Apple's new iPhone 6 might not be available in mainland China any time soon. But, according to local authorities, plenty of people there have already wrapped their hands around its contours.

Chinese police in recent days said that on Sept. 4, they detained an employee of Foxconn, a major Apple contractor, for stealing shells of the new phone from a factory in northern Shanxi province. According to the local Communist Party-run newspaper Taihang Daily, police alleged the 40-year-old male suspect, identified only as surnamed Qiao, sold six shells for 6,000 yuan ($960) to an electronic gadget market in the southern city Shenzhen, a hub for gadget makers.

The factory is in a development zone in the city of Jincheng. A staffer who picked up the phone at the public security bureau in in the zone confirmed that a suspect had been detained and that it was working with Foxconn. She added that the incident is still under investigation.

An Apple spokeswoman didn't respond to requests for comment. Foxconn – formally Hon Hai Precision Industry of Taiwan – said it expects its employees to follow its internal code of conduct. It declined to comment further on the matter.

The companies have long grappled with issues of maintaining Apple's secrecy about its new products. In China that's especially tough, given that its gadgets that are made by tens of thousands of Chinese workers, if not more. In the case of the iPhone 6, images of the device appeared for months online before the Cupertino, Calif., company formally unveiled it last week.