[kermitology]

You want to know how this is theft? The guy who found the phone figured out who the phone was originally in possession of the phone: Gray Powell. There are mechanisms to contact those people via the same means that he found out who it belonged to. He could have called Apple and asked to speak with Powell to tell him he had his phone. He could have called the BAR where he found the damn thing.

This was theft the moment the FINDER did nothing other than reportedly call the generic apple number and say something that the call centre would know absolutely nothing about. (Uhh.. I think I have some iPhone prototype) and left it at that.

He didn't sell the phone for Gizmodo to do an expose, he sold it to make $5000. That transaction right there, even though Gizmodo went through the same sort of hoops that the finder should have gone through, this turned into theft when the finder did nothing reasonable to contact the original owner.