IIRC it was confirmed that the engineer was at a bar because he had updated Facebook (via the phone) mentioning the delicious German beer he was drinking (hence the German airline offering him tickets to Germany).
...because once you're at a bar, it's only possible to loose things, not to have them stolen?
Hmm, I may have replied to the wrong comment, or misread it. I only meant to say that the device wasn't stolen from Apple campus, not that it couldn't have been stolen at the bar.