From sources that I have read it looks like the prototype for the new iPhone was lost by an Apple employee in a bar. It seems that this isn’t the first time a prototype has been lost.
Last year, an iPhone 4 prototype was bought by a gadget blog that paid $5,000 in cash. This year’s lost phone seems to have taken a more mundane path: it was taken from a Mexican restaurant and bar and may have been sold on Craigslist for $200. Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like.

About a day or two after the phone was lost at San Francisco’s Cava 22, which describes itself as a “tequila lounge” that also serves lime-marinated shrimp ceviche, Apple representatives contacted San Francisco police, saying the device was priceless and the company was desperate to secure its safe return, the source said.
Cava22, in San Francisco’s Mission District, where another unreleased iPhone apparently went missing last month.
Apple electronically traced the phone to a two-floor, single-family home in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, according to the source.
When San Francisco police and Apple’s investigators visited the house, they spoke with a man in his twenties who acknowledged being at Cava 22 on the night the device went missing. But he denied knowing anything about the phone. The man gave police permission to search the house, and they found nothing, the source said. Before leaving the house, the Apple employees offered the man money for the phone no questions asked, the source said, adding that the man continued to deny he had knowledge of the phone
So the moral of the story here is don’t drink and bring iPhone prototypes out to a bar. Most likely you will lose it and then you will be in deep problems. Who knows what this Apple employee will have to deal with after losing something so valuable as something the Apple corp has deemed priceless.