How an Engineer Exposed an International Bike Theft Ring - By Its Facebook Friends (msn.com) 50
Security engineer Bryan Hance co-founded the nonprofit Bike Index, back in 2013, reports the Los Angeles Times, "where cyclists can register their bikes and contact information, making it easier to reunite lost or stolen bikes with their owners." It now holds descriptions and serial numbers of about 1.3 million bikes worldwide.
"But in spring 2020, Hance was tipped to something new: Scores of high-end bikes that matched the descriptions of bikes reported stolen from locations across the Bay Area were turning up for sale on Facebook Marketplace and Instagram pages attached to someone in Mexico, thousands of miles away..." The Facebook page he first spotted disappeared, replaced by pages that were blocked to U.S. computers; Hance managed to get in anyway, thanks to creative use of a VPN. He started reaching out to the owners whose stolen bikes he suspected he was seeing for sale. "Can you tell me a little bit about how your bike was stolen," he would ask. Often, the methods were sophisticated and selective. Thieves would break into a bicycle room at an apartment complex with a specialized saw and leave minutes later with only the fanciest mountain bikes...
Over time, he spoke to more than a dozen [police] officers in jurisdictions across the Bay Area, including Alameda, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Marin, Napa and Sonoma counties... [H]ere was Hance, telling officers that he believed he had located a stolen bike, in Mexico. "That's gone," the officer would inform him. Or, one time, according to Hance: "We're not Interpol." Hance also tried to get Meta to do something. After all, he had identified what could be hundreds of stolen bikes being sold on its platforms, valued, he estimated, at well over $2 million. He said he got nowhere...
[Hance] believed he'd figured out the identity of the seller in Jalisco, and was monitoring that person's personal social media accounts. In early 2021, he had spotted something that might break open the case: the name of a person who was sending the Jalisco seller photos of bikes that matched descriptions of those reported stolen by Bay Area cyclists. Hance theorized that person could be a fence who was collecting stolen bikes on this side of the border and sending photos to Jalisco so they could be posted for sale. Hance hunted through the Jalisco seller's Facebook friends until he found the name there: Victor Romero, of San Jose. More sleuthing revealed that a man by the name of Victor Romero ran an auto shop in San Jose, and, judging by his own Facebook photos, was an avid mountain biker. There was something else: Romero's auto shop in San Jose had distinctive orange shelves. One photo of a bike listed for sale on the Jalisco seller's site had similar orange shelves in the backdrop.
Hance contacted a San Francisco police detective who had seemed interested in what he was doing. Check out this guy's auto shop, he advised. San Francisco police raided Romero in the spring of 2021. They found more than $200,000 in cash, according to a federal indictment, along with screenshots from his phone they said showed Romero's proceeds from trafficking in stolen bikes. They also found a Kona Process 153 mountain bike valued at about $4,700 that had been reported stolen from an apartment garage in San Francisco, according to the indictment. It had been disassembled and packaged for shipment to Jalisco.
In January, a federal grand jury indicted Victoriano Romero on felony conspiracy charges for his alleged role in a scheme to purchase high-end stolen bicycles from thieves across the Bay Area and transport them to Mexico for resale.
But bikes continue to be stolen, and "The guy is still operating," Hance told the Los Angeles Times.
"We could do the whole thing again."
"But in spring 2020, Hance was tipped to something new: Scores of high-end bikes that matched the descriptions of bikes reported stolen from locations across the Bay Area were turning up for sale on Facebook Marketplace and Instagram pages attached to someone in Mexico, thousands of miles away..." The Facebook page he first spotted disappeared, replaced by pages that were blocked to U.S. computers; Hance managed to get in anyway, thanks to creative use of a VPN. He started reaching out to the owners whose stolen bikes he suspected he was seeing for sale. "Can you tell me a little bit about how your bike was stolen," he would ask. Often, the methods were sophisticated and selective. Thieves would break into a bicycle room at an apartment complex with a specialized saw and leave minutes later with only the fanciest mountain bikes...
Over time, he spoke to more than a dozen [police] officers in jurisdictions across the Bay Area, including Alameda, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Marin, Napa and Sonoma counties... [H]ere was Hance, telling officers that he believed he had located a stolen bike, in Mexico. "That's gone," the officer would inform him. Or, one time, according to Hance: "We're not Interpol." Hance also tried to get Meta to do something. After all, he had identified what could be hundreds of stolen bikes being sold on its platforms, valued, he estimated, at well over $2 million. He said he got nowhere...
