Originally Posted by
02Giant
I think you should pay the guy something for it...if he has a receipt from the Pawn Shop. He bought it legally, they sold it legally since they would have checked the serial number and since you (likely) reported the wrong number when stolen, they were legit in their actions.
Why should the OP owe the guy anything? It was HIS stolen bike, regardless of how someone ended up with it. That's not to say the current "owner" did anything, but he does have recourse to the pawn shop, who in turn has recourse to wherever they got it. If anyone can't recover his loss from whomever, then it's his loss.
It's kind of like a fraudulent check. Imagine, you're balancing your checking a/c and find a fraudulent check that you never wrote. You call,it to the attention of your bank and they restore the dough to your a/c, and send it back to where it came from, and it's up to those people to get their money back until it finally comes to the person who took it from the criminal and eats the loss.