He had his choice of Pinarellos, Colnagos, Wiliers, Looks, Speciliazed, even a Moots. Maybe the Dogma was his size.


Another interesting bit -- the shop is less than a block away from the nearest police station. The guy really was crazy to do this.

Should have grabbed some Assos bibs and shoes on the way out....what was he thinking????

His bank account isn't that "extremely large". If it was, he could have just bought the thing (and gotten a free fitting too)!

=================

I was expecting the OP was going to be complaining about himself getting ripped-off at his LBS!

The interesting thing about this theft is that I've been to this store a couple of times to look at bikes, and I've even been on a test ride. When I rode up I was nervous about leaving my (unlocked) bike outside and the guys in the store said, "Don't worry, you can leave your bike on the sidewalk, no one will ever bother it." When I went on a test ride, I had to practically beg to let them put my bike inside the store while I went for a test ride on the shop bike.

I guess they were right - my bike was probably safer outside on the sidewalk than it was in the store.

My attack Corgi guards the local LBS on a regular basis. Apparently it's working.

It might be an insurance fraud. They would have had hard time selling it, so they decided to write it off. It just seems hard to believe some organized group would do such a dumb crime.

No -- no way was this insurance fraud. They sell high end bikes all the time. And if someone wanted to do insurance fraud they would have just staged a break in over night. They wouldn't have sent someone into the shop with a gun during business hours with customers present.

And there is no reason to think this was an organized group. It could have just been a couple of dumb meth addicts thinking they could get some cash for it.

Like the dude who would steal a Ferrari F50 and see what he can get on eBay. Or the art thief. Or the guy who steals expensive cheese.

This one's my favorite:

clear2copy said on January 30, 2010 at 10:06 PM
wow.. 11 large would buy a lot of bus passes

Yes, all of us around here use Dogmas for our commuting needs.

Well, I'm so called Eastern European, Estonian to be exact. I would like to know how does Eastern European accent sound, because as much as I know, and I think quite a lot about Eastern Europe, every single country here has own language and these languages and their accents are so different from each other. So that "Eastern European accent" can't really exist, maybe like Russian accent, but even Russian is only spoken in Russia and Belarus.

Anyways, no need to ship bikes stolen from US to here, you can steal bike just like that even from my LBS.

When I hear an Eastern European speak English, I can't tell which country they're from. Could be Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, etc, etc.
The reason the bike might be shipped there is because it would be very difficult to sell a bike with that serial number near here. Not necessarily because there is a shortage of Pinarello Dogmas in Estonia.

$11,000 worth of bus passes. Classic!

you really think the police would go looking for a bike thief? your police must be a whole lot better than ours.

I don't think they do around here, but if a couple or more $10K+ bikes get ripped, they might fire up an investigation.

I recovered one of my bikes once. Saw the dude walking it down the sidewalk with a flat rear tire. I walked along checking out the details and grabbed the bike and stated that it was stolen from me. Dude says he bought it, so I said, cool, we're gonna walk it to the cop shop right now. Cops check the serial, found my stolen bike report and I was on my way. I didn't stick around to see what happened to dude.

I have also heard tell of folks finding their stolen bikes on CL and having the cops roll out to the meeting with the "seller".

wow. your cops really are better than ours. ours won't even show up if you call and report a burglary in progress. they just say come in and file a report.

A bike thief? Maybe, there isn't much crime around here. But this wasn't just a bike theft. It was an armed robbery. They'll go looking for this guy.

Oh, sorry, that wasn't local. I read about it on these forums.

haha...my LBS is an armed robbery, given how many employees are packing. it's super sketch.

A typical American (speaking as one, myself) can't pick out a specific country of origin when an Eastern European speaks English to them. Hence the "Eastern European accent" description. It would be different if it was an Aussie accent, or French, or even German. But who knows what an Estonian accent sounds like, outside of other Estonians? I sure as hell don't. And if I did, and said "he spoke with an Estonian accent", nobody would know what I was talking about.

Does that clear it up, at all?

sounds slightly familiar. next time just say that you've just shot a burglar and see how quickly they turn up.

My favorite comment from the video discussion

"$11,000.00 Bike? Wow, I could feed my donkey Jose for 3 years"

Here in Texas, they might turn up next week.

+1

maybe it was singer from Modest Mouse.