Yes - fair enough. But why wouldn't you just say 'Oh look, I've found the phone that I thought had been stolen'? That would have been the end of the matter surely....unless there was something else going on.
In my limited, second hand experience of dealing with legal proceedings, it would be wrong to thing that the advice given by soliciters/lawyers is always correct, and it would often be wrong to read too much into somebody behaving in a way that doesn't seem entirely sensible and logical from a detached viewpoint.As an aside, if what she says about her solicitor’s advice is true, then that sounds rather odd advice to this layman, (but I have now read JC Denton’s informed comments).