How Wired.com tracked down the iPhone prototype finder

A writer for Wired.com has posted how the site found Brian Hogan, the person who reportedly found an iPhone prototype in a bar and gave it to the blog Gizmodo in exchange for a $5,000 payment.

Brian X. Chen wrote a personal blog post about how a team of journalists at Wired.com started tracking the finder after it learned that San Mateo police were conducting a criminal investigation into the case, which involved an Apple employee accidentally leaving behind a prototype of a future iPhone at a bar in Redwood City. Hogan may or may not face criminal charges for failing to return the phone and instead making a profit from the Gizmodo deal.

The story is interesting in that it shows how modern-day sleuths can use tools such as Google and Facebook to track down someone who is trying to hide from them. Chen wasn’t able to tell the full story, in part because of an agreement to keep one source anonymous.

But Chen wrote, “It all started with a Facebook comment. The day Gizmodo published its 4G iPhone bombshell, our former intern Rose Roark saw a suspicious-looking note posted by Hogan on someone’s Facebook wall. She pointed it out to me, and I agreed it was telling. But even so, the comment was vague (a single word) and not enough to draw a conclusion; we didn’t have access to Hogan’s Facebook profile to learn more about him. We created a screenshot of the Facebook wall in case we needed it for future reference.”

A week after Gizmodo published its story on the iPhone prototype and how it found it, Wired.com started hunting. By then, Hogan had deleted his Facebook profile. But using the screen capture, Wired.com writers began checking into Hogan’s friends and found many had gone to Santa Barbara City College. So the team used the Knowx.com people-tracking web site to find a Brian J. Hogan who lived in Redwood City and in Santa Barbara. They scored a hit and sent someone to the house in Redwood City, but no one was there. Neighbors confirmed Hogan lived there.

A Google search on “Brian Hogan SBCC” found a search result that showed Hogan had studied abroad. Then the Wired.com team searched for people who had studied abroad with Hogan and were likely his friends. The team also checked with an anonymous tipster, but didn’t get a direct confirmation. Then Hogan’s attorney, Jeffrey Bornstein, called Wired.com writer Kevin Poulsen, since he had heard that Wired.com was tracking Hogan. Bornstein confirmed that he represented Brian Hogan, a pretty big clue that Hogan was the guy.

Then, in a later statement, Bornstein confirmed to Wired.com’s Kim Zetter and Poulsen that Hogan was the finder.

“And with all that, we finally had enough to break the story with confidence,” Chen wrote. “It was a combination of cyber sleuthing, old-school gumshoe reporting and persistent stalking.”

[photo credit: Wired.com]

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