iPhone 5: Police accompanied Apple in home search

Police were present when Apple security officials searched a man's home for a missing iPhone 5 prototype, the San Francisco police have admitted.

The acknowledgement on Friday, reported in the newspaper SF Weekly, comes after local police denied having any records of the visit that was revealed by CNET on Wednesday when it broke the news of the missing prototype.

The prototype iPhone 5 went missing in a bar in San Francisco in July, sparking a hunt by Apple to recover the device. According to CNET, police were able to trace the missing phone via GPS to a man's home in Bernal Heights, San Francisco.

In late July "plainclothes [San Francisco Police Department] officers went with private Apple detectives to the home of Sergio Calderón, a 22-year-old resident of Bernal Heights," SF Weekly reported on Friday after speaking to a police spokesman.

Calderón told SF Weekly that six badge-wearing people appeared at his house in late July to ask whether he had the phone. None of them said whether they were Apple employees.

"When they came to my house, they said they were SFPD," Calderón said. "I thought they were SFPD. That's why I let them in."

One of the individuals left a number with Calderón. SF Weekly traced it to Anthony Colon, a private investigator employed by Apple.

However, the SFPD, while confirming that they went to the house, told SF Weekly they had no record of conducting a search.

"There's something amiss here," a police spokesman said. "If we searched someone's house, there would be a police report."