http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/iphone-finder/ Even got a fancy-shmancy lawyer and everything. He's still hosed, though.
This guy is thief. He requested money from different tech sites and sold something that clearly wasn't his. If he was really an honest person according to his "sources" then he would have left the phone with the bartender so Grey could've gotten it back without any problems. He probably already knew it was Grey's phone from opening up the Facebook app unless Apple remotely shut down the iPhone right after he started it using it. I'm guessing that's not the case though because I doubt Grey Knew his phone was lost right away...
He claims he thought the money was for the rights to an exclusive story about the phone. It's hard to say without knowing exactly what Giz asked of him regarding the phone, but I do find it a little bit incredulous that he's know enough about the media biz to think such a thing; the average Joe's instinct would be to sell the thing to the highest bidder. There's a whole whack of things we don't know though, and probably won't until the investigation is over and the people involved can start talking about it. I don't think this Brian fellow is being entirely on the level about what he did though. He's admitting just enough minor guilt (about not going far enough to get the phone back to its owner) that my first (and admittedly cynical) instinct is to wonder what big lie the little lie is trying to cover for.
