14 DAY TRIAL // A petty thief stole a rare Go Cycle bike in the London borough of Hackney, and, when it run out of power, he inadvertently rang the owner for advice on how to charge it.
Ben Jaconelli’s electric bike, worth £2,500 ($4,200 or €3,000), was stolen from Kingsland Road, east London, where he had left it securely locked. However, when he returned to retrieve it, the machine was gone, although he had left it unattended only for 20 minutes.
Jaconelli called the police to report the theft in hopes it could help him recover his unusual bike. However, the 30-year-old man, who happens to run e-bike website Fully Charged and is also the authorised GoCycle dealer for the area, received a phone call from a man asking for a charger for a Go Cycle.
“I’m the authorised dealer for Go Cycle’s in the area so the thief called me, unaware that it was my bike. He asked for a charger for a Go Cycle and I knew straight away it had to be the thief,” Jaconelli said, according to the Standard.
He took as many details as he could from the suspicious man on the other end of the line, and then set about tracking him down. After finding his address, the victim got into a 1970s army truck along with three of his friends and went to find the mystery caller.
They paid the suspect a visit in Whitechapel, London, but they didn't find him at home. They talked to his mother, who appeared to know nothing about the theft and got straight on the phone with her son to question him about the bike.
“A minute later he called me and asked why I was at his house and I said ‘You stole my bike,’” Janconelli explains, adding that 20 minutes later he was reunited with his electric bike, as it arrived at his warehouse in a taxi.
“There is a such a close network of dealers and I had alerted them all to the theft. Even if he did not ring me, I would have found out about it pretty quickly,” the dealer, who recently opened a Fully Charged shop on Old Street roundabout, added.
The details of this botched theft have been passed on to police, that is now investigating the case and possible connections to other bike thefts in the area. However, no arrests have been made so far.