How YOU Got The Bike Back

You may recall Ross’s stolen bike post yesterday.

Incredibly.

He got it back

Oisin takes up the story:

My bike had been robbed from my shed on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. It was brand new; I only had it two weeks. I started looking on gumtree etc. to try and find it. I tracked down the seller who had it up on gumtree. I rang him but he said he had just sold it but could get me a different racer bike the next day.

I googled his number and found a list of previous ads on gumtree selling bikes, Playstations, golf clubs etc. at really low prices and with dodgy sounding ads. The next day he sent me a picture of this other racer (a picture of Ross’s bike, above) he would sell me. I googled this bike and found this post. I also found the seller’s name, photo and age on a dating website he used

So I contacted Ross and went to the Gardai with him. Ross and I had been texting the seller and we arranged a fake buy. The seller was caught by the Gardai, and Ross’s bike was found along with two other bikes.
I also tracked down the guy who bought my bike on adverts.ie. He had said he looked at the stolen bike databases online but hadn’t seen mine so thought the bike was legit and bought it. The next day when my was stolen I put an ad on bikeregister.ie, he saw the ad and fair play to him, he reported it to the Gardai. So they went to get it from him. The poor f**ker is down €400 quid though!
So moral of the story is register your bike and pursue it if it is lost. And be aware how much of your personal information is on the net!

 

Bikeregister.ie


65 thoughts on “How YOU Got The Bike Back”

  5. Fantastic news, glad I was able to contribute to this! Have had 2 bikes robbed in the last 2 years so this has made me very happy!

  8. Huzzah for the internet! I wonder what will happen to the thief though, will he get a jail term or a fine (which he would pay with the proceeds of tomorrows stolen items)?

  9. I wonder if he got any dates. Sounds like a nice lad.

    “Interests: Nicking stuff and selling it on da web”

  11. Do you not think it would have been nice to split the 400 quid with him? I mean he didn’t have to hand it over and it was a nice thing to do.

  13. Good work broadsheet. Bike thieves and burglars in general are filthy cretins. I hope, hope to God the Judge throws the book at him. PLEASE keep us updated on the case.

    • Ya must be joking! He’s probably already been to court, gotten his mammy to say how “he’s had a troubled childhood” and “he’s always been a good little boy,” said he’s sorry and regrets what he’s done, blamed the Great Recession on his joblessness and received a slap on the wrist. He’s told his mammy he’ll give it a knock on the head and next week you’ll see a similar spate of ads on adverts.ie under a pseudonym.

    • This must be must be the guy ..and the using a local Montessori as an contact address has he got the little ones on the rob?

    • I knew I shouldn’t have left the Rolex out in the shed! From now on it’s gonna be in the bedside locker with the Breitling and Tag Heuer.

  19. hey, how about we name and shame the thief? sure it might prejudice any trial but let’s face it, no one’s going to jail for this. name and shame him, i’d be happy to have his pic as my FB profile pic

  31. That’s absolutely brilliant, power to the people! You know donedeal/gumtree/etc should be more responsible about vetting advertisers and do spot checks along the lines of this, how hard would that be?

  39. Oh man you deleted that comment?

    Broadsheet what kind of overly PC whimps are you?

    If this is the youth of the today, we’re in for a boring mundane mediocre future.

  40. Oisín essentially completed the story there so I won’t elaborate. I was monitoring all those websites myself but it was great having an internet army to help me with it and Oisín was a real star. I am delighted to hear he wis getting his bike back. The buyer was a true samaritan.
    It was hilarious being able to say to the gardaí: “We have a picture of my bike that the thief sent us. We have his mobile. We’ve arranged a meet. We know his name and age. We have his address. We have a picture of him. We have an itemised list of all the stolen goods he’s sold over the past few months and finally…we know he’s a Libra! When we were thanking the Gardaí they said, “Sure ye did all the work yerselves. Now we get to do the fun part”.
    Take care of yourself and your stuff!

  41. Deleted the comment when I suggested notify Social about the Skanger running a business.

    Site really wimpy.

  42. I’d be amazed if one of the sites.. You know the one.. (the snooty one.. first letter of the alphabet), doesn’t have a bit of a strop for the suggestion of fencing on a public site.

    Great that the buyer returned the bike.