wowww... fascinating article, blows my mind. the guy sounds like he's "crazy like a fox"

as long as the cops keep admitting as to how damned lucky they were to catch him, messengers from other cities knew of this guy yeeeeeears ago. I'd heard of him in Montreal before ever moving to the T-Dot. He's imfamous, when my ride got ripped off 14 years ago, I went to his shop the next day with my u-lock in my briefcase, and in my suit no less. We had ourselves a little chat and I left with a somewhat altered version of what had been ripped off from my place the night before, I went back a week later to pick up the "lost" Time MTB pedals. He's a character alright, who responds well to reason. ;)

Yeah he was a fixture on the T-Dot bike scene for sure. He was paying bums and crackheads in Toronto to steal bikes, that's what the weed and crack was for. In all I believe that he had about 3200 bikes in 5 garages. Lots of people "on the street" were aware of him but as usual the cops are the last people to know.

Is there a picture of the Centaur vs. Snake sculpture? I mean, that is the important thing here.

Igor has been a Toronto fixture for years...Everyone's known about him...Lot's of people have gone to his "store" (more like a mini landfill) at least once out of curiosity...I bought a wheelset about fifteen years ago from him when I was a naive student and didn't realize his **** was stolen...I believe it was called "igor's bike barn" back then...
The only surprise here is it took the Toronto police so long to bust him...Actually, when I stop to think about the Toronto police department's attitude towards cyclists in general and bike theft in particular, I'm more surprised they bothered to charge him at all...

My cynic-spidey-sense tells me it probably had more to do with the drugs than the bikes. That, and making one big bust to make us all feel like Toronto is on the side of cyclists whereas in reality we're all getting the shaft, and getting it good.

The police have trotted this out like The Untouchable did with Al Capon (complete with using axes to bust open a garage), it's kind of funny really considering they tripped over the bust despite the fact the city has been screaming at the cops about this cat for years.

haha yeah.

currency for bikes thieves, he tried to have me pay him the "25 bucks" he gave the crack head for my bike, ... so now it really means I gave him 25 bucks on the street worth of crack for your bike, (which I got wholesale for 5) then you can give me 25 cash.

wait so people know about this and nobody ruined his ****?

i'm trying to understand why this was okay. is it like a canadian thing?

genuinely curious.

dude got firebombed once. seems to me like a pretty direct gesture of trying to ruin his ****.

Now will the crack be available at auction as well?

Hmmm, there is a place just like that in the bay area. (a few blocks off the cal campus)

The guy is a little odd, the bikes are litterally piled over head high inside the shop, and he will only sell you the ones that he puts outside the front of the shop (wont even let you take a look inside the place)

the funny thing is that there was a 20 person swat team that ended up raiding the place and managed to not find anything after looking at over 750 bikes, even though i have numerous aquaintences who have had their bike stolen and gotten him to give it back to them.....

what is even better is this is posted on the home page of his website

to clarify, the cops are not auctioning off what is essentially still evidence, they're only giving back bikes to those that can positively ID and prove bikes are theirs. the bikes on ebay right now are unrelated.

Hahahah.

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So the police have 50+ bikes up on eBay right now... who gets the proceeds from the sale? Do the police pocket the money?

I feel like these bikes should be donated or something?