Apple investigators searched house in lost iPhone prototype probe

A group of Apple employees investigating a lost iPhone prototype reportedly teamed up with local police officers to search a San Francisco man's home.

San Francisco Weekly is reporting that Apple investigators searched the home of 22 year-old Sergio Calderón in July.

The report originally suggested that Apple investigators claimed to be members of the San Francisco Police Department to enter the home, but the publication later issued an update stating that plain-clothes police officers joined the investigators for the search.

According to the report, the investigators offered Calderón $300 to return the handset and threatened to report his family members to immigration officials.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment on the report.

The search is believed to have been linked to an iPhone prototype lost earlier in July at a bar in San Francisco. A separate report suggested that the handset may have been sold on Craigslist.

The incident is not the first in which a prototype iPhone has gone missing. In 2010, police intervened when a test model of the iPhone 4 was lost at a Silicon Valley pub and later sold to gadget blog Gizmodo for $5,000.

The fallout from that incident included a police search of the home of the blog's editor, and misdemeanour charges being filed against the two men who discovered and sold the handset.