How can I report my stolen iPhone to Apple and wipe it immediately?

Marking your phone as lost in Find My locks it and prevents the thief accessing any of your data, so the waiting period doesn't benefit the thief unless they know your passcode. Note that if you have Stolen Device Protection turned on then even if they know your passcode they can't access your data without Face ID.

If your iPhone or iPad has been stolen – Apple Support (UK)

I'm just a user so I don't know why Apple does things but my assumption is that if Apple had a Stolen Phone mode the problem would be the significant number of people who would report their phone as stolen only to find it or have it returned to them a few days later. If the phone - and its IMEI - had been reported stolen to the carriers then it would be unuseable and these boards would have posts bemoaning the policy.

• What waiting period to wipe your device through Find My?
• Are you referring to the Stolen Device Protection waiting period, the data on your phone is still protected during that waiting period with the Passcode.
• If you are seeing a 30 day waiting period to remove the device from Find My, that is not what you should be doing. Removing the device will result in the thief being able to set up the device for their own use. They would still be required to reset the phone, so your data is not there for it to be compromised.
• Did you forget the Apple Account Password and not have any other Trusted Device or Trusted Phone number on the Apple Account to use for an immediate password reset? That will result in using Account Recovery requiring a waiting period to access your account.
• Your data is protected with the Passcode on your device, so the thief does not have access to it. The only way to remove a Passcode is to completely erase the device, which means it no longer contains personal data. If Find My is turned on, it will still be Activation Locked and remain unusable to the thief.
• Reporting a stolen device is done to law enforcement. That has nothing to do with the data on the phone that is still protected with the Passcode. If the thief attempts to guess the Passcode too many times, it will automatically be locked for any further use.

If your iPhone or iPad was stolen - Apple Support

There are no Apple employees participating in these strictly user supported communities. Apple is not a recovery service for lost devices. Apple provides the Find My app on Macs and i/Pad/OS to place your phone in *before* it is lost or stolen. At best, that will allow you to wipe the phone remotely, unless it is shielded by the thief.

The steps and advice that you follow are in the two links you have been provided. Whether they worked or didn't work for you is not on Apple, or local law enforcement. In the case where the Las Vegas PD would not investigate a suggested location for your lost phone, that should have been escalated as it is not trivial stolen property.

Thieves benefit from opportunity. That is why my iPhone is never further than my hand or in my pocket. I use Face ID and a pin, the latter is memorized, not stuck on the back of my phone.

The sheer depth of the responses illustrates another issue. Addressing the issue of finding your phone after reporting it as lost, it would merely require yet another disclaimer warning of the finality when choosing to report it as lost. Taking away options to avoid additional responsibilities is not a good way to operate.

In this case, my wife had inadvertently left her passcode to unlock her phone on a sticky note on the back of the phone. I understand that this is not the norm but it left us in a very uncomfortable position. We were able to see her phone through Life360 and could see that the thieves were turning the phone off and on. We also knew the location but law enforcement refused to investigate due to it being Las Vegas making it low priority.

So we knew that the phone had been stolen, we knew that they had the passcode and were using it. We wanted to immediately wipe the phone but in following the suggested steps, reporting the phone as “lost” caused the automatic hold. I spent hours on the phone with Apple support and they said that we could wipe the phone by following the steps. Ultimately it would end up at where you have to enter a code. This brought a whole new set of issues. The code was being sent to the stolen phone. When picking the option that we didn’t have access to that phone and the fact that there are and were no other Apple devices associated with her phone, there was nothing Applle could do and that we would have to endure the waiting period.

I’m not a fan of bringing up problems without offering possible solutions so…

It would have been a relatively easy fix had we been able to have the code sent to my phone. I was set as her recovery and legacy contacts. I don’t see why this shouldn’t be possible.

Additionally, the issue of accidentally or intentionally removing the phone making it useable by the thieves shouldn’t be an option unless I’m missing something. If there was a differentiation between reporting a phone as lost vs stolen it seems that there would be two separate procedures that were tailored more specifically to those situations.

Thank you VikingOSX for your helpful and compassionate response