Law.com has revealed that Gizmodo editor Jason Chen has hired a criminal lawyer. I’m glad to hear that he’s finally taking this seriously. Chen’s lawyer says that he does not know if Chen is the target of the investigation or if they are trying to find information about his sources. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if he is saying that to protect his client.

What’s more interesting is that the finder of the iPhone prototype has been revealed. Wired has discovered the identity of the finder after following some social networking clues.

From the report on Wired:

Brian J. Hogan, a 21-year-old resident of Redwood City, California, says although he was paid by tech site Gizmodo, he believed the payment was for allowing the site exclusive access to review the phone. Gizmodo emphasized to him “that there was nothing wrong in sharing the phone with the tech press,” according to his attorney Jeffrey

Hogan says that he regrets not doing more to return the iPhone to Apple. Wired also reports that a friend of Hogan called AppleCare about the device and this is all that was done as an attempt to return the device. The iPhone was never returned to the bar and no other type of attempts were made.

In their report Wired also reveals that they were contacted to purchase the device, but not by Hogan. So there was a middleman, which leads me to believe that Hogan knew what he was doing was not only incredibly shady but also potentially illegal.