If his phone was hooked up to the company to the point where they have control, there's a chance that their IT department sent a "Kill packet", for lack of a better term. That essentially wiped the device. Had that happen about 10 years ago when I had a blackberry. Somehow someone managed to hit the right button and did a force reset to all the company blackberries. All of our apps outside of the factory ones were wiped, thankfully being a blackberry most of us just lost a game or two, and pandora so no big deal.