Another supposed iPhone 4G prototype turned up last week on a Vietnamese web site, this one reportedly bought for $4,000 by Taoviet, which of course cracked it open and showed it around à la Gizmodo.

Engadget's convinced it's real and a closer-to-production model than the one Gizmodo bought. This one supposedly uses a version of the proprietary A4 chip that Apple's using in the iPad, not exactly a surprise move.

Taoviet apparently paid less than Gizmodo to find this out; Gizmodo, for all its trouble, didn't seem to progress human knowledge any.

According to the search warrant affidavit swore to by the cop, an ex-Secret Service agent, heading up the Gizmodo investigation and unsealed by court order last Friday Brian Hogan, the kid who sold Gizmodo the first gone-missing iPhone prototype, told his roommate that he got $8,500 for the thing and flashed $5,000 in hundred dollar bills.

Gizmodo has said it paid him $5,000 and promised a bonus, but apparently offered him ten grand when he was shopping the thing around. The existence and source of that $2,500 has yet to be plumbed - at least publicly.

The 10-page affidavit reveals that Hogan's cover was blown by Katherine Martinson, one of his roommates, who ratted him out to an Apple cop the day the Gizmodo story broke to avoid getting dragged into the mess herself after Hogan tried to revive the Apple-disabled phone by plugging it into her computer.

She was worried that Apple would be able to track her down from her IP address. She told the cops Hogan knew from the beginning who the dingus belonged to and realized its worth. He told her the Apple engineer "Shouldn't have lost his phone."

Search warrants were in process a couple of days later when she called the cops to tell them that Hogan and his other roommate Thomas Warner were removing evidence from their apartment.

The cops located Hogan at his father's house and eventually arrested Warner in the middle of the night on two outstanding misdemeanor warrants. The arrest evidently persuaded Mr. Warner to confess that he had hidden a thumb drive and memory stick that he previously denied ever having under a bush. He had stashed Hogan's computer at a church and "lost" the prototype's identifying sticker at a gas station.

No charges have been filed against anybody yet but it's clear the authorities were treating the case, including Gizmodo's role in it, as "grand theft phone" from the very beginning based on Apple's description of the thing as "invaluable."

By the way, Gizmodo writer Jason Chen, who bought and dismantled the phone, eventually returned it to Apple broken in three places, a situation the cops describe as "vandalism."

Steve Jobs called Gizmodo editor Brian Lam to demand the return of the phone; Lam held out for confirmation that it was real and better access to Apple.

Chen could be charged with receiving stolen property, trade secrets violations and destruction of property.