A few days ago we reported that Apple had allegedly misplaced the iPhone 5 in a bar…again. However when publications attempted to verify the story with San Francisco’s police department, they were told that there was no such report filed. That sounds rather suspicious, doesn’t it? Granted it could have been chalked up to Apple perhaps requesting SFPD for their discretion, at least until this report just surfaced.
Sergio Calderon, the man whose home was raided, claimed that six officials wearing badges stopped by his home and began questioning him and searched his home and his car, and even asked him about his family’s immigration status. One of the officials, Anthony Colon, then left Sergio with his contact information, and when SF Weekly called, it turns out that Colon was not working for the SFPD, but was rather a former San Jose police officer, who according to his LinkedIn profile (removed, but here’s the cached version), is currently working for Apple as a Senior Investigator.
If this is true, what this implies is that the team that Apple sent to retrieve the supposedly lost iPhone 5 were impersonating officers of the law, a crime punishable up to a year in jail in the state of California. SFPD has stated that this is something they will look into, but only if Calderon speaks to them directly.
“This is something that’s going to need to be investigated now,” SFPD spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield said, when informed about the Bernal Heights man’s statements to SF Weekly. “If this guy is saying that the people said they were SFPD, that’s a big deal.”
This story is certainly not over, and at some point, Apple is probably going to intervene publicly. The question is: will it be before, or after things get completely out of control?
Update – According to a new report published by SF Weekly, SFPD has changed its tune about how they did not know about the incident. According to SFPD’s spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield, out of the six officials who went the Calderon’s house, “three or four” of them belonged to SFPD but were wearing plainclothes at that time.
This was the reason why Calderon even agreed to the search in the first place, as he was under the impression that the two officials who entered his house to search for the missing iPhone were SFPD officers.