They have to work on the balance of probabilities though. It would be very long odds to sell a device, steal it back, then need to approach Apple for help unlocking.
They can't rely on the odds, because scammers would step in and increase the odds if the possibility existed to exploit Apple's behavior. IMO, this is what should happen given that Activation Lock is enabled.
It's a separate question whether the customer should be able to disable Activation Lock before it gets tripped, which would prevent the computer from bricking itself. Apple makes that choice for the customer because they don't fully respect your ownership of the device that they made.
