There’s no Lost iPhone 5 Prototype According to SFPD Records

Tweet

Two days ago we told you that a new iPhone has been lost by an Apple employee in a bar, quite possibly an iPhone 5 prototype unit, which explains Apple’s interest in getting back the phone as soon as possible.

According to CNET Apple has found the location of the missing iPhone, probably via the iOS tracking capabilities, and that police, together with Apple investigators visited a house in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights to retrieve it but they were unsuccessful.

What’s strange about this story is that, according to SFPD records, there’s no official investigation involving such a lost iPhone unit. SF Weekly reports that Officer Albie Esparza, SFPD spokesman revealed that there are no records of the visit to Bernal Heights:

“I talked to CNET” reporter Declan McCullagh, Esparza tells SF Weekly. “I don’t know who his source is, but we don’t have any record of any such an investigation going on at this point.”

Esparza says no records of the visit to Bernal Heights by police officers — which should be recorded in documentation per standard SFPD procedures — exist at either Mission or Ingleside stations, at least one of which would have handled the incident. (Ingleside station covers Bernal Heights, while the phone was allegedly lost at Cava 22, a bar in the Mission.) Police dispatchers also have no records of any incident involving the address where the search for the phone supposedly took place, Esparza says.

Esparza has been telling the same story to CNET’s reporter weeks ago, which makes the lost iPhone report even more interesting. Apparently those sources familiar with the investigation had enough convincing information for the reporter to publish the article.

It’s also interesting that, unlike the iPhone 4 that was revealed to everyone and their grandmother via Gizmodo, initially and then, through any news outlet that picked up the story, this iPhone 5 prototype has not found its way to a tech reporter yet.

Has Apple retrieved it already? Is it all a big misunderstanding? And why wouldn’t the police keep any records of such an investigation?