Two group who sole a mislaid iPhone 4 antecedent to technology blog Gizmodo have been condemned to a year of probation, avoiding prison time.
Brian John Hogan, 22, and Sage Robert Wallower, 28, were fined $250 (159) - but authorised to keep the $4,750 (3,014) they done from the sale.
They will moreover have to do 40 hours of open service.
An Apple operative left the device at a club in Redwood, California in Mar 2010, before it was unveiled.
Mr Hogan and Mr Wallower both pleaded no competition to a malfeasance assign of burglary of mislaid property.
Gizmodo journalists, inclusive the editor Jason Chen, whose home was raided by military after the blog performed the device for $5,000 (3,173), transient prosecution.
Technology website CNET reported that San Mateo county DA Richard Wagstaffe asked for prison time, but the panel of judges ruled otherwise.
"The panel of judges deliberate that Mr Wallower had served in the armed forces and Mr Hogan was enrolled in San Jose State, and conjunction had any crook record, and motionless that prison time wasn't required.
"This was a couple of childish people who should have well known better."
A California law states that any person who finds mislaid skill and knows who the owners might be but "appropriates such skill to his own use" is guilty of theft.
Gray Powell, the Apple P.C. operative who mislaid the phone, forgot it whilst out celebrating his 27th birthday at a German drink grassed area called Haus Staudt.
The phone was sheltered as an iPhone 3G version, but the people who performed it worked out its loyal identity.
After Apple detected that the handset had been sole to Gizmodo, it demanded that the device be returned.
The Cupertino-based wiring hulk even contacted military who searched Mr Chen's home and confiscated 3 Apple laptops, a 32GB Apple iPad, a 16GB iPhone and a Samsung digital camera.
Gizmodo finally did give the antecedent back - but usually after it published photos and a video of the device on its website.
The story became well known as The Complete Lost iPhone Saga .
Former Gizmodo article executive Brian Lam reflected on the situation in his blog .
"An hour after the story went live, the phone rang and the number was from Apple HQ," he wrote, adding that the call was from the one-time Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who died on 5 October 2011.
Mr Jobs asked to have his phone back.
"He wasn't demanding. He was asking. And he was attractive and he was funny," wrote Mr Lam.
"I conclude you had your fun with our phone and I'm not insane at you, I'm insane at the sales man who mislaid it," one after another Mr Lam, quoting Mr Jobs. "But you need the phone back since you can't let it drop in to the incorrect hands."
"Before he hung up, he asked me, 'What do you regard of it?"
"I said, 'It's beautiful."
When Mr Jobs denounced the iPhone 4 at an eventuality in San Francisco on 7 June 2010, he joked about the mislaid phone incident.
"Stop me if you've already seen this," he said, as he introduced the device.
On his blog, Mr Lam wrote that nonetheless the story was a outrageous dip and he did not bewail the way Gizmodo rubbed it from a veteran indicate of view, he was still sorry.
On 14 September, a couple of weeks before the Apple co-founder died of a respiratory arrest, Mr Lam sent him a e-mail of apology.
"Steve, a couple of months have transfered since all that iPhone 4 things went down, and I just longed for to say that I instruct things happened differently.
"I may should have stop work correct after the initial story was published for a few not similar reasons.
"I didn't know how to say that without throwing my team beneath the bus, so I didn't.
"Now I've schooled it's improved to remove a job I do not believe in any more than to do it well and keep it just for that sake.
"I'm remorseful is to problems I caused you."
He never received a reply.
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