Lost iPhone 4S Prototype Case Leads to Apple Vice President Departure

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Earlier this year an Apple employee lost a prototype unit of what it was believed to be at the time to be the iPhone 5. While said unit was not purchased by any media company and then reviewed well ahead of the announcement of the device, as it was the case with the iPhone 4 a year before, it still was an annoying situation for Apple.

The company has conducted a search of someone’s personal home and car after Apple employees traced the missing unit to that particular area in California, but the lost iPhone has never been found, or at least Apple didn’t revealed such details in the past months.

Following that incident, the SFPD has conducted its own investigation to determine in what way was the search of that home performed, and what role police officers had during those events. Apparently Apple never filed an official complained but it did request the help of plainclothes police officers when it came to “raiding” the house in which the company thought the lost iPhone was hidden.

Now we hear that it was an iPhone 4S unit that was lost at the time and that the investigation of the lost iPhone that followed is to blame for the departure of Apple’s Vice President of Global Security John Theriault from the company.

Theriault is the last in a series of Apple executives that have quit the company recently and it looks like his ousting is directly related to the way Apple handled the whole lost iPhone prototype case this year. He joined Apple in 2007 after working at Pfizer for 10 years after ending his carrier with the FBI. The exact details of Theriault’s departure from Apple remain secret and we’re yet to find out what happened with that iPhone 4S prototype. Did the person(s) that found it mistakenly confused it with an iPhone 4, which would explain why it never hit the news?

At this time we have no idea who will take over Apple’s VP of Global Security position at Apple, but he or she will certainly have a tough job ahead as this is probably not the last Apple device we’re going to write about.