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Where do stolen bikes go?

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Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#191

Post by BonoboIO »

ozim wrote: post #80
bckygldstn wrote: post #21

There's a Dutch bike company (VanMoof) that offers a Theft Recovery service for their bikes: they have teams of people that track down the bike (using GPS primarily) and basically steal it back. They used to produce monthly videos of bike recovery operations, though it looks like they've stopped the videos so you'll have to scroll past a few years of promo videos: https://www.youtube.com/@vanmoof Often they recover t…

I did not hear about VanMoof earlier but my buddy called police (Amsterdam area of course) once when he found his bike and he wanted to be good citizen so he did not want to just steal it back from some backyard. Well police helped him recover the bike without arresting anyone and told him next time he should just steal it back and don't bother them.

Don’t disturb cops while they drink coffee. Poor guys. /s

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#192

Post by BonoboIO »

denton-scratch wrote: post #30

I had a £2,000 electric bike stolen in Oxford. No worries - it had a GPS tracker, and I could see it heading to Birmingham up the M40. Also, my neighbour had CCTV footage. You couldn't make out the faces or number-plate, but you could see it was a black Mercedes. It was taken at about 3AM. So they had "liberated" the bike (it was locked up), and immediately headed out of town. I'm sure it was scouted, then they came…

2000 ... well going to get my buddies and talk to the new „owner“.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#193

Post by BonoboIO »

blhack wrote: post #179

I had a bike stolen at burning man, and it ended up in NEW ZEALAND! I couldn't believe it. I was able to track it for a little while via the tile app, but it eventually stopped being available. Would have been such a cool story to get it back. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kiwis-on-a-mission-to-find-ele...

Why people downvote your story?

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#194

Post by Camillo »

prawn wrote: post #135
denton-scratch wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doing this makes it effectively legal to commit said crime. Yeah. The same thing happens with bankster's frauds. The difference is that a fraud case is very costly to investigate and prosecute; in this case, as you put it, I gave it to them on a silver platter. And I'd bet that they'd have recovered dozens of expensive bikes if they'd raided it, and solved at least dozens of open cases.

AND limit future thefts by the same people, and likely dissuade future thieves.

If you put the bike thieves in jail, sure. And when your e-bike gets stolen, you may well think you want them in jail. But the next week, the New York Times writes an article about how there are too many non-violent offenders in jail and the incarceration crisis is a national shame. Now the e-bike owner is outraged and wants the thief out of jail. It's not trivial to come up with a punishment that will deter the thieves without also deterring the voters from seeing it administered.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#195

Post by michaelmrose »

User23 wrote: post #112
grecy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> basically steal it back This brings up an interesting legal question. Is it illegal to steal back your own property? Even if you trespass onto private property to do so, the person would have to get the Police involved to do anything about that, at which time you can say "Sure, I'll take the trespassing charge, and while we're here I'm leaving with all of my property".

Not a lawyer, but talked about this with one once and this is what I remember. By definition you can't steal something that belongs to you. The fact that someone else stole it doesn't make it stop being yours. However it might still be illegal to take it back if doing so involves breaking other laws, like breaking and entering, assault, or what have you. It might not be crazy to risk a trespass, since those generally…

So given the privacy horror that is cell phone location data selling if you know someone's home address and name you could probably arrange to pick up the bike where they normally tie it up.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#196

Post by InCityDreams »

syndacks wrote: post #161
bckygldstn wrote: post #21

There's a Dutch bike company (VanMoof) that offers a Theft Recovery service for their bikes: they have teams of people that track down the bike (using GPS primarily) and basically steal it back. They used to produce monthly videos of bike recovery operations, though it looks like they've stopped the videos so you'll have to scroll past a few years of promo videos: https://www.youtube.com/@vanmoof Often they recover t…

Vanmoof is a shit company with shit bikes and even more shit customer service. Purely aesthetics and marketing. Stay away.

Your opinion being based on...?

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#198

Post by johnnyApplePRNG »

I bought something from a police auction aggregator business in Ontario once and when I went into the location to pick it up I got a chance to chat with the owner briefly.

I mentioned how many bikes I saw on hand, and he proudly told me that since his inception about 20 years ago he had auctioned off more than 1 MILLION stolen bicycles.

1 million stolen bikes, retrieved by police in Ontario alone in the past 20 years.

That's incredible.

Imagine how many bikes have been stolen and not recovered by the police.

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#199

Post by chriscjcj »

Cieplak wrote: post #8

If one's bike is stolen in the San Francisco Bay Area, there's a small but significant chance you can find it for sale at the Laney College Flea Market (e.g. [1]). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/BAbike/comments/8mmrne/stolen_bike_...

I pass by a very large cache of bikes every day on the way to work. The quantity ebbs and flows. Perhaps they're all procured legitimately, but somehow I doubt it. No one seems to be interested in investigating it because it's been going on for quite some time now.

https://goo.gl/maps/eJPJcPca3DuptoFY6

Re: Where do stolen bikes go?

#200

Post by pastaguy1 »

I've definitely spent some time thinking about it, or did in college anyway.

There's a lot going on with the typical bike population on a college campus.

A fair amount of bikes get stolen on the way home from a party or whatever, and left in a shrubbery or whatever. These bikes tend to get picked up by the school and sold at the reuse store. Some bikes have probably done that loop more than once, especially because these bikes are often not so great, and the line between "stolen" and "community" blurs a bit.

Unregistered/expired bikes also end up in the reuse store, which is also pretty common.

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