Couple of interesting points in here are in noted in bold.
A bicyclist who took the rare step of reporting a serial number after his bike went missing earlier this year helped police disrupt a theft ring targeting Colorado College and downtown Colorado Springs, an investigator said.
Police found the ID number during a routine search of sales records from El Paso County pawnshops. The records led investigators to the seller and four other people they believe acted as accomplices in the yearlong thefts.
...The arrests on Tuesday ended the search for 64 stolen bicycles that went missing over the past year, many of them high-end brands including Specialized and Gary Fisher that can sell for hundreds and even thousands of dollars apiece, police said.
The thieves mixed and matched bicycle parts to avoid detection - swapping gear sets, derailleurs and shocks - before selling the bicycles on the street or at pawnshops.
The theft ring did not involve Internet sales, and Schiffelbein said there was no evidence it had ties to other cities in Colorado.
...
Their approach varied, police said, but one or more often approached locked bikes in well-lit areas and used bolt cutters to break through bicycle locks. A file could get through a cable lock in a matter of seconds, police said.
The pawn shop angle is an interesting one because cops have a lot of leftover registration/identification rules specifically for pawnbrokers and the like to combat this problem. These idiots probably would have been better off using Ebay ...
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