Police officers and Apple Inc. employees recently visited a San Francisco residence in a search for a prototype of one of the tech giant's devices that had been traced to a local home, but left empty handed.

Four city police officers accompanied two Apple employees to the home in south central San Francisco, the city's police department said in a statement on Friday. The police statement didn't say when the search took place or name the device that went missing. However, the department's news release was sent in a document titled 'iphone5.doc.'

'The two Apple employees met with the resident and then went into the house to look for the lost item,' the police said in the statement. 'The Apple employees did not find the lost item and left the house.'

Apple didn't want to make an official report of the lost item, the statement said

The search for the stray device marks the second time in as many years that the Cupertino Calif.-based consumer electronics giant has tracked down a prototype that has slipped out of the hands of an employee.

Last year, technology blog Gizmodo published photos of the iPhone 4, which was still under development, after it paid $5,000 for the device to someone who claimed to have found it in a bar.