Mr. Yager: Here is your stolen phone. I’m really sorry it has taken so long to send it to you. It took me a while to figure out it was stolen and that it belonged to you. Since you are a writer for a living, I thought you might like the story of how I bought this phone. I bought your phone from a [sell/barter site] ad for a “legally unlocked 16 GB iPhone 3G.” The seller said he was a student who fell in love with the phone but couldn’t keep up with the AT&T payments. He asked $475 for AT&T’s termination fee and some late payment charges. He said that the manager of his AT&T Store told him that when the phone was paid off, it would be unlocked for use on any wireless service, and he could sell it to anybody he wanted to. The seller told me how to move my [other carrier] SIM card from my phone to the iPhone 3G. I got five bars on the iPhone when my current phone only got three. The seller told me I wouldn’t have all the AT&T features like [visual] voicemail and Youtube [?], but all I wanted was a phone and a replacement Video iPod. My old one with the small screen won’t charge up anymore. One day when I plugged it into iTunes to synch my music and TV shows it told me there was a software update. I clicked OK because I wanted the latest features. When it finished downloading, I couldn’t make calls anymore. That’s when I knew something was wrong. The seller’s number was disconnected. I brought my iPhone to a techie friend at work who is really into iPhones and he told me it must have been unlocked by a hacker because iTunes locked it up to AT&T again. I told him how I got the phone and he said right away that it sounded like it was stolen. Actually, he called it “hot”, and that was appropriate because I couldn’t even touch it after that. I didn’t care about the money. I could turn it into AT&T but I wanted a chance to apologize and explain and to be sure that it got back to it’s owner. I lent it to my friend to see if he could figure out who it belonged to. He called me up all excited, “your phone is famous!” He found your name on the original SIM, and when he Googled it he found your blog about getting your iPhone 3G stolen. It all fit together. By the way, you look like an expert on iPhones and such but if I read your blog in advance I still wouldn’t have known this was a scam. A lot of what you write is so far over my head that it might as well be in martian to me. I don’t mean it’s not good, I’m just not a programmer or a gadget freak, and I can’t tell your techie blogs from the ones written for regular people. The big review you did of enterprise phones was really good in that it didn’t get too technical and talked about the best way for a businessman to buy a phone. I hope you do another one before I buy my next phone. I think the media in general does a disservice to people by making heroes out of iPhone hackers. Even you write about hacking the phone and tell Apple off for making the hacks quit working. If iPhones couldn’t be hacked, I wouldn’t be out $475. I’m not blaming you, but it’s ironic that you’re against hacks that help put iPhones on the black market. Sorry about all that. I guess I figure that for sending you your phone, I should be able to put in my two cents. 😉 I felt pretty stupid for buying a stolen phone, but I feel better now that I’ve sent it back to you. I’m sorry it took so long. Blessings. My deepest gratitude, my friend. I had given up hope of getting my iPhone 3G (actually, Apple’s iPhone 3G) back. The best way I can think of to repay you is to let your story take center stage and to take your insightful observations and suggestions to heart. Software Development