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BCarley
Geo90
The story is that someone went to The Cyclery Lewisham with my bike, and the guys there did a search on stolen-bikes uk and found out the bike was stolen. They rang me up and I collected it after approximately 1hr and a half.
The full story is that my bike got stolen on Friday night in Covent Garden outside the racks in front of the COS store, after I forgot to lock it (stupid me, I start texting after I got off the bike and completely forgotten to lock it). After 1hr when I went back, the bike was not there.
There are two scenarios in terms of who stole the bike: Either a "regular" bike thief looking for poorly locked bikes or someone who just saw a bike unlocked and decided to take it.
At this point it is important to note that the bike has anti-theft locks pretty much everywhere, specifically: Abus Nutfix Security Axle Set on the wheels, and hexlox on the seatpost, saddle, disc brakes and steerer. That meant that if the bike was just stolen by not a proper thief they would have a hard time to do anything on the bike, unless skillful enough to grind the locks on the wheels and remove the hexloxs from 7 bolts.
I never met the guy who brought the bike to the store, but he was basically looking to buy new things for his new ride (locks, reflec. vests, etc), and he said he bought the bike from someone (a friend maybe? definitely not online as I was searching throughout the whole internet every 2hours) for a couple of hundred quids. I am not sure why he had to leave the bike to the shop for half an hour, maybe he asked something simple to adjust like the saddle height and the guys saw the anti-theft locks (which he didn't mentioned?), or maybe the guys from the shop found it suspicious that someone just bought this bike (very custom ride and not your usual brand/model) as a first ride and found an excuse to keep it, and search for it online. That part of the story is a bit unknown to me... When the guy went back to collect the bike they told him it was reported as stolen and could not give it back to him. He understood and left. That's all I know.
The fact that I reported the bike stolen online was definitely helpful. Maybe also the fact that I had put a reward. Maybe also the fact that I had all these anti-theft locks, which forced the buyer who had no idea on how to remove them (and maybe assuming they were just bolts requiring a regular tool) to get it to a bike shop or maybe I am just very luck in the unfortunate event of someone stealing it in the first place (also bike was untouched when I got it back).