“Brian J. Hogan, a 21-year-old resident of Redwood City, California, says although he was paid by tech site Gizmodo, he believed the payment was for allowing the site exclusive access to review the phone,” Chen and Zetter report. “Gizmodo emphasized to him ‘that there was nothing wrong in sharing the phone with the tech press,’ according to his attorney Jeffrey Bornstein.”
“According to the statement from his lawyer, Hogan was in the bar with friends when another patron handed him the phone after finding it on a nearby stool. The patron asked Hogan if the phone belonged to him, and then left the bar. Hogan asked others sitting nearby if the phone belonged to them, and when no one claimed it, he and his friends left the bar with the device,” Chen and Zetter report. “‘Brian opened the phone onto a Facebook page but then the phone shut down,’ attorney Bornstein writes. ‘From that time on, the phone was inoperable the entire time Brian had it.'”
Full article here.
Greg Sandoval, Steven Musil and Declan McCullagh report for CNET, “Hogan, however, had help in finding a buyer for the phone. CNET has learned that Sage Robert Wallower, a 27-year-old University of California at Berkeley student, contacted technology sites about what is believed to be Apple’s next-generation iPhone. The device was lost by an Apple engineer last month. Police in San Mateo County have said they are investigating the lost phone as a possible theft.”
“CNET’s sources said Wallower, a former Navy cryptologic technician who transferred to UC Berkeley two years ago, acted as a go-between,” Sandoval, Musil and McCullagh report. “CNET has learned that there were at least three people involved: Hogan, Wallower, and someone else connected to the sale. Records indicate that Wallower and Hogan may have attended Santa Barbara City College during the same period.”
Full article here.
[Attribution: AppleInsider. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “ChrissyOne” for the heads up.]
this is as inane as OJ “looking for the real murderer.”
Let them wallow in the hogan.
So, it was ANOTHER person who handed him the phone after finding it on a nearby stool?!?!?
Wow, if that’s not lawyer talk I don’t know what is!
Kind of like that exclusive looking at fee.
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@ChrissyOne: actually Rosenberg probably save a lot of people’s lifes, helping to avoid WW3.
Russian scientists with her help shortened development of the nuclear weapons by a half year — they were going to make it anyway, but the time matters since there were at least two cases when USA was ready to start nuclear bombing of USSR shortly before the latter made nuclear weapons.
So it was good that USSR got the bomb sooner and crazy Pentagon people could not arrange WW3.
Hey, Brian J. Hogan, if the $5000 was a “fee” to allow Gizmodo to exclusively “review” the phone, then it still “belonged” to you, correct? Then how could Gizmodo return the phone to Apple, since you are saying they did not actually buy it from you for $5000, they were just “reviewing” it? They should have returned it to you after they were done.
If you’re going to spin a tale, at least make it believable. If this is the best you can do, you better have some good lawyers. Or you can just tell it like it really happened. Perhaps you sold a valuable lost item for $5000, at which point it became a stolen item.
My personal experience finding two iPhones.
The first was lying in the wet grass at a pee-wee football game. I see it. I pick it up. I immediately waive it in the air any say-“Anyone lose a phone” a group of people under a tent respond in the negative. Before I get any further a gentleman claims it-with about 20 witnesses looking on. If no one had claimed it, I would have handed it to one of the referees or coaches and had them make an announcement.
The second iPhone I found was sitting atop stack of soda at the checkout stand at a gas station. I walk up to the counter, see the iPhone and say to the clerk-“hey someone left their iPhone” and hand it to the clerk. She imediately starts to go after customers at the pumps to find the rightful owner.
Lesson to the unscrupes in the bar and at JizzMofo:
“If it ain’t yours, it ain’t yours.
Stealing, Stealing when I should have been buyiing!
@Alicekk
“I think selling it to Gizmodo was the obvious path, and arguably what alot of people would end up doing, especially since getting it back to its owner was very difficult once the phone was turned off.”
If what you say is true, then this world has declined into a sad, sad state, and people like you are the cause. Please seek to add at least a bit of morality and ethics into your life.
Congratulations on the attribution C1! Fred Mertz must be on his sick bed to have missed this story.
Why hell!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> Instead they spoil the suprise for the rest of us.
