[Update] Man Claims Fake Police Searched His Home For the iPhone 5: Apple Investigators?

Update 1: It now appears plain clothes SFPD officers accompanied Apple investigators to the home, via the SF Weekly. The SFPD did not search the house, but Apple investigators did:

“Apple came to us saying that they were looking for a lost item, and some plainclothes officers responded out to the house with them,” Dangerfield said. “My understanding is that they stood outside.” He added, “They just assisted Apple to the address.”

Yesterday it was reported Apple had lost another iPhone in a bar (seriously!), this time at Cava 22, located in San Francisco. The follow up to that story by the SF Weekly reported the police claimed no ongoing investigations of any ‘lost iPhone’ prototypes.

Now, SF Weekly has discovered Apple investigators may have posed as SFPD during their search of a man’s home for the lost iPhone prototype. As per the SF Weekly:

“They threatened me,” he said during an interview at his house. “We don’t know anything about it, still, to this day.”

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.

What makes this story interesting is one of the visitors, known as ‘Tony’ gave Calderón his card asking him to call him if anything turns up. Calderón passed this card onto the SF Weekly. They called the number and a man named Anthony Colon answered–a current Apple investigator and former San Jose police sergeant. His LinkedIn profile was taken down, but backups have been saved.

The SFPD responded to the SF Weekly story, and said they would investigate the matter if Calderón contacted them directly, as posing as police is a serious offence punishable by up to a year in jail in California.

Is this just another massive publicity stunt by Apple? How can you lose an iPhone prototype two years in a row? If it’s true, you can imagine Steve Jobs would be pretty livid right about now.

[via MacRumors]

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