I leaked the iPhone 4. AMA.

Why not leave it with the bar management? That seems like the most appropriate thing you could have done. The owner would surely check there. People leave stuff at bars all the time.

Yeah I agree with you, I should have done that! I was 21, drunk, and I didn't think about that at the time however.

How much money did you make from the entire episode?

Gizmodo told me they would give me $5,000 for the story, and another $3,000 after it was confirmed by Apple to be real. They knew that there was no way in hell I was going to be able to ask for the $3,000 after the story aired, but I didn't. I ended up having to hire and expensive lawyer and had to pay him much much more than $5,000.

So Gizmodo ripped you off? What scumbags! Did it ever cross your mind to approach companies like Samsung or HTC to see if they were interested in buying the phone?

Yeah they did. It did, but shit was crazy and happening really fast, Hindsight is 20/20.

Am I left to assume that you were threatened with a lawsuit for accidentally finding this device?

The threat was/might still be looming of a civil suit, but I don't have anything they could sue me for.

"The defendant unintentionally stumbled upon one of our prototypes due to the negligence of one of our employees. He deserves jail time."

more like "he knowingly sold a device that clearly not belonged to him (=stolen). Due to its uniqueness at the time (prototype of the most awaited phone) we see the value of the stolen good at 8 million.. so we seek that as the damage.. he needs to pay that or do jail time for that value."

According to Apple the phone had no monetary value. According to the courts the phone was worth $250 which me and the other guy charged had to pay in the form of a $125 fine each.

It is so fucking awesome to hear from you. Fuck gizmodo. When you first held the device and turned it on did you see ios fully? If yes, when did it selfwiped?

Yeah it was the whole ios! Basic iPhone keys with a few apps. When I plugged it into my computer it asked for a version of iTunes that didn't exist and it bricked at some point after that. I don't actually know why it bricked.

I've read somewhere that Apple used FindMyiPhone to erase everything, might be because of that!

That will be a story you will tell your grandkids! haha

I would imagine all of the prototype devices have some sort of backdoor for a scenario like this.

Actually there was nothing like this at all. They had no idea where it was.

I remember Gizmodo taking a LOT of heat for this; what do you think of the site as a whole and how they treated you during this ordeal?

Actually nothing happened to them. Jason Chen got his door knocked down during a police raid, but no criminal or civil charges were filed. My friend and I were the ones that took the heat. From my perspective Gizmodo took advantage of me.

How did the ordeal affect your relationships with your friends/family?

It was extremely tough on my family, there were news vans in front of my house and we ended up staying at a hotel in the east bay for a week until they left. My name got out in the media because my girlfriend at the time made a Facebook post about it, which I asked her to delete, but the press found her and she couldn't deal with all the stress that followed and we broke up maybe 3 months after that.

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It had flat edges. FLAT EDGES!

Oh wow that's rough, I'm sorry. How long was it until you went back to your house?

All it all probably 3 weeks after the police first tracked me down. Turns out my room mate was talking to the cops the whole time, giving them everything they wanted to try and collect a reward. She took pictures of my things, wrote down conversations, and flat out lied about certain stuff so the cops could get the most damning case possible. She told them when I caught wind of what she was doing and they came to "talk." I went to my parents house and she told them where that too.

Why would she do that? Was she mad at you, or was there some kind of reward?

There was no reward she was just so greedy she was willing to do it just for a chance at a reward. She has lots of sociopathic tendencies by my diagnoses.

Who is your favorite Simpsons character?

Homer.

How was the aftermath of the whole situation?

Legally, I was fined $125 dollars, had to do 40 hrs of community service, and go 1 year informal probation.

Do you have a criminal record as a result of this? Why do good men get screwed, while dickheads like apple can do whatever they want.

I was charged with a misdemeanor misappropriation of lost property,which I had expunged after my informal probation was up. I think the outcome was pretty good considering I had a special task force after me who's sole purpose was to investigate high tech crime, and who Apple happend to be a board member of.

So..was it harder to get a job? Considering your name is all over the internet?

No, my record is clean at this point, and I got a job after the incidence but before I was ever charged with anything.

what did the task force actually do? did they contact you directly? was it a government entity?

I only directly spoke to the head detective and other officers once, everything prior to that was through my room mate, and everything after that point was through my lawyer. They did confiscate all of my shit and never gave me my Cannon Rebel SLR back... dicks. Yeah they were public officers but they were part of a special tech crime fighting task force.

I don't understand, how come you got in so much trouble over this? It's mad!

Yeah it was a sensationalized story for sure! They wanted/needed a pound of flesh to show for the excitement.

But what was the 'crime' that you were actually fined/given community service for?

