San Francisco (CNN) -- Police officials said they helped Apple investigators, who searched a man's home here recently.
They were reportedly looking for a prototype of the next iPhone that an Apple employee left in a bar in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood, according to CNET. Apple had contacted the police claiming the prototype is invaluable, the report says.
Four San Francisco Police officers escorted Apple investigators to a home in the city's Bernal Heights neighborhood, the statement said. The two Apple employees searched the home while the officers waited outside, police said. They did not find the item there and declined to file a police report, according to the statement.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
A city police official declined to comment to CNN and referred reporters to the news release. Earlier this week, officials said they had no record of an investigation.
In the statement sent to CNN and other news media late Friday, police did not describe what "lost item" Apple was looking for. However, the file name of that news release is "iphone5.doc," as Reuters pointed out.
Lt. Troy Dangerfield gave an interview to SF Weekly Friday afternoon confirming the police's involvement with Apple in the investigation.
SF Weekly also interviewed a man who told the publication that he consented to having his home searched for a phone by six officers last month. No one in the group identified himself as being an Apple employee, the man told SF Weekly. He reportedly said that he assumed they were all police officials and would not have permitted entry if he knew the searchers were from Apple.
Apple's team searched the home, car and computer files, while police waited outside, the reports say. The investigators reportedly told the man that they had traced the phone's GPS signal to his house. When asked, he said he had been at the same bar where the phone was reportedly lost but that he didn't have it, the report says.
One of the investigators, who identified himself as Tony, gave the man living in the house a phone number and told him to call with any information about the lost phone, the report says. When the SF Weekly reporter called, a man named Anthony Colon, who said he was an Apple employee, answered, the report says.
Colon's LinkedIn profile, which he eventually removed, said he is a senior investigator for Apple and a former San Jose police sergeant.
The man, who reportedly said he's a U.S. citizen who lives with relatives, told SF Weekly that the people searching his home questioned his family's immigration status.
The man could not be reached by CNN for comment.