On Wednesday, we reported a repeat of last year’s iPhone disaster - an iPhone prototype lost in a bar. According to the website, Apple never filed a police report based on such loss, likely from an employee field-testing the unit, although it “sparked a scramble by Apple security” in an effort to recover it quickly. The story just got one hundred times more interesting: the SF Weekly has followed up with a new report claiming that Apple security personnel may have posed as the police during the search of Sergio Calderón’s home. Impersonating a police officer is a criminal offense, even if you are a security guard. On the flip side, the police could’ve improperly assisted in the investigation without documenting their work corectly.
[Sergio] 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.
Calderón is claming that he allowed the team of investigators to search his home and automobile and even check his computer to see if a missing iPhone prototype had been synced with it. The investigators walked away empty handed but told Calderón they would give him $300 to return the phone or could offer information on the device’s whereabouts.
As the visitors left, one of them – a man named “Tony” – gave Calderón his phone number and asked him to call if he had further information about the lost phone. Calderón shared the man’s phone number with SF Weekly.
The phone was answered by Anthony Colon, who confirmed to us he is an employee of Apple but declined to comment further. According to a public profile on the website LinkedIn, Colon, a former San Jose Police sergeant, is employed as a “senior investigator” at Apple.
A spokesman for the SFPD is concerned about the supposed series of events and they will be investigating the incident. This story keeps getting more crazy by the day! What’s next, a movie deal? But in all seriousness, Apple is taking this very seriously.
UPDATE: Anthony Colon’s LinkedIn profile has been deleted but MacRumors saved a screenshot of it and we also have a link to the cached version of his LinkedIn profile page.
[via MacRumors]
Image via Taste Tequila
