I never considered that, but if I recall correctly the engineer that lost the phone claims to have called the bar repeatedly looking for the phone. Of course, that doesn't rule out the bartender. Since the phone looked like a regular iPhone in a case I suspect no one would have paid any attention to it unless they planned on flipping it.
Also, why didn't Apple use the "Find My iPhone" feature of MobileMe to track it down? Lots of things don't add up in this whole ordeal...
