server if the person who lost the phone paid with a credit card? Easy way to find their name out right there, not to mention the facebook home page.

If I did happen to find some weird prototype phone, I would probably just go knock on the company's door (it's not hard to find the Apple building...) and give it back, seeing that I wouldn't want to get mixed up in some weird lawsuit.

Basically, I think the guy who "found" the phone was more interested in money than doing the morally correct thing. As for Gizmodo? I don't read them anymore after they started sleeping with Apple.
 
BBA said:
I would agree with one point: If you find a phone at a bar, you give it to the bartender to keep safe a reasonable period of time. You do not pocket it and skip out, like that guy did.

Of course, unless you ARE a theif. And...given the circumstances, he did sell it. How can you believe his story over the rightful owners story?
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Pretty much sums up my point of view. And Gizmodo is a dirty Apple whore for buying stolen goods in order to make profit at their site.
 
The guy who lost it is worse than an idiot. Its bad enough to lose our own personal phone, but losing a company's prototype?

I actually have a hard time believing anyone would be so dumb to casually carry around such important hardware.
 
Yikes, just read a story linked over in the Apple forum. These guys called the bar where the incident occurred and the guy who found it never told the employees there. That's pretty low.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
i have a feeling theres more to it then just "the guy tried to return it to apple" that hes not saying.. especially with the fact that he sold it for 10 grand.. gives me the feeling that he may have tried to black mail apple into buying it back from him.. which wouldn't be out of the norm for this day and age..
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I don't know about that. He might have really tried to return it, but you know if some random person contacts them and says "Hey, I have a weird iPhone here. You guys know anything about it?" the majority of people on the front line of support would just ignore it along with the nonstop comments they probably get like "You guys should add Flash support!"
 
prtzlboy said:
Pretty much sums up my point of view. And Gizmodo is a dirty Apple whore for buying stolen goods in order to make profit at their site.
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No different than a newspaper/magazine paying for exclusive photos.
 
prtzlboy said:
Pretty much sums up my point of view. And Gizmodo is a dirty Apple whore for buying stolen goods in order to make profit at their site.
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agreed. OK, it's cool news (iphone 4g) but obviously Apple didn't want us to see it. The guy probably did steal it.
 
I can't imagine taking someone's phone home with me, even if I knew it was the hottest prototype. I would have given it to the bartender with my business card and ask if she/he could keep it till someone tried to reclaim it and call me if no-one tries to reclaim it. It's that simple and would hope anyone else would do the same thing. I lost a pair of sunglasses, because I put them down on the table, I realized that I forgot them just as I was walking out of the restaurant, but they were already gone. I checked with the restaurant later and no one turned them in. That is theft, plain and simple. If you find something that isn't yours, you should hand them in to someone who can hold them for that person to reclaim. If they never reclaim it, then you can have them.

The father is not aware of how Apple works if he thinks his son's job is safe at Apple. Although him going public like this, might help to save his son's job temporarily. They are vindictive bastards over there and they will make that poor kid's life hell until he quiets or they just fire him. It is common for people to get test units, so they can be used in real environments. I doubt he could have left the campus with it, unless he was authorized to. They basically strip search their employees, so he almost certainly was authorized to walk around with it. For that kid's sake, I really hope this was a planned drop, because those cultist freaks will be dancing around castings hexes on him otherwise.
 
I agree.
I have found quite a few cell phones in airports, bars and even at the zoo and I have always either returned them to the local "lost and found" or personally tracked down the owner (by calling their "home" entry in their address book, etc.

It's what I would hope someone would do if I lost my phone.

The only thing that makes people tolerate the theft is that it's an apple prototype. Nix that and make it YOUR phone and the guy called HTC, Sony, or Motorola instead of you to return it and, guess what? He's a thief.
 
Mize said:
I agree.
I have found quite a few cell phones in airports, bars and even at the zoo and I have always either returned them to the local "lost and found" or personally tracked down the owner (by calling their "home" entry in their address book, etc.

It's what I would hope someone would do if I lost my phone.

The only thing that makes people tolerate the theft is that it's an apple prototype. Nix that and make it YOUR phone and the guy called HTC, Sony, or Motorola instead of you to return it and, guess what? He's a thief.
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Read the Gizmodo story and you'd see the phone was deactivated the very night it all happened. Supposedly the person who found it was planning to try to track down the owner (yeah, who knows if that's true or not) but then found it wouldn't come on anymore. Then he contacted Apple who gave him a 'support ticket number' but never called him back. After 2-3 weeks he eventually contacted some news sites whereupon Gizmodo then said 'Hey, give it to us and we'll pay you for it.'
 
Gray Powell's father: 'He was devastated'

What happened, was he thrown off a roof already? :eek:
 
In one of the Gizmodo reports, they talked to the CSRs who took the call from the guy trying to return it. They confirmed that they turned him away, thinking it was a Chinese knockoff. So the guy did try to return it, what was he supposed to do - go down the Apple HQ and start knocking on doors?
 
BillR said:
Sort of makes you wonder what an employee was doing with a new unknown prototype phone while out on the town having drinks.
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Not wondering about that at all. If you had the responsibility of making a new iphone, you would pay people to go to bars with one, just to make sure it actually works satisfactorily in that environment, with the noise and such.
 
_G_ said:
Gray Powell's father: 'He was devastated'

What happened, was he thrown off a roof already? :eek:
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If he was in China, he would have committed assisted suicide by now.
 
The guys who are making accusations this guy stole it are suckling the cock of apple yet again. Fanboys no doubt.

