Vigilantes fight CraigsList bike thieves
A year ago, his bike was stolen. Then he spotted it on Craig’s List…
A friend tipped off Martin Moulton that a “for sale” photo clearly showed his bike’s custom seat. It was selling for $1000, in an ad claiming it belonged to “a friend” who “needs the money, which is why the price is so low. First serious offer gets the bike…”
Martin had already had five bikes stolen, according to an article about his fight in The Washington Post. So he planned to trick the Craigslist seller into giving out his address. Then he’d confront them — backed up by a friend who was prepared to call 911. At the last minute, the local police department agreed to provide an undercover vice officer instead, who successfully intercepted the sale.
Ultimately the seller revealed that he was only selling the bike for a pawn shop where it turned up — and apparently no charges have been filed. But it shows how technology is changing bike theft — making it much easier to sell stolen bikes, but sometimes also easier to locate them.
“With the advent of Craigslist and eBay, it looks like more expensive bikes are being stolen in a more organized way,” one bike store owner tells the Post — and a police lieutenant was more blunt about the thieves. “They’re killing us,” he tells the newspaper, saying bicycle thefts have “gone up significantly.”
A web site called Stolen Bike Registry tries to address the problem by letting users upload photos of their bikes, along with any bounty they want to offer for its return — and alerts owners to any bike shops that have asked about their serial numbers. But in its 8 years of operation, they’ve successfully helped return “about a dozen” stolen bikes, according to the Post.
One YouTube video documented how easily a bike can be stolen — and how little help bike owners get from both witnesses and the police.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TNTq3nhuh0[/youtube]
After “years of losing wheels, seats, brakes…and bikes to thieves,” two brothers filmed the lack of reaction they got when they approached a locked bike — their own — during New York City’s rush hour. Armed with bolt cutters, and then a hacksaw, and then even a handheld power grinding tool, they successfully sliced their bike’s chain every time. It took a full six minutes when using the hack saw, while their power grinder continuously spewed an unmistakeable trail of orange sparks. But only one person ever approached them — suggesting it’d go faster if they sliced the chain with vice grips.
In some cases, eBay is the problem — and the solution. One pair of crooks conned a bike shop into letting them ride off with a pair of bikes worth over $7500, according to the Post — by leaving fake IDs at the shop! But though eBay made it easy for them to put the bikes up for sale — a clever police sergeant also cracked the case simply by searching eBay for bikes matching the profile.
Perhaps the most disturbing story comes from the author of a blog called the Tribunal. While describing his location to 911, he’d watched a pair of bike thieves lift his bike out of a walled backyard compound, then carry it down a ladder. The bike was gone before the 911 dispatcher had even finished entering his address.
The blogger had even equipped his bike with a GPS emergency unit, and located the neighborhood where it was stolen, as well as a probable apartment building. (”The amount of property coming in and out of this one apartment was astounding. Scooters, bikes, tires, rims, electronics galore, and clothes.”) Eventually he saw his own bike being ridden — complete with a sticker for his own web site.
He says he reported the theft to the police in April – but has yet to see any results.
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August 26th, 2007
[...] Vigilantes fight CraigsList bike thieves » This Summary is from an article posted at TECH.BLORGE.com on Sunday, August 26, 2007 This [...]