Bike Theft Superhero Bryan Hance

This week's guest is Bike Index co-founder Bryan Hance. Bike Index has listed over 730,000 bikes since it was founded in 2013 and has become a formidable force in the battle against bike thieves — and Hance is its heart and soul.In December 2021 Hance and the Bike Index team published a report on a  case they'd spent 10 months working on that involved 100s of bike thefts in Colorado and a Facebook marketplace store based in Mexico named Alexander's Bikes.In our interview, you'll learn the sordid details of how Hance connected the dots from desperate victims in Denver and surrounding cities,  to his expansive network of partners on-the-ground, to the online storefront in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Hance also shares why he got involved in this work, his thoughts on the state of bike theft in Portland, his frustrations with Facebook's inaction against fraudulent sellers, and much more.Links from this episode:Closing the loop: a deep dive on a Facebook reseller of bikes stolen in Colorado via Bike IndexSearch stolen bikes on Bike IndexThis episode was recorded on February 10th in the BikePortland studio in north Portland. This podcast is a production of Pedaltown Media Inc., and is made possible by listeners like you. If you're not a subscriber yet, please become one today at bikeportland.org/support. You can listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe at bikeportland.org/podcast. Our theme music is by Kevin Hartnell.