The owner then has 90 days to claim the property. Id. 2080.2. If the true owner fails to do so and the property is worth more than $250, then the police publish a notice, and 7 days after that ownership of the property vests in the person who found it,
Funny thing is, that if he had done that and delivered the phone to a local police station. It would more likely than not have been tossed into a lost and found bin, and become legally his after those 90 days. The phone was already disabled and contained no owner name, and barring the police officer receiving it being a hardcore Apple fan identifying it as a prototype, there was no obvious way to identify the owner. It would be handled like any other found phone, the police registering it and logging the name of the person turning it in. They would not care or bother with any further investigation as they have much more important task to handle. Combined with Apples taste for secrecy, it's not likely they would send people to surrounding police stations asking for the phone.