Back in 2020, Brian Hance started telling police about an organized international bicycle smuggling ring depriving hundreds of Americans of their high-end bikes.
Hance runs Bike Index, a website where bike owners can register their bikes with serial numbers and photos to help ensure that if they’re ever stolen, there’s a community of people who may be able to help find it.
There are 1.3 million bikes on the site, and for a long time the reported thefts were simply crimes of opportunity. But in the spring of 2020, scores of high-end bikes began appearing as missing on Bike Index, and Hance began seeing pictures on Facebook and Instagram of bikes for sale that matched the descriptions of those listed as stolen from Bike Index.
They were all for sale in Guadalajara, Mexico.
That got authorities interested.
In Colorado, the Attorney General’s office indicted eight people on 227 counts of theft, including 29 bike shop burglaries.
All eight pled guilty; one had driven his truck 158 times to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. That same person had a habit of making large cash withdrawals in Denver and large cash deposits in a bank in El Paso.
As to the California smugglers, Hance found a similar trail leading to Jalisco. That led to another arrest.