I would have asked to hand it Steve personally! That would have been great fun!
Ignorance is not a defense strategy. This guy acted out of greed and wrongly perceived an ill conceived strategy to profit from what he thought at the time was good luck. Now he will have to face the consequences of his actions regardless of what advice he was given by the tech blog people.
DeRS
do you sell mushrooms, too, or just ingest a steady dose?
The guy’s story is so much bs. If you find a phone in a bar you leave it with a worker at the bar because the owner may come back looking for it. That’s common sense. Not ask your friends if it’s theirs and then leave with it and think nothing of Gizmodo wanting to pay $5000 for a phone??!!
You’re wrong. Plain and simple, you’re wrong.
Whether the guy behind the bar steals is not your judgement to make. You keeping something to sell it to get what’s best for YOU is WRONG because you don’t want the barkeep getting the money. Do you not see the flaw in your logic? If you give it to the rightful person (barkeep) you’ve honored your end of responsibility. If he betrays that, then that’s not your fault. But you selling something because you don’t want HIM to, is TOTALLY wrong and very very unscrupulous.
The OBVIOUS things to do: Give it to the bar keep, give it to the police, walk into an APPLE store and give it to the manager (since we know all involved realized it was a prototype). I think the majority of people would not pocket it thinking they could sell it to some two-bit Web site.
I left my iPhone in the Las Vegas airport. Next day they called me in California to arrange shipping and two days later I had it back. Thanks again, Vegas airport people!
And the Autobahn and the Volkswagen proved quite useful. A lot of useful medical information was gathered during all those forbidden experiments.
Guess it’s all in the perspective, huh?
Of course, the real kicker for the numpties involved in this is if they’d gone to Apple HQ and given it in, I bet Our Lord Jobs would have made sure they got a lot more than £5,000 in thanks for being honest. Although perhaps not quite as much as they are now going to have to pay in lawyers fees. And possibly jail time.
They should have handed it in to Apple HQ anyway, just because that called ‘being honest’, but the reward would doubtless have followed anyway.
So, does this end the Apple/PR conspiracy theory? Wallower, eh? I think he’s gonna be doing some wallowing.
No, this whole story is so girl wearing a skirt as a top.
at $5000 I suspect this will be remembered as the iphone 5Gs-is-not-enough story!
“Comment from: DeRS
@ChrissyOne: actually Rosenberg probably save a lot of people’s lifes, helping to avoid WW3.
Russian scientists with her help shortened development of the nuclear weapons by a half year — they were going to make it anyway, but the time matters since there were at least two cases when USA was ready to start nuclear bombing of USSR shortly before the latter made nuclear weapons.
So it was good that USSR got the bomb sooner and crazy Pentagon people could not arrange WW3.”
Wow what BS! Did you “learn” this from some member of the communist party posing as an “educator” at a university? Telling you how “evil” the USA is and always was? How “evil” capitalism is and always was? And communism is here to “save” the world? We’ve seen how Stalin and crazy communists run things….no thanks! Stalin and the USSR killed over 30 million during WW2; not the Pentagon.
So, an interesting question here would be: What would YOU do?
If I saw a funny looking iPhone on a stool, and after asking around nobody claimed it, I’d take it home. I would then e-mail Steve (“Yesterday, I found what appears to be a prototype iPhone. It could be a Chinese knock-off, but still; could you check with your engineers if anyone lost it? If Let me know. I haven’t told anyone and don’t plan to, until I’m sure it isn’t one of yours” If Steve comes back saying: “It’s ours. Can I get it back please? Sent from my iPad”, I’d try and arrange to return it to him personally, all the while making sure he’s aware that I’m keeping the news to myself.
Once the phone is safely back, I’d spill the beans (with Steve’s blessing, of course; I’m sure he wouldn’t mind the publicity) to some Mac rumours outfit.
Haha! “Hi Steve, this is Joe a schmuck at a bar. Found a top-secret prototype iPhone of yours and am holding it for ransom. Here are my terms … ”
How many ways can we commit a felony today? Maybe fit in industrial blackmail in the morning?
Oh, and it doesn’t count unless you BRAG all the details on the Internet! Bbwwwahahahahah, should have become a lawyer. Such a harvest these days!