iphone 4s stolen, locked thru icloud, recovered, cant unlock

adaminja · Oct 25, 2013

Hello, first post ever in the assistance of a friend. Not yet an iphone owner myself but am about to bury the ailing bb and get one, so the timing of this first post is exceptional! His phone was lost or stolen a week ago, blocked thru icloud, and now its been recovered. Although we unblocked it thru icloud, the phone remains locked, and only allowing access to make emergency calls, although icloud no longer recognizes it as blocked.

somehow i haven't found a solution. Surely this cant be a first... Help? Please? One day I hope I can contribute something meaningful to the forum but for the moment its only questions

Hoping to find a solution! Thank you!

murphy47 · Oct 25, 2013

Try contacting carrier then Apple to make sure they know phone has been recovered by original owner.

willerz2 · Oct 26, 2013

See if restoring it in DFU mode fixes it. If it was reported stolen to your carrier, you may or may not be able to get the device removed from the blacklist. Rarely will they remove a device already on the blacklist

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murphy47 · Oct 26, 2013

Even if he is the original owner?

willerz2 · Oct 26, 2013

murphy47 said:
Even if he is the original owner?

Yes. The blacklist is much like the unlock whitelist in how it operates. Once it's on the list, you almost can never take it off. But, there is a wait period before it takes effect, so unless you recall the request prior to the blacklist being updated with the ESN/IMEI/ECCID, you can revert the stolen tag on the device. Some carriers take as long as a few hours for the changes to be made, and some may take as long as a week before it's processed. You can call up your carrier and see if you can get the changes revoked as it's different from country to country and carrier to carrier.

The ultimate reason for this is that there are consumers that will take advantage of their insurance by reporting their devices stolen, claim a new device, then say their older device was "returned" and aim for carriers to remove the block on the device so they can sell it out to profit.