It’s no surprise that bikes get stolen every day in Brooklyn, and hipsters are forced to walk to coffee shops instead. Well one woman wasn’t going to take her theft lying down, and she had an opportunity for revenge when her bike popped up on Craigslist the following day.

This morning I woke up around 9 AM and checked Craigslist to see if there were any reasonably priced bikes on there and lo and behold, there was a picture of my bike for sale for $75. They even had a picture of the scratches. I called the number and spoke with someone who said he lived on South 8th Street, near Peter Luger’s, which is two blocks from where the bike was stolen. I said, “I’m in the neighborhood, I could come by, I’m just a few blocks away.” And this freaked him out a little bit, so he got off the phone with me almost immediately, saying he had just woken up, and he would call me back. He never did.

She then went to the police, and started plotting a sting operation. Because NYPD clearly has nothing better to do all day.

So they drove me a few blocks away from the restaurant, and as I walked up there, I texted Maura, and she called the dude. And then a few minutes later he he rode up on a yellow bike, this big, tattoo-covered, dreadlocked dude who I so would not have wanted to face alone. I looked at the bike, and he had attempted to fix one of the things that was broken, but the other part, which I had carefully described to the police officers, was still unfixed, which was the first thing he pointed out to me, as if he were being an honest salesman. I almost started laughing. It was definitely my bike!

And then the cops all converged on the guy, and they said, “Can we talk to you over here?” to him which sounds very nice but I assure you was not really said as a question. And then he was over against the Peter Luger’s wall with all the cops and I was alone with my bike. And then they were asking him all these questions, and he was like, “I do not steal bikes, I buy them from this guy,” and then within a minute they had extracted that he was a junkie, that he bought these bikes from another junkie, and even how much junk he consumed a day. Detective work in action! They cuffed him and put him in the squad car.

Thanks Craigslist! You may be a portal for prostitution and fencing, but at least you helped put one criminal behind bars!