Could The Lost iPhone 5 Prototype Story Be A Hoax?

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Earlier this week, CNet surprised everyone by reporting that Apple had lost yet another iPhone prototype at a San Francisco bar. We were so intrigued that we stopped by to talk to the manager but he didn’t know jack about it.

You know who else has never heard anything about a lost iPhone 5 prototype? The San Francisco Police. Which is weird, because according to CNet’s story, they were called out to investigate.

SF Weekly reports:

There’s just one problem: SFPD spokesman Officer Albie Esparza says no records exist of any such activity by SFPD inspectors.

“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.”

And they should:

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.

Leander and I actually discussed this when the story broke, and while I said that, if this turned out to be a hoax, Cava 22’s owner might be looking to drum up some free publicity, he argued that Apple would have worked with a Silicon Valley cybercrimes task force to recover the phone. What do you think?

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