Apple got exaactly what they wanted: 10 million bucks worth of publicity for free.
Apple can get that anytime they want... they don't have to lose an iPhone prototype to get that kind of publicity. Just look at the publicity they are getting from the iPad...
And part of being able to get that kind of publicity -- for Apple -- has always been by not letting information leak out or be snuck out of their company. That's how they are able to manage getting big publicity when they do release products or updates.
That's precisely part of their strategy.
So, it wouldn't make sense for them to sabotage their own strategy for how they manage to "get publicity" by destroying that very basis that they use to get it -- which is keeping a tight hold on the information until they release it thenselves, with a product announcement or a product release. That's always been part of the publicity aura for Apple. And anyone who knows Apple knows that, too.
We don’t even know that it really was a “prototype;” just that it accessed 4th gen. frequencies. There are at least 25 models of phones out there that do that right now.