Bike Thief From Portland Tracked to Seattle by Victim (VIDEO)
A man has been happily reunited with his favorite bicycle after launching an undercover sting to track down its thief. Jake Gillum managed to track down the bike via Craigslist and trekked all the way from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington in order to bring it back home.
According to Gillum, he had locked up his bike in Southeast Portland, but when he returned to claim it, the bike was gone. Instead of mourning the loss, Gillum took action and began searching Craigslist, an online site for trading and selling items, to see if he could locate his beloved bike.
After searching through all the listings in Oregon, he decided to search in Washington and managed to find his $2,000 Fugi Team bike listed for sale. "I was home alone, I started yelling really loud, and I scared the dog," Gillum told KATU.
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How did he know it was his bike? "I've got a scratch on my top tube here. I've got scratches on the forks, and I kind of know everything about my bike," he explained. The next step was for Gillum to make contact with the seller (aka the thief), but he didn't want to give away his location in Oregon.
A Burner application on his phone was able to change the area code from Oregon to Seattle, which managed to convince the seller to take his call. "The guy, the whole time, thought I was calling him from Seattle. I couldn't have done this without that," Gillum said.
He arranged a meeting with the seller and took along two friends to videotape the confrontation for evidence. "I thought I was going to throw up. I was really scared; I was very nervous," Gillum confessed. But the plan paid off and police were able to apprehend the suspect.
"I think that it's a lesson for thieves that they need to be afraid of people like me, because they don't know who they're stealing from, and it's a lesson for victims that they don't need to lay over and take this," Gillum said.
Watch the encounter below:
