My iphone was stolen, icloud hacked, and password + recover phone changed - what do I do?

Hello,

My iphone 13 was stolen in Mexico. I had set the phone to LOST MODE via Find My; however, when I setup my new phone, the lost mode was turned off. As soon as that happened, the thief managed to hack into my phone, change my icloud password and recovery phone #, and factory reset all of my connected apple devices. They had also hacked into and changed the PW for the email account that was associated with my icloud, but I have since regained access to that email account.

Now I am trying to regain access to my icloud, but there doesn't seem to be a solution. I called apple support and they told me all I can do is follow the steps on iforgot.apple.com.

I did a test run of the forgot password process using a temporary icloud account I setup to do this. I linked that icloud account to an ipad I have. In doing this test recovery process, I'm imagining that my ipad is the stolen device that the thief has possession of.

Here are the steps that it took me through, which ultimately did not allow me to recover the pw.

I start this process via my laptop PC. at iforgot.apple.com

1. I enter the apple ID i'm trying to recover the pw for,
2. It asks that I confirm the phone # associated with the apple ID. I enter the correct #. NOTE: the theif changed the phone # associated with my icloud account. I was able to find out the phone number they are using after recovering access to my gmail account which they hacked into.
3. I then get taken to a page that says a notification has been sent to your connected device. In this test case the connected device is my ipad, which I am imagining is the stolen device. I see the notification on my ipad and I (imagining i'm the thief), click "Dont Allow
4. Back on the iforgot.apple.com screen (on my laptop), after the notification has already been sent to the "stolen" ipad, there is an option that says "I dont have access to the device". I click this.
5. It tells me i have the option to recover my password from another iOS device. I select this option and follow the steps using my girlfriends iphone. The steps require her to download the Apple Support app, and use the password recovery process via the app.
6. I get taken to a page that says "a text message has been sent to the phone number on file" - mind you the phone number on file in the real life scenario is the thief's number (which for this test run is a temporary voip number i created). There is an option on the page that says " I dont have access to this phone #". I click this, but the text was automatically sent already.
7. I get taken to a page that says that I have the option to recover my password via email and that it will take a couple days to complete this process. I click "proceed". Note that the email associated with my apple ID in the real life scenario is an email that I have regained access to, so you would think that's a good thing.
8. On the next page, it says "a verification code has been sent to the email associated with your apple ID". I get the verification code, enter it, and click next
9. I land on a page that says "request received, we will notify you by tomorrow what the wait time will be"
10. Meanwhile, I also get a notification on the "stolen" ipad saying that "there was an attempt for password change on your account". I, imagining I am the thief, click this, and it asks "did you try to change your password?". I click "NO". I then get a message that says something to the effect of "ok, ignore the request then, there is no further action you need to take"

So in this test scenario, I was unable to regain access to my icloud !! this seems crazy. Does someone know of a solution ? NOTE that I did a test scenario first b/c I wanted to be sure the process works before actually trying it with my real life hacked apple ID.