So this is why everyone thinks that Apple is impersonating police officers.

Normally, we here at MGiP don’t link to articles to outside websites unless it is absolutely necessary, and in this case, reading this article first is absolutely necessary. In this article, it explains the first in a series of events that has the collective public eyebrow raised about the conduct of certain agents of our favorite tech company, Apple, Inc. It brings into light what the general practices are when corporate espionage or thievery is involved, and how they go about handling it, and then it further goes into detail to show us what the police forces are willing to do in order to assist. Start, by reading this here, courtesy of BGR.com: http://www.bgr.com/2011/08/31/apple-loses-iphone-prototype-in-a-bar-again/

As you can see, just like Gray Powell’s incident involving the iPhone 4 prototype from last year, a new, unreleased version of the iPhone was lost by an Apple employee at a bar after some drinks. The stories are very similar, actually. But in this case, things were taken more seriously and responded to much more quickly than last year. This year, the iPrototype was lost AND TRACED VIA GPS to  bar called “Cava22”, located in the Mission District in San Francisco. Afterwards, it was tracked to a home in Bernal Heights, SF, and this is where the story has gotten interesting. Click below for a google streets view of “Cava22”.

You see, at this time, Apple had sent out one of their senior investigators to the home located via the GPS results, belonging to a man named Sergio Calderón. Now, Sergio has not been mentioned any further than this story, so no one knows at the current time whether or not he is innocent or guilty, so I won’t pretend to have an opinion on that. What I will form an opinion on is the way that Apple’s investigator’s conducted their business. Initially, the entire reason that this case made it to the public eye is because this senior Apple Investigator, a man named  Anthony Colon, brought along one other Apple Investigator with him, and several other people. They knocked on Sergio’s door, and allegedly identified themselves as the San Francisco Police Department. They stated why they were there, and what they were looking for, and at that time, Sergio allowed them access to his home, and they conducted a search for the lost iPrototype.

Normally, this is not an abnormal thing, but here is where it gets tricky. The man who was heading up the search gave Sergio a card with a number to call, and when Sergio called that number, it went to the man mentioned above, Anthony Colon. However, after a little bit of digging, Sergio discovered that this man was a Senior Investigator for Apple, and not, in fact, San Francisco Police. And this is when Sergio decided to go public, and of course, the story gets more even more abhorrent. Now, all of a sudden, during the search, Mr. Colon had questioned Sergio about his family’s immigration status, and then he had also “threatened” him. During these events, Mr. Colon also offered to give Sergio $300, and no-questions-asked if only the iPrototype as returned.

And I am sure that if Sergio ever makes it into court, other claims will be made, for example, like when Mr. Colon tied him by a rope to the back of his truck and dragged him down the street urging him to spill the beans, or when he restrained him to a wall, and got out a hand-torch and began to “interrogate” him. And hell, the way Sergio is going, there may even have been some “waterboarding” going on.

No, none of those torture techniques actually happened, but in this case, it seems that things took a turn for the worst, and in my opinion, Sergio decided to capitalize on it using this Senior Investigator as a bargaining chip to a nice, fat, out-of-court settlement with the largest tech company in the world. This was his method of winning the lottery.

Now, originally, when this complaint was made public, the SFPD spokesman talked to had claimed that they had no records of such search, but they then quickly changed their story. Apparently a different spokesman, a Lieutenant Troy Dangerfield (great name!) has confirmed that Mr. Colon and his colleague were accompanied by four plainclothes SFPD officers during this search, but that they did not enter the premises or participate in this search.

While I myself may not be a police officer, I do know that even if they had participated in the search, they would have done nothing wrong. Would you like to know why? Because Sergio GRANTED THEM PERMISSION TO ENTER HIS HOUSE AND CONDUCT THE SEARCH. It is not like they stormed in with shotguns ablaze, search-warrant in hand. At that time, they did not need one because they were quite simply granted permission. Now, what it sounds like to me is that Mr. Colon was accompanied by the SFPD. When they arrived, the SFPD probably introduced themselves as such, and Mr. Calderon just shut his mouth. By him not identifying himself as an independent investigator is not in itself is a crime. And, if this ever makes it to court, he could argue that by leaving his contact information with Sergio, he did indeed identify himself. Yet omission of identity is not the same thing as claiming a false identity.  It should be interesting to see how this all plays out, and as usual, we will keep you updated as new information becomes available.