More On The Apple iPhone 4G Finder
Mentioned being curious what would happen to the Apple iPhone prototype finder, well, an arrest would not be surprising in the near future:
Under a California law dating back to 1872, any person who finds lost property and knows who the owner is likely to be but “appropriates such property to his own use” is guilty of theft. If the value of the property exceeds $400, more serious charges of grand theft can be filed. In addition, a second state law says that any person who knowingly receives property that has been obtained illegally can be imprisoned for up to one year.
What we know of the still anonymous finder: Had the iphone. It obviously belonged to Apple or that engineer, both which were clear from the device itself. Yet, the finder held onto it for weeks and then started shopping it around to blogs. Knows who the owner is likely to be, check. Appropriates for his own use, check. Value of property exceeds $400, check.
The finder should have contacted the engineer or just driven down to Apple and returned the darn thing to the Apple front desk in a big envelope addressed to “Steve Jobs.” Heck, they could have sent an email to Steve’s Apple email address which he seems to be increasingly using these days. But they didn’t, and now it seems the full story will be revealed in court. Oh well.