Reading this sad tale got me thinking; there seems to be an increasing amount of 'targeted' bike thefts these days, and there's been numerous threads on here about thieves bypassing a fair bit of security to get to expensive bikes. And the lengths some go to, suggest that the trade in stolen bikes is quite a lucrative one.

So, this makes me believe that a fair amount of these thefts must be masterminded by people with some in-depth knowledge of bikes. IE, other bikers. People who know the value of stuff. People who have access to a ready market willing to pay a good price. 'Opportunists' wouldn't go to such lengths to nick stuff they would only expect a few quid for, they tend to go for easy targets like weak locks etc. Seems that a fair few bikes are nicked from car parks in some quite remote locations. Again, how would opportunist know about such places?

I've suspected for some time that a lot of the higher end bikes stolen are specifically targeted, and that there are willing buyers who may not be too bothered about a bike or component's provenance.

It's avery unpleasant thing, to contemplate being targeted by other bikers, as we like to feel that we are part of a 'community' where we feel relatively safe and protected. But I can't help thinking that it's very possibly people you may have met while biking, members of your club, friends of friends, that are behind a fair bit. Every community has it's good and bad members.

The bikes/parts are undoubtedly bought by people 'into' biking; the uncomfortable thing is, how aware are they of the source of their cheap bits?

Loads of stuff is shifted on eBay, but would you question a mate who's selling something on? Bearing in mind that they might not even be aware of where it came from. You'd perhaps have your doubts about a scrote who approaches you in the street/pub with a suspiciously 'hot' item, but would you exercise the same doubt over someone who doesn't 'fit the bill'? A bargain part on Classifieds? 'Oh, so-and-so's ok, nice feller', but we simply don't know that much really, if we think about it.

No-one honest wants to think that they're buying something hookey, but the truth is, a fair amount of us must be, otherwise this sort of crime surely wouldn't be as rife?

Dreadful to think about, but sadly, I think it's all too evident that the Enemy is in our midst… 🙁

I doubt the crims have to be enthusiasts to know about the kit.

I know about my job, doesn't make me enthusiastic about it!

Could be people working in bike shops. Not all of them are cyclists, and they will usually have access to a computer will tells them the name/address/telephone number of customers, and what bike they ride.

Takes about 5 minutes to learn which brands are valuable.
I don't trust the knobbers who only contribute to this forum via the classifieds section.

Realman – same thing was happening with a motorbike shop round our way – an employee was giving tips out to local low lifes for a fee…

I am always amazed how many very niche bikes are stolen and never recovered. They must go way out of the area as they must be easily recognisable locally. Also, they can't really be bought by cycling enthusiats or if they were getting proper use, somebody would spot them out on the trail.

In my industry, counterfeit and stolen goods are a big problem. Most of the research ever done suggests that the circumstances of the onward sale (ie in the pub, at the local market etc) mean that the buyers are fully aware that they are buying stolen goods, but the price is everything.

Of course, the people commiting the crime are the villains here, but if they had no market, they would stop. If somebody is offered a stolen bike, and they buy it in full, or even suspected, knowledge that it has been stolen, they are just as guilty of perpetuating the crime.

Someone has to point out to the crims it's lucrative, so that's either a biker or another crim who somewhere along the line found out about it.

In reality all they need to do is spend an hour looking at ebay and realise the potential to shift goods on.

I would imagine there are far better margins/lower risk in bike theft than there is in car crime these days….

Takes about 5 minutes to learn which brands are valuable.

Yes, but it takes a bit more time and effort to establish a ready market to flog off bent gear at a good price. Is someone going to go to great lengths to break into a locked garage, and take lock-cutting tools, to maybe make £50 or so? Drive all the way to a trail centre? Think about it; a £2000 bike could fetch £6-700 easy, in a 'legitimate market'. But some bloke down the pub isn't going to spend that sort of money on an obviously nicked bike. I've been offered stuff by kids in the street for silly money. I saw a £700 bike sell for £10 down Brick Lane one time (never coppers about when you need them, and there's 'very little' they can do anyway 🙁 ). But you'd happily pay a good price for something you believed to be legit, no? Especially if the seller seemed 'genuine'.

And there's a fair few group rides, advertised on the forum, where anyone can turn up. Strikes me as a great way to be able to get to know potential 'targets'; what they ride, where they live, what security they've got…

The locals around Glyncorrwg certainly leaned fast that that there was a 'gold mine' just outside of town

I expect that there are a small minority who ride bikes and steal them. I would have thought it's mostly just that bikes are next in desire line of household goods, behind electricals and normally they are stored in the garage, so easier pickings generally. Also, they are generally on display in public and alot of bikers have their bikes strapped to their car, it doesn't take a crim mastermind to spot you and follow you home.
I guess there are gangs who specialise in bikes and know their stuff, doesn't necessarily mean they are out riding every weekend.

uplink – bigtime, i was down there last week and saw a couple of young scallys looking through the fence at all the expensive metal knocking about.

