0:01

N.P.R. Well,

0:12

Emwong, are you a cyclist? I

0:14

am. In the war months, I like to ride my bike

0:16

to the farmer's market and buy donuts. Fair

0:18

weather, cyclist. Do you ever worry

0:21

about your bike getting stolen? All

0:24

the time. There's a lot of bike that's where I live. And

0:26

not just where you live, I

0:28

have learned. The whole operation of

0:31

bike thievery is changing. People

0:33

are paying thousands of dollars for

0:35

these bikes, which makes it an

0:37

attractive target for criminals. Christopher

0:39

Solomon is a journalist who's looked into

0:41

this. This really is a

0:44

supply chain. I mean, you've got people that

0:46

are stealing the bikes. You've got people transporting

0:48

the bikes. You've got the guy at the

0:50

end overseeing the whole process and

0:52

selling the bikes at the very end. This

0:55

is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong. And

0:57

I'm Darien Woods. In today's episode,

0:59

we dig into Christopher Solomon's story

1:01

in Wired magazine. He

1:04

walks us through how one

1:06

man uncovered an intricate, full-blown

1:08

criminal operation to steal bikes.

1:11

We ask whether they were ever brought

1:13

to justice. We

1:25

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your compatible device anywhere contactless payment is

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accepted. Christopher

2:29

Solomon, freelance reporter. Thank you so much

2:31

for joining The Indicator. Oh,

2:33

it's such a pleasure to be here and to talk

2:35

about stolen bikes. How did you start looking into bike

2:37

thieves? I wrote for

2:39

Outside Magazine about these people

2:42

who go after bike thieves

2:44

and try to get people's bikes back. And

2:46

that was fascinating. And then I met

2:49

a gentleman named Brian Hance who

2:51

runs a nonprofit called Bike Index,

2:54

which is where people can register

2:56

bikes and they can help get

2:58

their bikes back if they're stolen.

3:01

Brian gave me a call back during COVID

3:03

and said, do you want to hear a story idea? And

3:06

he had gotten a tip telling

3:08

him that there were a

3:11

bunch of bikes that had been listed

3:13

on Bike Index as stolen and they

3:15

were for sale on a Facebook page

3:17

in Mexico. They used a student in

3:19

and just said, hey, I am blank.

3:22

Cyclist in Mexico. I'm sorry to let you know your bike is

3:24

in Mexico. And so began

3:26

this like four and a half year

3:29

crazy detective story that

3:31

unearthed this massive stolen bikes pipeline

3:33

that was sucking bikes from the

3:35

Bay Area and the West and

3:38

taking them to Mexico to be sold. Can

3:40

you just describe a bit more about who

3:43

Brian Hance is and what are his characteristics?

3:45

Brian is this guy in his 40s, late

3:47

40s. He has

3:49

a day job. He's a casual

3:52

cyclist himself. He really

3:54

hates to see people get

3:57

away with bad deeds. And

3:59

he sort of... center of this

4:01

loose constellation nationwide of

4:03

bike vigilantes. He

4:06

tries to reconnect people with their

4:08

stolen bikes. And he's also incredibly

4:10

good at open source intelligence. They

4:13

find publicly available information and they

4:15

piece it together on the

4:18

mean streets of the internet, like some

4:20

kind of digital detective, and they can

4:23

figure things out. And so, Brian

4:25

Hance came across a mysterious pattern

4:27

of bike thefts in the San

4:29

Francisco Bay area a few years

4:31

ago. Describe that moment.

4:33

Yeah, he was literally sitting in his basement

4:36

riding out COVID when he got this tip.

4:39

And the tip matched up with stolen

4:41

bikes from Bike Index to bikes that

4:43

were for sale in Mexico.

4:46

And soon the Facebook page went blank

4:48

because Facebook allows you to country block

4:50

your Facebook page. And so, soon they

4:52

couldn't see it anymore, but soon they

4:54

figured out how to start looking

4:57

at the Facebook page and this Instagram page.

5:00

And they started digging some more

5:02

and digging some more. And soon

5:04

they found dozens, scores of stolen

5:06

bikes that were appearing on these

5:08

Facebook and Instagram pages called Constru

5:10

Bikes. Eventually, they would publish

5:12

a database of 800 bikes,

5:16

many of which they could document as

5:18

being stolen, that were put up for

5:20

sale by Constru Bikes down

5:23

in Jalisco State in Mexico. These

5:26

guys would buy the bikes,

5:29

take pictures of the bikes. The bikes

5:31

would be posted for sale in Mexico

5:33

before they'd even left the Bay area.

5:36

The mastermind, Ricky Zamora, I mean,

5:38

he was incredibly self-confident. He posted

5:40

a picture once of a pickup

5:42

truck with a bunch of mountain bikes

5:45

in the back, and he said, the new shipment has arrived. And

5:48

we say this in the story, and someone said,

5:50

where do they get such preciousness? He said in

5:52

Spanish. And he

5:54

said, tenemos gente robando todo el mundo.

5:57

We have people robbing all over the

5:59

world. So he just flat-out said

6:01

it. Were police

6:03

or were the social

6:05

media companies like Meta doing anything about this?

6:08

The short answer is no. He brought it

6:10

to the attention of law enforcement many

6:13

times and had no luck, finally got

6:15

the San Francisco Police Department to pay

6:17

attention. They did serve

6:20

a search warrant on this transmission shop in

6:22

San Jose right in the heart of Silicon

6:24

Valley. There's now been a

6:27

guy indicted and he appears to

6:29

be the American end of this

6:31

pipeline. But he

6:33

brought this to the attention of

6:35

Facebook, of Meta, many times. Nothing

6:38

ever comes of it. I did contact Meta

6:41

and talk with them and they essentially

6:43

sent me their policies that said selling

6:45

stolen goods is illegal. That was

6:47

about it. They contacted Wired after the

6:49

story ran and said they'd like to

6:51

look into this some more. So

6:54

far, even as of this morning,

6:56

Ricky Zamora is still selling bikes

6:58

on his Facebook page in Mexico.

7:01

But you managed to speak to

7:03

Ricky Zamora, so tell me about

7:05

that. You know, that was, I

7:07

think, the last call that we made in this

7:10

story. He picked up the phone, first of

7:12

all, and he

7:15

denied everything quite politely at

7:17

first and growing increasingly curt.

7:20

But he denied knowing Victor. He denied

7:22

knowing anything about bikes. And when

7:24

we said, well, why is the federal government

7:26

clearly think that you're involved? And he said,

7:28

well, maybe because I'm a wonderful cyclist. And

7:30

we said, well, what about this? What about

7:32

that? And he said, maybe because I'm Guapo. Guapo

7:34

is in handsome. He said handsome

7:37

in English after that. Right. That

7:39

is hilarious. And then he

7:41

said, I don't have time for these

7:44

questions. And he said something quite vulgar

7:46

to the female translator and sexist and

7:48

hung up the phone on it. Hey,

7:51

Ricky. He's gone. He's hung up.

7:53

So do you think this is part of a

7:55

bigger trend? We've obviously seen a lot of bike

7:57

thefts around the time of the pandemic. I know

8:00

I have in my personal life noticed a lot

8:02

of friends with stolen bikes.

8:04

What's happening here more widely? This used

8:07

to be a crime of convenience, and

8:09

it's become professionalized. You have gangs of

8:11

bike thieves now. You have

8:13

people who break into apartment buildings to

8:16

go straight to the locked bike rooms to

8:18

steal the most valuable bikes.

8:20

And they target just, they high grade

8:22

and take just the nice $6,000 Bulls

8:24

e-bike, for instance.

8:28

They've gotten very good, to your point, at what they

8:30

do. So they'll have a portable

8:32

angle grinder, and they can cut through a

8:34

thick chain lock in

8:36

30 seconds a minute, which was just not

8:39

done five, seven years ago. I mean, it's

8:41

just, they're very good at what they do

8:43

now. I'm reconsidering whether I should have a

8:45

thicker chain on my bike. Do you have

8:48

any other advice for people who own bikes

8:50

and are feeling a little bit nervous? I

8:52

wouldn't necessarily trust your bike to that locked

8:54

bike room. I would put it up

8:57

in your apartment, no matter what the rules

8:59

say. Another thing people are doing

9:01

is they're putting air tags in hidden places

9:03

on their bike. So if

9:05

it does get stolen, you might be able to find it in

9:07

the next couple hours before maybe the

9:09

thieves notice the air tag. Before

9:12

it might end up in Mexico. Yeah,

9:14

exactly. So this piece got

9:16

published in Wired. What's happened since then? There

9:19

has been a lot of outrage in Mexico,

9:21

which has been satisfying. And

9:24

Ricky Zamora has taken a lot of heat in

9:26

Mexico, though he published an open letter to the

9:28

cycling community saying he was bloodied but unbowed. And

9:31

as I said, he continues to sell bikes. The

9:34

federal government has been mom on whether they're going

9:36

to do anything else. But I'm skeptical that we're

9:38

going to see any more action. I

9:40

would like to be wrong. I think the world's

9:42

going to keep grinding on and bikes are going to continue

9:44

to be stolen and sold. And

9:47

I think it's just, this is just sort

9:49

of a cautionary tale for the rest of us. We're

9:51

thinking twice if you see a bike deal that

9:53

looks too good to be true. Well

9:57

Chris, on that very sombre note. Thank

10:00

you so much for joining The Indicator. Oh, my

10:02

pleasure. This

10:08

episode was produced by Cooper Katz-McKimm with Engineering

10:10

by Neil Rauch. It was fact-checked by Angel

10:12

Correras. Kicking Cannon edits the show, and The

10:14

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