I recently found a laptop case outside my apartment complex. You know what I did? I picked it up because I looked at my roommate and said, "You know what man, if I pick it up I know I have control over what happens to it, but if I leave it there you have no idea what someone will do with it".

Found the owner and returned him his things. Which was about 3 grand in cash, a passport, and a laptop.

If I had left it there do you think the outcome would've likely been the same?

You can't trust anyone when dealing with lost goods, because so many people are willing to jack other peoples shit with the silly reasoning "finders keepers"
 
WTF is wrong with you people? If you HONESTLY wanted to return an item you found to it's original owner then the very least you would do is tell the bartender and leave your phone number with them.
 
Under most state and city laws. Just because you found it, doesn't mean you own it. You must make every reasonable attempt to locate the owner, and make yourself available to be contacted should the owner come back looking. Each territory has a time period before it can be called legally abandoned, but only if the above attempts have been followed.

To pick up anything and then immediately sell it to someone else without making every attempt to return it to its legal owner is THEFT and trafficking in stolen property even if that property was found on the floor. The very minute you made the offer to sell it, it became "stolen".

Whine and argue all you want, sure the guy was an idiot for leaving or dropping it there, but selling something that does not belong to you is a crime.

Try selling a car you just "found" parked on the side of the street. Good luck explaining that to a judge. It doesn't matter if the item is tiny or as big as a house. If it wasn't given to you or sold to you, it doesn't belong to you.

There's a monetary limit to misdemeanors and felony's too. The value of the item depends on the charge of theft too. It wouldn't surprise me if the bar person is charged with felony trafficking.
 
GhostDog said:
WTF is wrong with you people? If you HONESTLY wanted to return an item you found to it's original owner then the very least you would do is tell the bartender and leave your phone number with them.
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A phone that doesn't work that you can't verify who owns? Yeah leave the bartender information so he can have one of his buddies call and grab it.
 
You mean a phone that didn't work the next day? Yeah I wouldn't have told them that night - because I'm psychic. I hope if I ever misplace something important that someone honest finds it.
 
GhostDog said:
You mean a phone that didn't work the next day? Yeah I wouldn't have told them that night - because I'm psychic. I hope if I ever misplace something important that someone honest finds it.
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people are stupid idk if they do it on purpose or what but they forget that the phone was remotely bricked yeah there's an app for that remember?

still why didnt the guy leave it at the bar?

the entire story smells of bullshit from both sides and the dad doesnt have the whole story fuck him he's already pointing fingers to save his son

guess what?? the fucker got drunk and probably lost the phone that scenario is far more believable than anything else they are coming up with
 
Oh, dude that lost the phone was totally in the wrong. But the guy who found it really didn't go out of his way to do the right thing either.
 
BillR said:
Sort of makes you wonder what an employee was doing with a new unknown prototype phone while out on the town having drinks.
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The guy that lost it works for Apple and was testing it, it's in the original story.
http://gizmodo.com/5520438/how-apple-lost-the-next-iphone?skyline=true&s=i
On the night of March 18, he was enjoying the fine imported ales at Gourmet Haus Staudt, a nice German beer garden in Redwood City, California. He was happy. [UPDATED] After all, it was his birthday. He was turning 27 that very same day, and he was celebrating. The place was great. The beer was excellent. "I underestimated how good German beer is," he typed into the next-generation iPhone he was testing on the field, cleverly disguised as an iPhone 3GS. It was his last Facebook update from the secret iPhone. It was the last time he ever saw the iPhone, right before he abandoned it on bar stool, leaving to go home.
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Guy that lost it needs to know when to say when, or leave top secret employer BS at home when he goes out boozing.

Guy who "found" it should have left it at the bar.
(quoting from same source article I linked above)
The person who eventually ended up with the lost iPhone was sitting next to Powell. He was drinking with a friend too. He noticed Powell on the stool next to him but didn't think twice about him at the time. Not until Powell had already left the bar, and a random really drunk guy—who'd been sitting on the other side of Powell—returned from the bathroom to his own stool.

The Random Really Drunk Guy pointed at the iPhone sitting on the stool, the precious prototype left by the young Apple engineer.

"Hey man, is that your iPhone?" asked Random Really Drunk Guy.

"Hmmm, what?" replied the person who ended up with the iPhone. "No, no, it isn't mine."

"Ooooh, I guess it's your friend's then," referring to a friend who at the time was in the bathroom. "Here, take it," said the Random Really Drunk Guy, handing it to him. "You don't want to lose it." After that, the Random Really Drunk Guy also left the bar.

The person who ended up with the iPhone asked around, but nobody claimed it. He thought about that young guy sitting next to him, so he and his friend stayed there for some time, waiting. Powell never came back.
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Of course this is all hearsay anyway. Guy who found it could be lying out of his @$$ and didn't ask anyone anything, he just figured "hey free iPhone, score!". :rolleyes:

Guy who got too drunk and lost top secret phone should get canned, sorry. First of all it's bad enough you took something valuable from work and lost it; it's even worse that it was an Apple product because I guarantee you Steve Jobs pulled a Hitler in the often retitled scene from Der Untergang. In fact I'm surprised someone hasn't retitled that scene YET with this very topic in mind. :D
 
there's a lot of hitler videos on the lost iphone topic but you know since constantin films started bitching about it being posted on the internet they are taking them down as fast as they can ..




bunch of dicks........
 
Another fact that you guys missed is that Apple remotely bricked the phone once the engineer found out it was missing. How do you return a phone when it's bricked?
 
Thief... IDK. Questionable... yea.

We have no idea when the guy found it. Could have been closing time on the way out of the bar.

IMO though, why would someone take a prototype ANYTHING to a bar?
 
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