An unfortunate Apple employee lost a top-secret prototype of an unreleased new iPhone at a bar in San Francisco last month and it may have been sold on Craigslist for $200, CNET reports, citing sources familiar with the ensuing police investigation.
The employee, who has yet to be identified, appears to have made virtually the same terrible mistake as another Apple employee, Robert Gray Powell, who lost an iPhone 4 prototype at bar in Redwood City, Ca. last year.
Sources within Apple told Idea Lab that the company deals with product security breaches on a case-by-case basis.
This time, Apple reportedly moved swiftly in an attempt to recover the device after it was lost in late July at Cava 22, a “tequila lounge,” in the Mission District.
Apple representatives are said to have contacted San Francisco police a day or two after the phone went missing, “saying the device was priceless and the company was desperate to secure its safe return,” but did not file a police report, CNET reported.
Going a step further, Apple is said to have traced the iPhone, apparently by remote tracking, to a house in the city’s Bernal Heights neighborhood.
Police and “Apple investigators” are reported to have visited the home and spoken a man in his 20s who said he was at the bar the night the phone was lost, but denied any knowledge of where it ended up. The man allowed the investigators to search his house and they came up empty-handed.
CNET doesn’t elaborate on why their source thinks the phone ended up on Craigslist. We’ve contacted Apple and the Cava 22 and will update when we hear back.
Last year’s lost iPhone 4 ended up being picked up by another customer at the bar and sold for $5,000 to the blog Gizmodo, which dissected and posted images of it prior to release, sparking a lengthy legal battle that is still ongoing.
In that case, Powell, a 28-year-old Apple engineer, was celebrating his birthday the night he lost his phone.
But there was a silver lining to his story. Sources at Apple confirmed to Idea Lab that Powell kept his job at Apple and that the fallout within the company was relatively contained.