Misappropriation of lost property.

Why should you feel guilt if you did your best to contact the original owners and they turned you down?

I doubt most of us would have even done that...

Yeah I couldn't explain the guilt I felt, it was just sort of there, I knew I didn't maliciously do anything at all, but the huge media response was really embarrassing.Talking about it more made me realize that it was pointless.

What would you have done differently, looking back at the entire thing now?

I would have done lots differently looking back now, but how does anyone know what do do in that situation, let alone the 21 year old version of myself. What would you have done if you thought you had an unreleased iPhone?

Would you consider changing to an android device?

Also do you still have it?

Haha yeah I'm a PC/Android guy now. I don't have it, Gizmodo asked to take it with them to examine more and then dissected the thing for proof, and used it stick it to Apple for their own gains. The people at Gizmodo/Gawker media took advantage of me IMO and they can suck it...IMO

What other sites did you try contacting before Gizmodo? Also, for future people put in your situation, is there another tech site that you recommend contacting if they have valuable information to share?

Full disclosure: I write an anti-Gawker blog, so I might quote your second answer if you recommend an alternate site.

Edit: Changed wording of first question.

There was a few other, Engadget was the other one that showed some sort of interest, but they seemed shady. I don't really read that many tech blogs and I don't think my opinion is worth very much but I like Techcrunch.

Thanks for answering. I was trying to draw comparisons between your ordeal and what happened with Joe Muto (the Fox Mole), and I noticed that Gawker apparently paid for his legal defense. Did Gawker offer anything like that for your sake?

No, when the shit hit the fan I asked them to "step up to the plate for me" and they basically said F U and I never heard from them after that.

Was the phone you found identical to the production model ?

Yes

Did you ever speak to Steve Jobs?

No, in hindsight I should have had him over for a nice bowl of fruit and a conversation. Plus a few pictures.

Are you going to Ecuador with Mr. Snowden and other leakers?

Nope, already went to court about it.

Any word on what happened to the employee that lost the phone?

I found out two days ago that he got fired, but then rehired. I had always been under the impression that he wasn't fired, but in telling my story to another Apple employee on Sunday, he told me that he was fired because of it. I really felt bad when I heard that.

What did you have to drink that night?

Too many sake bombs with a Dane. Danes can drink a lot.

Do you regret taking it?

Short answer is yes definitely. I also regret how I handled the situation from an early stage, I let it get completely out of my hands and into everyone else's.

Hindsight being 20/20 and all, what would you have done differently if you could go back to the night you found the phone in the bar?

Give it to the bartender.

That sucks that you were trying to help a brother get his phone back and it turned out worse than expected. :(

Yeah I didn't handle it very well either, I gotta take responsibility for my part.

How much were you trying to get from Apple? It is surprising they would just blow you off on something like this.

The call to Apple was in effort to give them the phone back, the person on the other line didn't know there was a prototype missing. I rushed through that part of the story but Apple was the first phone call.

Did apple ever directly contact you through this ordeal?

No

So, did this event had any positive effect on your life (get a good job etc)?

Yeah it taught me to own up to my mistakes and gave me a shove in the right direction in my life. It made me want to take school more seriously and gave me the motivation to go get a good job and start investing in my future.

I still use an iPhone 4! If you could LEAK me an iPhone 5 that would be COOL. If you KNOW WHAT I mean.
What's your flavourite colour?

Blue! As for the next iPhone, go to a bar where Apple employees hang out and buy everyone lots of drinks. Drunk employees seem to be the way to go.

Who did you go to court with if you said Apple never contacted you about the incident?

A criminal case as opposed to a civil case.

You are an extremely lucky guy. I always wondered if any companies like Samsung wanted to buy the phone from you? Also what was your most memorable experience with the phone?

I have literally received no benefit from finding the phone, pretty much all bad things except a cool story. Part of the reason why I though what I was doing was ok was that my ex-girlfriend's sister's boyfriend worked at facebook, and he told me that there were whole divisions of companies like Samsung who wanted information like this.

Was the phone locked?

No

Did apple security come looking for you? I heard they do all of this illegal stuff, such as illegal searches and detainment's.

I'm sure they tried to find out as much about me as they could, but they never came looking for me. The detective that recomended charges against me was part of a task force that had Apple on the board, so they were involved for sure.

Gourmet Haus Staudt, right?

Yeah, I loved that place but the one of the bartenders and one of the bouncers decided to refuse me service one night because of the whole thing. This being despite the fact that I probably made them thousands of dollars. They flaunt the fact that it happened there too. I could probably go back now but I don't want to.

What kind of phone do you have?

GS3

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Where the poop comes from?