I had a family member's iphone, for which I had the pin, but not the icloud password. They did not know what it was. The "trusted device(s) and phone number(s)" were no longer around. I tried many and any avenues for resetting it, with no success. I even appealed to Apple, but they refused to help me without a proof of purchase, which the family member did not have or could not find.
They had a new iphone, and a new account. So really they just needed the phone wiped, so the data was off it, and so hopefully they could sell it.
I then tried every avenue I could think of to wipe it, again coming up short. I even tried jail-breaking, but even that was no good against Apple's security.
So I gave up. The phone just sat here looking at me for months, a mute testament to my failure and frustration.
Today I had a breakthrough. I remembered the "wipe after 10 failed pin attempts" option. I thought it would probably brick the phone, but at least then I could throw it away once the data was no longer on it. But it worked even better than that, it just reset it, or something that looked like that. I was able to reload it with another account, and then do a regular reset/wipe rendering it ready for resale. It does take about 12 hours to fail the pin 10x, because the delay between tries becomes longer each time, up to like 8 hours.
I spent a lot of time googling, and nobody I ever saw mentioned this. I may have just missed it my search. I wish I had thought of it sooner.
