Himself's elderly aunt (now in a dementia ward) has an ipad that another nephew conned her into buying early 2022.

The nephew set it up but I doubt she used it much.

The ipad has now worked its way to me as no one can get into it.

Well neither can I, even though I do know the PIN and icloud credentials.

The little book of passwords can be a wonderful thing.

When the ipad is turned on it comes up with "hello" in a variety of languages.

Its asked me what language and country, which I've answered.

Its now at a point where it needs the 2FA phone number.

The nephew stupidly used her landline number, so it cant receive any codes.

Its disconnected now anyway.

It then asked for another phone number to send a code to, so I used mine.

Code received and entered, and now I have to "wait" for an indeterminate length of time for the next step.

Which is that an email will be sent to the icloud account.

But I cant get into that either as it is requesting a code from the impossible landline number.

I feel I am going round and round in circles now, in a chicken and egg situation from which there is no way out.

I dont know much about Apple-land so I feel I have reached the end of my abilities.

Is this ipad irretrievable and now a placemat, or is there hope?