Seattle pawn system catches a bike thief ...

From 'Seattle Bike Thief Caught, Thanks To Online Reporting System'

SEATTLE - You can see it in his face, 6-year-old Rocco Marckx loves his bike...but somebody decided to steal his bike and his smile.
In July a thief grabbed the bike from the garage of his condo complex.
...
As Rocco's dad was filing a police report, the stolen bike appeared on an online pawn shop reporting database.
...
According to the dad, the thief sold the bike at a pawn shop located just one block away. Within a couple of hours, the boy and his bike were reunited.
...
Bikes are a popular item in the neighborhood. It turns out, two people along the same street had their bikes stolen at about the same time.
This second victim used the new Seattle police online reporting system to alert officers of her stolen bike. A detective matched the bike's serial number to one sold to the Pawn Exchange shop in south Seattle.

Many cities are now using online reporting systems, but that doesn't mean there aren't problems with the pawn shops - the SBR just located one in Colorado where the pawn shop system didn't work, and only a sharp-eyed SBR user located it on Ebay. Pawn shops are also known not to report correct serials, or purposefully 'fudge' a serial by a few digits to make an item appear 'clear'.