My mate had £14K worth of bikes nicked a few months ago, we've seen nowt of them despite them being pretty distinctive. There's always a market for nicked goods, bikes or otherwise sadly 🙁

You're not far wrong, I got a comendation for devising theNotts Police Cycle Theft Rduction strategy and this was then used by TFL to base their new strategy on.

One of the biggest issues is stealing to order not for MTBers like thee and me but drug couriers in inner cities who want a nice bike as a status symbol- they don't know anyhing about it, but just want a bike with shiny bits and a price tag they can brag about.

There is alos a pervading myth regarding a van going bewteen Oxford and Cambridge bagging bikes form one and selling them in the other town.

There is a less dubious myth about scrap metal- steel framed ATBs etc being stripped and put in shipping containers and sent to china.

the thought of steel bikes being scrapped almost makes me shed a tear, b4stards..

My bike was distinctive and expensive and never surfaced either, though I do still post images of bikes now & then, my bikes are distinctly run of the mill so probably not so desirable…

Anyhow I have never quite got over the feeling that showing shiny image after shiny image of 3k bikes on here is just a bit like advertizing, have you noticed the ammount of bike part dealing going on it the classifieds too, some of the sellers just stand out as having too much availiable kit for sale. No I wont name names, but its there for all to see.

back in the early 90's when in the mid shrop wheelers – loads of bikes went… turned out to be one the guys we rode with

I'm not sure the police care too much

a couple of years ago I found an Orange 5 in some bushes when out running early one morning
I took it home & rang the police

Ah OK – could you give me a description was the response?
I duly obliged & then asked if they wanted the serial number – OK then 🙄

Anyway they asked me if I could hang on to it for a while
4 weeks later they rang & said they were coming round for it as they'd traced the owner – turns out it was a copper from the same station

Never got so much as a "thanks mate"

It's not too unlikely. One of my relatives used to repair motocrossers and the like in his garage in his spare time. He packed it in after one of his mates had a break in, and one of the thieves dropped their phone as they were legging it. When his mate went through the phone, there were the phone numbers of various people who have stuff to do with motorbikes, including my relatives. The implication is that the thieves were almost certainly bikers themselves.

Controversial comment ahoy!

turns out it was a copper from the same station

Very bleedin' convenient! What are the chances? Wouldn't be the first time that a copper abused his position and stepped over the very fine line between the right and wrong side of the law.

And it took him 4 weeks to realise? If I was a copper and lost that kind of metal, I would perhaps have kept my eyes 'peeled' (wow, police and Orange bike pun in one handy word!) at the station for any reports.

ebay, there are plenty of people looking for a bargain, and far to ready to ignore why it is a bargain

Very bleedin' convenient! What are the chances? Wouldn't be the first time that a copper abused his position and stepped over the very fine line between the right and wrong side of the law.

Last time I recounted that tale here someone else said the same

I dunno – I'm not a gullible type & it sounded OK, felt right etc.

Fair enough. And I guess you wouldn't argue with the Police would you?

Some things obviously and definitely smell 'right', and some things definitely 'wrong', but I guess this falls somewhere between the 2.

I guess there are gangs who specialise in bikes and know their stuff, doesn't necessarily mean they are out riding every weekend.

+1

I'm sure there's the odd biker who's involved, but unfortunately I think regular thieves are smart enough to learn what's what and where to go.

to be fair and hopefully to dispel a bit of paranoia.. (although I'm not exactly sure if this will help..)

I know of a mush who used to drink in my local when it was going through one of it's dodgier phases.. He was a well known jailbird and thief..

He no longer drinks there as he was had up for liberating a small consignment of very expensive hand made rugs and punting them on at… well.. maybe a tenth of their market value..

Now this guy isn't heavily into the weaving industry as a hobby as far as I know… and I've also heard stories of him getting hold of the best designer clothing for sale and the best quality electrical goods.. probably got hold of some quite nice bikes too I imagine…

It really doesn't take a genius to work out the highest value item.. and where to steal it from.. a lot of career crims might have different values and morals and education systems from us… but that really doesn't make them any less sophisticated.. or less likely to be successful in their chosen field..

It really doesn't take a genius to work out the highest value item.. and where to steal it from.. a lot of career crims might have different values and morals and education systems from us. but that really doesn't make them any less sophisticated.. or less likely to be successful in their chosen field..

