That is indeed how insurance works, you lose something and they reimburse you, thanks for the clarification.

I thought that you meant the insurance company would reimburse for a mac that was returned to you without physical damage but locked by Apple.

If you later recover an item that you've successfully claimed an insurance claim against, you would just have to hand over the item to your insurance company (who might not even want it at that point). And you should have been able to successfully claim the laptop since at the airport, it was most definitely lost and/or stolen.

Also, how can you even assess that the laptop has no physical damage? They can't boot into the OS and can't see that the laptop is in fact completely physically intact. What if the other party broke the webcam or one of the USB ports?

The computer was “lost” for a whole month before being found and 2 months before being returned. You should claim losses immediately anyway so probably he could have gotten the refund before even knowing it was found.

>Using travel insurance for "loss or theft" of something when something is actually, well, lost.

If someone grabs your laptop and takes it in an airplane that takes off without you, it's arguably been lost or in fact been stolen.