World's most prolific bike thief

**Spiral** · #1 (**permalink**) 08-26-2008, 04:18 PM

Canadian police say they have caught the world's most prolific bike thief.
Officers recovered 2,865 stolen bicycles from the owner of a Toronto bike shop, reports The Guardian.
Igor Kenk, 49, is awaiting trial on 58 charges of theft, attempted theft, possession of stolen goods and possession of burglary tools.
He was arrested after Toronto police, noticing that bike theft had spiked sharply in June, planted bicycles on the streets and watched to see who stole them.
As plain clothes officers hid in wait, Kenk and another man walked past. Kenk seemed to tell his companion to cut the locks on two bikes, which he did, before the pair attempted to pedal away.
When police raided the Bicycle Clinic, the shop was so jam-packed that the fire service had to remove the upper-floor windows and lower the bikes out by rope.
Later, 200 more bikes were seized in Kenk's home, along with large quantities of drugs, in a smart neighbourhood in Toronto.
Ten landlords around the city also reported that they had rented garages to Kenk, which were chock-full of bikes.
Some 15,000 people have visited the police station garage where the vast collection was taken, hoping to pick out their own lost bikes.
Toronto police officers said about 500 people had so far been reunited with their bicycles.