Tracking the underground bike theft economy

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A few years ago, bike enthusiast Bryan Hance got a tip. A whole bunch of expensive bikes that were stolen in the Bay Area had suddenly turned up ... for sale on a Facebook page in Mexico. The revelation started Bryan down a years-long investigation where he would uncover an intricate, large-scale criminal operation out of Jalisco, Mexico.

In today's episode, we talk to freelance reporter Christopher Solomon who wrote about Hance's journey in WIRED Magazine.

Related episodes:
Is retail theft getting worse? (Apple / Spotify)
The economics of stealing bikes

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:03.0	Well, you're...
0:05.0	Well, I'm wrong.
0:07.0	Well, I'm Wong, are you a cyclist?
0:14.0	I am. In the war months, I like to ride my bike to the farmers market and buy donuts.
0:18.4	Fare weather, cyclist.
0:20.3	Do you ever worried about your bike getting stolen?
0:23.4	All the time. There's a lot of bike fast where I live.
0:26.0	And not just where you live I have learned.
0:28.8	The whole operation of bike thievry is changing. People are paying thousands of dollars for these bikes,
0:36.4	which makes it an attractive target for criminals. Christopher Solomon is a journalist who's
0:41.5	looked into this. This really is a journalist who's looked into this.
0:43.0	This really is a supply chain.
0:45.0	I mean, you've got people that are stealing the bikes, you've got people transporting the bikes,
0:49.4	you've got the guy at the end overseeing the whole process and selling the bikes at the very end.
0:54.3	This is the indicator from Planet Money, I'm Wailen Wong. And I'm Darien Woods. In today's episode,
0:59.5	we dig into Christopher Solomon's story in Wired magazine.
1:03.8	He walks us through how one man uncovered an intricate,
1:07.5	full-blown criminal operation to steal bikes.
1:11.7	We ask whether they were ever brought to justice.
1:16.5	Support for this podcast and the following message come from Wise, the app that makes
1:24.0	managing your money in different currencies easy. With Wise you can send and
	...

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