Help!! Is this hopeless??

[SunnyDaze]

OK

My neighbor down the street found an iphone 3gs in the snowbank after the huge blizzard that took down the metrodome. It WORKS, he's had an ad up on Craigslist for four days now, it charges, turns on, I see the background picture of this chick's cat (yes I have her name from the XXXX's iphone, yes I've tried to find her on facebook...nothing.) There IS A PASSCODE. I can't crack it. It's past the one hour mark of "try again" and frankly I can't think of any other way to try and get a hold of this dingbat that doesn't call her phone and doesn't check craigslist!!

So ANYWAY, I'm trying to get it to restore/wipe the thing so's I can use it. Thing is, I keep getting the "this iphone is not eligible for the requested build" error message. I've tried restoring with the standard itunes, with pwnage tool, (I have tmobile) I just want to get this frickin thing to WORK besides the screen with the cat. Also is it weird that I've had it into dfu/recovery mode and the regular home screen with passcode keeps coming back? Guess "the cat came back" Jesus that was lame.

Someone please help me!!

[Madman604x]

if you take it to an apple store they can trace the owner. mind you you will have to surrender the phone OR they may try contact the owner on your behalf

[i.Annie]

Hmm yes Apple can likely find the owner

Note that the owner is also capable of blacklisting the device and rendering it useless once restored (psst that's what you have to do). Even a jailbreak won't help.

But I'd suggest taking it to Apple, it's the nice thing to do.