The people who sold the iPhone prototype turned out to be a 21-year-old resident of Redwood City, California, named Brian J. Hogan. His attorney says “He regrets his mistake in not doing more to return the phone.” He attempted to return the phone at first, ultimately selling it to the tech site Gizmodo for $5,000.

Jeffrey Bornstein, the attorney representing the iPhone finder, says Hogan is willing to cooperate with authorities, and provided a statement to Wired expressing that Hogan was in the bar that night with friends when another patron handed him the phone after finding it on a nearby stool, asked around if anyone owned it, and then left the bar with his friend and the prototype.

His attorney says many good things about him, "He also volunteers to assist his aunt and sister with fundraising for their work to provide medical care to orphans in Kenya. Brian is the kind of young man that any parent would be proud to have as their son." But I still think he did wrong. We all know that if once we found a thing which does not belong to us, we should neither keep it nor sell it nor get our own benefit from selling other’s things. Anybody meet such situation would've turned it into the bar's lost and found or barring that dropped it off at the local police station. By now the identity of the finder of iPhone prototype has beem revealed, and police are still investigated the possibility that a crime was committed.

via [wired]