Iphone 5s apple Id account isn't deleted. Is there anything I can do?

So I've only had an android and I had no idea about the iPhone when I bought it. I bought an iPhone 5s off of some guy on Craigslist and he said the phone was factory reset. He didn't seem sketchy at all. But I took it in to at&t and the apple Id wasn't deleted and they said there was no way to access the phone until the account was deleted! There has to be something I can do right? I mean what do I do? Just throw the phone away? Lol jk but seriously the guys not writing or calling back which makes me think it's a stolen phone. There has to be some way to reset it so I can use it! Or else I'm just going to go buy a new phone and this iphone is going to sit in my desk for years. What do I do?

No way around it

ideally keep trying to contact the guy you bought it from

maybe he just forget to wipe it

otherwise you own a neat package of spare parts

Your greed for a bargain meant you didn't buy carefully. As a result you now have a useless stolen iPhone and it's very possible that it's location is being tracked and that it's covertly sending photos of you and your surroundings back to the owner/police.

If you decide to keep it then you're also a criminal, just like whoever stole it or decided to keep it when they found a lost phone.

Cut your losses and hand it in to police, or to a shop for the network it's registered to. If it's insured there may be a small reward for its return, but even if not you may be returning vital data to the owner which wasn't backed up.

The phone is permanently useless to you. Do the right thing.

Latest (well 2 years or more) Apple OS 'security' feature means that the old owner 'has' to delete / transfer the apple ID to the new owner.

It is to make stolen phones useless

Problem is, many Apple owners and certainly 'new to apple' (like yourself)
do not know this… And get caught out

So go back to the seller and ask them to delete the phone from his apple account OR tell you their password so you can put your own Apple ID on there.

That said,
If have changed apple ID on a phone, and when I reset it,
it went back to the original owner - who had left the company.

if you can show you are the genuine owner, I'm sure Apple 'can' reset / reload it
Your challenge is showing you are the true owner, which means original purchase paperwork (from the seller) - or AT&T confirming that it is 'not' stolen?

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