[Hance] believed he'd figured out the identity of the seller in Jalisco, and was monitoring that person's personal social media accounts. In early 2021, he had spotted something that might break open the case: the name of a person who was sending the Jalisco seller photos of bikes that matched descriptions of those reported stolen by Bay Area cyclists. Hance theorized that person could be a fence who was collecting stolen bikes on this side of the border and sending photos to Jalisco so they could be posted for sale. Hance hunted through the Jalisco seller's Facebook friends until he found the name there: Victor Romero, of San Jose. More sleuthing revealed that a man by the name of Victor Romero ran an auto shop in San Jose, and, judging by his own Facebook photos, was an avid mountain biker. There was something else: Romero's auto shop in San Jose had distinctive orange shelves. One photo of a bike listed for sale on the Jalisco seller's site had similar orange shelves in the backdrop.
Hance contacted a San Francisco police detective who had seemed interested in what he was doing. Check out this guy's auto shop, he advised. San Francisco police raided Romero in the spring of 2021. They found more than $200,000 in cash, according to a federal indictment, along with screenshots from his phone they said showed Romero's proceeds from trafficking in stolen bikes. They also found a Kona Process 153 mountain bike valued at about $4,700 that had been reported stolen from an apartment garage in San Francisco, according to the indictment. It had been disassembled and packaged for shipment to Jalisco.
In January, a federal grand jury indicted Victoriano Romero on felony conspiracy charges for his alleged role in a scheme to purchase high-end stolen bicycles from thieves across the Bay Area and transport them to Mexico for resale.
But bikes continue to be stolen, and "The guy is still operating," Hance told the Los Angeles Times.
"We could do the whole thing again."
Time to ... (Score:2)
Actually, that won't happen. Until mandatory insurance puts companies on the hook for losses. Then, laws will be passed, police will move and we'll get a cool TV show like "Bait Bike".
Re:Time to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Requiring bicycle registration has been proposed by many non-cyclists over the years for various reasons that mostly boil down to "stop those freeloaders and make them pay their fair share" (and the problems with this argument are too numerous to describe in this comment) -- but in the few cases where it actually happened, the program cost more to administer than it brought in and provided no other benefits.
Two things:
1. This "mandatory insurance that puts companies on the hook for losses" hasn't even happened with cars. Sure, liability insurance is mandatory (in most of the US anyways, with few exceptions), but comprehensive (what would cover theft) is not.
2. It's quite easy to get your bicycle covered for loss. Renters and homeowners policies often cover them by default, and riders can be purchased to improve the coverage if desired.
Re: (Score:2)
The question comes down to, who is going to pay for the mandatory insurance?
Many places have mandatory car insurance. They also have mandatory registration... and yet, there are thousands of cars in cities like Milwaukee that have no license, and no insurance either. Insurance for a mere BICYCLE? Heaven forbid!
These are high-end bikes. The owners probably do have insurance on them. It didn't stop them from being stolen. It didn't get the police to care enough to do more than write the report so their insura
Re: Time to ... (Score:2)
Re: Time to ... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
"stop those freeloaders and make them pay their fair share"
Part of "their fair share" includes dedicated theft enforcement. Nobody should expect the dedicated focus of law enforcement to recover their fun little toys if they aren't going to help pay for it.
If there's no number plate on a bicycle, who's going to bother checking the stolen lists when someone rides it by?
Re: (Score:2)
Part of "their fair share" includes dedicated theft enforcement. Nobody should expect the dedicated focus of law enforcement to recover their fun little toys if they aren't going to help pay for it.
Victims of crime should only get attention from law enforcement if they pay for it? I don't pay a wallet registration fee but I still expect the police to take an interest if someone steals mine.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a wild expectation.
If they happen to catch someone fraudulently using your ID or credit cards they may do something, but what exactly do you expect them to do for a stolen wallet?
Re: (Score:2)
If they happen to catch someone fraudulently using your ID or credit cards they may do something, but what exactly do you expect them to do for a stolen wallet?
Take a report, have community officers keep an eye out for the perpetrator if they can be identified and are known to the police, increase patrols in the area especially if it was a mugging.
But that's really beside the point. The question I pose to OP isn't whether a stolen wallet is worth investment of police resources - it's whether the fact that I haven't specifically paid into a wallet recovery fund should have anything to do with the decision to investigate or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Part of "their fair share" includes dedicated theft enforcement.
I don't know where you live, but here in the US, approximately 0% of the money you pay in fuel taxes and vehicle registration (for your car) goes to pay for law enforcement.
Around here, the local police are mostly paid for by sales taxes and property taxes -- things that are not tied to your vehicle, though you do pay sales tax when you buy a bicycle or a car.
If there's no number plate on a bicycle, who's going to bother checking the stolen lists when someone rides it by?
