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There’s an ongoing surge in bicycle theft that struck even before the pandemic arrived in 2020. and that year served as an accelerant to thrust bike-related crimes to all-time highs. sought the expertise of a bike hunter to learn what was happening to all these bicycles after they were taken off the street or out of warehouses.

For criminals, high-end bicycles are very appealing targets. They are light, portable and sell for The difficult part is fencing the merchandise in a way where a victim can’t stumble upon their own bicycle for sale. Bryan Hance, the co-founder of a bike registration website, that he discovered stolen bikes were being trafficked to Mexico and resold online: This latest email about the bike was from an anonymous source.



The tipster pointed Hance to a Facebook page where there were more stolen bikes for sale—like a sweet 2018 Pivot Mach 4 mountain bike that sells new for about $7,000 and had been pinched from a San Jose garage two months previous; and a Specialized Stumpjumper Comp Carbon in space blue that had vanished nearly three weeks prior from Santa Clara, about 45 miles south of San Francisco. All of the bikes were late-model and pricey. All had disappeared recently from around Silicon Valley, where cycling was fashionable among tech workers.

All were for sale at about one-third of their original prices. Hance thought he’d seen everything in his years bird-dogging stolen bikes. But this put him on his heels.

But one detail flummoxed Hance. .

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