@Captain_Fantasy According to gizmodo, though, the guy made at least a few attempts at contacting apple, and was turned away. Which, frankly, make sense. As they put it:
“Hello, thanks for calling AppleCare”
“Hello. I think I have some kind of iPhone prototype, or something!”
“What?”
“Yeah, it’s kinda square, and it doesn’t work. I found it in a bar.”
“Ok! Thanks for calling.”
He also claims to have a ticket number, so I feel like that would be easy for someone to confirm, if they wanted to. Assuming that Apple would cooperate, which seems unlikely.
Also, gizmodo claims that they didn’t know whether or not it was anything more then a typical IPhone or a silly chinese knockoff at the time of buying it, and they did make a fair, and eventually sucessful, effort to let Apple know they had it and return it, after confirming the identity. So, legality is very sketchy here. It seems hard to pin anything all that illegal on them.