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10 Videos of Bike Thefts Gone Horribly Wrong

By Angie Ng

Bike theft is something that has most likely either happened to us personally or to someone we know. The anger, frustration and inconvenience is something we all understand. Aside from imagining revenge scenarios or locating our stolen bikes online if they are being resold that way, what can we do to alleviate those negative feelings? These videos of bike thieves getting caught in real life should bring some cheer into our lives.

What do you get when you take a beautiful bike, a piece of rope and a few sticky fingers? A lot of fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tufnWwV2J5I

While some may argue that there’s thin line between a prank and injury-causing illegal action, thieves certainly deserve what’s coming to them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLBvXnGo8fw

Here’s a video of a bike thief getting tackled by a police officer:

Sometimes its just whoever happens to be there, like these computer programmers:

Then there are sting operations – police place bikes in public places and monitor them, catching any thieves that try to steal those bikes. Here is video of one such operation, which ends in the thief getting tackled by officers:

Sometimes the sting operations are a bit more high-tech and involve gadgets such as GPS trackers. Here’s a video of a bike thief getting caught by police using GPS tracking:

The clip description says it all: guy finds stolen bike on Craigslist 160 miles away, sets up home-made sting, confronts the thief and gets his bicycle back, thief gets felony arrest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhIBWnUHrfw

Portland residents had an ongoing problem with an organized group of bicycle thieves so a YouTube channel called Undercover Investigation decided to help them out. A local bike shop loaned them a bike worth $2,000 and they hired a security expert to rig the bike with a radio tracking device. See the results for yourself.

There’s never enough of a good schadenfreude and nobody does it better than TwinzTV. You have to admit that an airbag shooting from under thieves’ posterior is oh-so satisfactory to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYlBT1d_GWo

And, of course, our own European Bike Stealing Championships 2015:

Don’t forget to check out our 10 tips how to protect your bike or our guide on what to do when your bike gets stolen. Have something to add to this story? Feel free to do it in the comments below!