OP needs to stop what they're doing. If they didn't have iCloud turned off before wiping the phone, the phone is a literal brick. Anyone who says they can get past iCloud Lock, other than the original account owner, is LYING. Period. Sucks that OP has a paperweight, but he can still sell the phone for parts to recoop the lost. Just be honest about the fact that it's iCloud locked. The OEM screen and components like the frame and even the used OEM battery are inherently valuable. But OP done fucked up for reals. After the phone has been factory reset through iTunes, and yes you will need to do this so Google how to put the phone in DFU mode, upon setting up the phone you will be presented with the Apple ID which will have the first character of the email address followed by bullets and then @(whatever email address the iCloud account is associated with).com Go to iCloud.com and use the Forgot ID or Forgot Password options, the original owner of the phone will need to be there with you, and if you can't figure out the password for the iCloud account, you need to schedule an appointment with the Genius Bar at your local Apple store. They will need to answer security questions, and the answers to these questions need to be input verbatim, they are indeed case sensitive. If you pay $30-40 for someone to "unlock" the phone, you're just getting yourself scammed. What they are likely referring to, is unlocking the phone to be put for use on another network carrier, something that can be done yourself, for free. You are NOT getting past the passcode on an iPhone. Go ahead and watch YouTube videos and entertain yourself, I'm telling you, you're wasting your time. If it's pictures videos and contacts that OP and his "associate" care about, iCloud accounts come with 5GB of free storage, so if the phone owner ever downloaded anything off of the App Store, ever, at all, there should be SOME data backed up to the cloud. If they didn't opt in to autopay $1/month for 50GB of iCloud storage, then what you see is what you get, and you will NEVER be able to retrieve any of the data on that iPhone, that much I PROMISE.