Or they could pose as the official of some government, say they have a phone they need cracked, and if successful they require some basic information on how it was done to present in court. I'm sure that company would be happy to comply for their standard fee, and the explanation would help Apple close up the hole.
Though if it is as people as suggesting, that they used some expensive lab equipment to make connections to the NAND chip pins to copy the data in them and rewrite it to allow brute forcing the 10000 possible 4 digit PINs it isn't something Apple needs to care about because:
1) that attack wouldn't work against a newer phone with the secure enclave
2) this case demonstrated that if you want to keep your iPhone secure from the FBI, don't use a 4 digit passcode, use an actual password
Biting the hand that feeds IT
