Why not this? Is it because it's a super-duper top-secret Apple product? If someone were to leave their regular 3G iPhone in a bar -- in exactly the same manner -- and someone else were to grab it -- in exactly the same manner -- and somehow some magical mysterious way, someone bricked it, took out the sim card and whatnot (I.E. rendered it resellable), and sold it on eBay, do you think the recipient of said sold stolen iPhone would have had a raid on their house, trying to determine if they knew when they bought it on eBay that it was a stolen iPhone?
Really? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but theft shouldn't be a function of what is stolen, only of the value of what is stolen.
It would be an entirely different manner if they were claiming trade secrets/intellectual property, or whatnot, but the only thing different about what Gizmodo did to what Gizmodo usually does is they did it without permission from Apple, and they did it earlier than Apple wanted. Those "trade secrets" were going to be revealed in the future, when Apple was ready to sell the product.