Just beat me to it.

Anyway, have you ever noticed that the first or second thing out of a wee scally's mouth when he sees you on a bike (perhaps behind "do a wheelie") is usually "how much did your bike cost mate?"

Most of the thieving classes are probably even more obsessed with things that go vrooom, braap and clickety clickety than the people they steal them from.

For some reason I'd got it into my head that the scallys would just ditch the frame, which is probably the rarest/easiest to identify component, and sell the rest via ebay, the classifeds on here + bikeradar etc 🙂

I could see no point in trying to flog something mid to high end (case in point that Jones that went a while back) and running the risk of it being identified, when they'd get not much less from piecing it out. If you're short a couple of hundred for the month, just flog another- there's not too much risk involved in stealing them, it's getting rid of the high end frame. If Jedi's bike had been stripped, and the frame went in the canal, what would be the chance of the thieves being caught?

I had my first Preston stolen off the back of my car,, i live in a small town andthought i would see it or it's component parts again as it was very distinctive,

lots of one off prototype parts and a 24 " front wheel ,, but 5 years later i still check out the kids as they ride past and check the cycle racks but it has never shown up..

insurance did pay up,,,

Most of the thieving classes…

See this is where I think many people make a mistake; to believe it's only people of 'a certain type' that steal stuff. I really think that there's possibly a number of 'nice respectable mountainbikers' who are behind some of these thefts. Knowledge of value of items, access to information where these items might be, and on the methods used to secure them. Being in a position of trust and not under any immediate suspicion. To assume it's just 'Chavs' or whoever, is naive and shortsighted, I reckon. And as for young scrotes; much of the time, they're nicking stuff to fence through older bods; they just get a few quid for their troubles.

And I'm willing to bet a number of people on here have knowingly bought stolen stuff, despite the outrage expressed towards bike theft…

I think that there is quite a large market for top of the range, expensive bikes with a chequered history out there.
Many people are not in a position to buy a £2~3k push bike but WANT one. They wouldn't think twice about buying a £2~3k bike from a "bloke in the local" for £100 or less, no questions asked. These types simply don't see buying a dodgy bike as a crime, as far as they're concerned they didn't steal it, the previous owner was probably insured and has been paid out by the insurance company and the insurance company can afford to pay out for it, cos that's what you pay insurance for, so who loses? They will grind any i.d. off and give the bike a quick paint job so the bike will be unrecognisable, even to it's old owner.
The thief gets £100 for 1 or 2 hours effort and that will pay for a big night out on the town, so he is happy. Chances of the scrote getting caught are minimal and if he does what are the penalties?
I don't think we will ever change this mentality.
The car industry solved the problem of car stereo's being stolen by making the stereo's fit their own particular model. No point in stealing a £2k car stereo from a nice modern car as it wont fit in your average scrotes Astra/Corsa/Saxo etc.
The bike industry and us owners have to address the problem. Make the bikes traceable, chip them like we do dogs maybe? Make it harder to steal them. I'm not sure what the real solution is but it's not going to go away any time soon.

Aye, having some sort of chip built into the frame could be good but then the frame gets dumped and the parts sold on…a tricky one that wont be solved soon. As a courier in london, there are a few guys i'm not sure of at all, just don't smell right(probably the case in more ways than one!), but then again is that just my suspicious nature?…i'm as yet unconvinced that some of them don't have a hand in nicked kit…tricky indeed and as the OP says, it's probably the case somewhere for sure.

Agreeing with Talkemada here. I guess it's easy to think of cycling as a niche hobby and identify with the people involved in it, "hi I'm a honest and stand-up guy who rides a bike, so other bikers must be trustworthy too". But take one step back and think about it though, who will say the same thing about any other hobby? For example, can we say for sure that all photographers are honest, good people? What about all rugby fans? And what about all stamp collectors?

Sometimes our hobbies are so important to us that we feel that they define who we are. But I think as much as we like to think otherwise, cycling is just another hobby, there's nothing special about it except we ourselves happen to love it. It defines us and changes us, but only to an extent. We are other things too: sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, students, plumbers, engineers, accountants, nurses or what have you. And unfortunately, some cyclists are also unscrupulous criminals. Taking part in a pastime, no matter which one, is no guarantee of good character. Sad but true. No point pointing fingers at "chavs" or whomever. All I can do is lock up my bikes as well as I can and get use to it.

There is a less dubious myth about scrap metal- steel framed ATBs etc being stripped and put in shipping containers and sent to china.

I can at least see how that might work but it sounds like a lot of effort for not much – 3-4kg of low quality steel?