The police don't even reliably do this for cars. Why would we think they'd do it for bicycles if they somehow had similar plates?
And if they did, thi
Re: Time to ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, um, If you liked it you should have put a ring on it?
Re: (Score:3)
You might add some tracker device like an air-tag, but it then needs to be difficult to remove or you only get the route to the fence.
The guy is still operating? (Score:3)
In January, a federal grand jury indicted Victoriano Romero on felony conspiracy charges
"But bikes continue to be stolen, and "The guy is still operating," Hance told the Los Angeles Times."
Re:The guy is still operating? (Score:5, Informative)
The guy in MEXICO is still operating, just one thief in California was caught. I am sure he immediately replaced that guy with an accomplice and the ring continues to operate.
Re: (Score:2)
Must build taller, thicker, wider. We must rebuild it again. And again.
And stop allowing shipping around it, since the thieves weren't carrying them across the line personally.
Re: (Score:3)
Craigslist car theft rings (Score:4, Informative)
I'm aware of several car thieves in my area due to their Craigslist and Facebook posts, and their footprint on Google maps. They've been operating in specific areas for about half a century (the early 1980's) and are well known, even appearing in one book I know of. They steal out of urban areas and part out cars on their rural properties, ultimately burying the chassis or disposing of the steel with shredders at scrapyards they operate.
They're experienced scofflaws and hard to convict, so the law doesn't pursue them unless they offend someone important or commit some outrage, which does happen from time to time. Locals don't interfere with them either. They've all been in prison one or more times for some kind of violence.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Craigslist car theft rings (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a naïve take. These are clans. They know everyone. A local officer has to consider that before they go kicking a hornet's nest. The cop's kids are in the same schools as the clan kids, for however few years they bother attending. The cops wife has to shop in the same markets. When they aren't stealing and parting out cars, doing AAA tow jobs, trading meth or committing insurance fraud (arson, typically,) they're in the woods poaching. Weapons in every corner of every trailer, in other words.
It's also not uncommon for clan members, the ones that avoid serious records, or relations to be deputies.
If you have some solvent that dissolves all of that without getting bloody, please share. Nobody has found one yet.
Re: Craigslist car theft rings (Score:2)
Re: Craigslist car theft rings (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Throw a dart at a map. If you hit anything that isn't a city or a body of water you've found it.
I just make a point of being aware of who and where they are, in my area, by name and sight.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, certainly you don't like it being this way?
My preference would be that people live dignified lives in an honorable manner. They frequently don't, however, and the things I don't like far more than that reality is naïve takes on why that is and simple minded views on what should be done about it, because that road leads to even greater disfunction.
Re: Craigslist car theft rings (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
we have a federal bureau of investigation
The feebs are about profile. Busting the legion of dirt bags that exist on the fringes of society has no appeal. As I said before; serious laws enforcement only appear on scene if someone important is annoyed or some great public outrage is perpetrated, which usually amounts to the same thing.
Insurance companies are not interested in getting into the muck with law enforcement. When they can earn profits by amortizing the cost of theft across insurees, that's what they do. When the cost gets too high a
Re: (Score:2)
I know it's all the rage these days to bag on California, but I don't think your example works well.
https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0... [ca.gov]
"Consumer Alert for Car Insurance Coverage for Kia and Hyundai Vehicles
March 2nd, 2023 - As the expert on issues affecting California insurance consumers, the California Department of Insurance has responded to recent media reports about increased thefts of certain Kia and Hyundai cars.
Please know that we have strong consumer protection laws for California drivers â" your
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No.
Re: (Score:2)
It turns out actual police work takes time and effort. Why bother with all that when you can be out hassling minorities and committing your own crimes with impunity?
Re: (Score:2)
The perfect solution: MagnaVolt! (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ... :-)
I think the Pro version calls RoboCop.
Old news (Score:3, Informative)
Gpx (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I think I'm safe (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Better than Myanmar (Score:1)
So the cops actually did something? (Score:2)
I have to say I'm shocked. Where I live, the cops are good at speed traps and thugging out on people who oppose neo-Nazi demonstrations at City Hall (yeah, you read that right), but tracking down actual criminals? Not so much. One of my buddies had his car windows smashed and his stereo literally ripped out of the dashboard. He had excellent video of the thieves, good enough that the cops easily identified them. Even so, they pretty much laughed in my buddy's face when he reported the theft. They said
cops cop out (Score:2)
You gotta do the cops' jobs for them if you want any action in Kalifornia.
This was in Mexico. For a small fee, the guy could have put out a contract on the guy in Jalisco and be done with it in short order.
Saudis have the right idea (Score:2)