Hacker News Reader

Comment by elliottcarlson | Hacker News Reader

There is a bike seller in Manhattan who uses an interesting system in reselling his (more than likely) stolen bikes.

Once a buyer contacts him via craigslist, he finds out the persons general vicinity, brings the bike to the area and locks it up with a combo lock based chain. He will give you the address of the bike, and if you like it, can make the purchase online and you receive the combination. If you don't want it, he can pick it up who knows when - or leave it for someone else to check out. If the bike gets stolen, he hasn't lost anything on his bottom line and at no point is he in physical communication with the actual purchaser.

View on HN

I'd say a more enterprising bike thief could really take advantage of this guy. Multiple email addresses to contact seller, regularly arrange viewings of these bikes and just steal them, probably using the same sort of equipment the seller uses to 'acquire' the bike originally!

interesting; i’d say that's pretty damn brilliant.

then again, if the risk of being caught (and punished) is as low in NY as it appears to be in SF, that seems like a bit of an overkill; wonder what the scale of his organization is..?

This same concept was debated within the realm of drug trade - which obviously is at a different risk level. With special compartment style locks on a chain, the same concept is possible - without a dealer having to ever interact directly with the buyer. Same concept can also exist for hiding information (whistle blowers hiding a SD card with data, a key, who knows what).

I don't know about SF, but it is not uncommon to see just a bike chain hanging on a post - it just fits in to the environment and no one will notice someone just walking up and taking their chain with the right combination.

considered drugs in this case, but couldn't figure out how that would work; how would you prevent theft (from your would-be customer)?

there’s no conceivable way i can think of to present a drug for someone to ‘check-out’ without enabling that person to steal it..

Just give them a free sample.

Presumably people will want to buy drugs from a dealer more than once so it wouldn't be worth ruining the relationship. Also dealers are usually connected to some sort of crime network so it's probably a risky proposition to simply steal from them outright.

I've been reading a lot of books on the subject lately and I think that's exactly how a lot street-level dealers (the lowest ranked members of the empire) are operating. The dealer would hide their product somewhere close by, for example in an empty soda can in a garbage bin or in a crack in the pavement. Once a client has made a purchase the dealer would tell the client where his stuff is hidden and the client can then go and take it.

If a dealer was busted he would never have any product on him, and the risk is relatively low if you consider that these people usually deal in units worth probably less than 20$ each. So if a package gets stolen or lost it's no big deal really.

This is illustrated at length in The Wire season 1.

As mentioned there are combination locks that contain a compartment - i.e. http://www.armstronglock.com/product_info.php?products_id=17...

While in this case perhaps it wouldn't be to 'check it out' but certainly post purchase or whatever requirements needed to exist prior to getting the combination. It is subtle enough to blend in to an urban landscape where abandoned(?) locks on chains aren't all that out of the norm.

>Same concept can also exist for hiding information

In which case it is known as a "cold drop".

If the risk of theft weren't so high that would be a pretty cool way to do a zipcar-style bike service.

boston has a zipcar bike system [better than zipcar because the bikes can be returned at any designated drop off/pickup location] called "hubway" but it is heavily subsidized [maybe entirely, im not sure]

Reply on news.ycombinator.com