iPhone Finder's Roommate Tipped Off the Police
In a not-very-surprising turn of events, Wired is reporting that the police who raided the home of 21-year-old Brian Hogan were tipped off on the whereabouts of the phone by his roommate. The iPhone-bandit's identity was leaked through a phone call from one of Hogan's two roommates, Katherine Martinson. She had told Apple that Hogan had been calling around to different news outlets, asking for monetary compensation for the found item. Martinson had turned in her roommate out of fear that the phone would have recorded her IP address when Hogan had plugged it into her laptop. “Therefore she contacted Apple in order to absolve herself of criminal responsibility,†wrote the detective who composed the affidavit. The 10-page search-warrant affidavit (available at Wired.com as a pdf) settles the score as to what particularly happened during the Gizmodo-Hogan exchange. The document states that the roommate said Hogan told her he received $8,500 for the phone, but did not indicate the original sources. Gizmodo has only reported that it had paid $5,000 for the device. The affidavit also shows that Steve Jobs personally contacted Gizmodo's Brian Lam to ask for the iPhone prototype back, though Apple did not have a comment about the situation. You can read the rest of this fascinating unraveling at Wired.com, or check out the email exchanges between Gizmodo's Brian Lam and Steve Jobs.
http://www.maclife.com/article/news/iphone_finders_roommate_tipped_police
