Can Apple Support help me activate a secondhand iphone 4s with the previous owner's apple id stuck in the phone? (The phone is not stolen nor lost)

Hello guys. I just bought a secondhand iPhone 4S on a pawnshop. The phone was full of files so i decided to restore/update it(i set it up as a new phone) and then suddenly, it asked me the password of an apple id which made me realize the previous owner didn't log out his apple id which makes it impossible for me to log it out. So I decided to check some ways in the internet on how to restore it without logging it out and good thing i found one. After restoring it, i tried activating it but then it said "log in the previous apple id logged in before". it shows me c*****@e*****.jp .. I couldn't log in my apple id since it needs to log in the previous/original owner first before i could log it out and log in my apple id. This made me think it's going to be impossible for me to use/activate the iPhone again and my money that was used to buy this would be really worthless. I asked the person in-charged in the pawnshop to know the name of the owner who pawned the phone and he said the person who pawned it was only told by his boss to be the one to pawn it since his boss was gonna use the money. I have the receipt of payment if you want to see it, but the problem is the previous owner already went outside from the country which is impossible for me to contact him. Please help me, it would mean so much. Thank you.

Storage: 64 GB
iOS: 8.2