'Fake' cops search home for missing iPhone prototype

Did Apple security personnel impersonate San Francisco police in searching a house where they believe a prototype of Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5 was traced to? A resident of Bernal Heights in San Francisco said six officials claiming to be from San Francisco police questioned him and searched his house in July, SF Weekly reported. “They threatened me. We don’t know anything about it, still, to this day," Sergio Calderón, 22, said in an interview with SF Weekly. He said one of the men also threatened his relatives about their immigration status. Calderón is an American citizen who lives with multiple generations of family members, all of whom he said are staying in the US legally. “One of the officers is like, ‘Is everyone in this house an American citizen?’ They said we were all going to get into trouble,’" he said. Calderon narrated that last July, six people – four men and two women - wearing badges of some kind showed up at his door and told him they were from the San Francisco Police Department. The six asked him whether he had been at Cava 22 over the weekend – and he had - and told him that they had traced a lost iPhone to his home using GPS. No confirmed ID “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," the SF Weekly report said. Calderon let the six search his car and house, and gave them access to his computer, to see whether he had linked the phone to his hard drive or had information about it in his files. When the “officers" failed to find the phone, one of them supposedly offered him $300 if he would return it. “They made it seem like they were on the phone with the owner of the phone, and they said, ‘The person’s not pressing charges, they just want it back, and they’ll give you $300,’" he recalled. Before leaving, one of the visitors, “Tony," gave Calderón his phone number and asked him to call if he had further information about the lost phone. Apple employee SF Weekly said a call to the phone number was answered by Anthony Colon, who it said confirmed he is an employee of Apple but declined to comment further. It said a public profile on the website LinkedIn showed Colon, a former San Jose Police sergeant, is employed as a “senior investigator" at Apple. Colon’s LinkedIn profile was taken down but SF Weekly posted a screenshot on its site. Also, SF Weekly said Apple’s media-relations department did not return calls for comment. For his part, SFPD spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield said police may to look into Calderón’s allegations. “There’s something amiss here. If we searched someone’s house, there would be a police report," Dangerfield said. Punishable act The SF Weekly said that if Calderon’s account is accurate, it “raises the possibility that Apple security personnel attempting to recover the prototype falsely represented themselves as police officers." It said this is a criminal act punishable by up to a year in jail in the state of California. On the other hand, it said there is a possibility SFPD employees colluding with Apple failed to properly report an extensive search of a person’s home, car, and computer. But Dangerfield said police will only investigate if Calderón chooses to speak with them directly and share information about the people who came to his house. “If the person is reporting that people misrepresented themselves as San Francisco police officers, that’s something we will need to investigate. We take people representing themselves as police officers very seriously," he said. Earlier, tech site CNET reported an unreleased iPhone 5 had been lost in the Mission district restaurant Cava 22. The incident echoed the earlier loss of the iPhone 4 prototype last year. CNET said San Francisco police officers and Apple employees traced the phone to the home of a man in Bernal Heights, but were unable to find it there or get the man to acknowledge possessing the prototype. SFPD spokesman Officer Albie Esparza claimed no records of any such activity by SFPD officers existed, as they should if police had been involved in a home visit and search. Publicity stunt? SF Weekly said that since the SFPD disavowed any knowledge of the search for the phone, some tech reporters have speculated that the story of the lost phone was a hoax or publicity stunt engineered by Apple. It noted CNET based its report on a single anonymous source “familiar with the investigation." But Calderón said he and his family are eager to figure out exactly what happened. “Who did I let in?" He asked. “Who was harassing me?" — TJD, GMA News