Canadian police have caught the man believed to be the world’s most prolific bike thief, after they recovered 2,865 stolen bicycles from the owner of a Toronto bike shop.
Ever since Igor Kenk was arrested last month, some 15,000 Torontonians have visited the police station garage where his swag was taken, hoping to pick out their own bikes among the vast collection. A surprisingly large number of them have been lucky: Toronto police told the Guardian on Monday that so far about 500 people had been reunited with their bicycles.
Kenk, 49, who owned a crammed shop called the Bicycle Clinic, is currently out on C$275,000 (US$263,000) bail, awaiting trial next month on 58 charges of theft, attempted theft, possession of stolen goods and possession of burglary tools.
Kenk was arrested on July 18, when Toronto police, noticing that bike theft had spiked sharply in June, planted bicycles on the streets and watched to see who stole them. As plainclothes 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 neighborhood in Toronto. Ten landlords around the city also reported that they had rented garages to Kenk, which were chock-full of bikes.
Though Kenk’s motive is currently unclear, the New York Times reported that police believe he may have been playing the commodities markets, waiting for another spike in metal prices before melting down the bicycles.
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