A thief who stole a state-of-the-art electric bike was caught out after unwittingly calling its owner to buy a battery charger.
Ben Jaconelli’s £2,500 Go Cycle was stolen when he left it locked on Kingsland Road in Hackney, east London.
Mr Jaconelli, 30, who runs e-bike online store Fullycharged.com was furious to discover the unusual bike was gone after leaving it for just 20 minutes on Friday night.
But soon after reporting the theft to police, he received a phone call from a man asking for a charger for a Go Cycle.
Mr Jaconelli, who lives in Hackney and has just opened a shop in Old Street roundabout said: “I’m the authorised dealer for Go Cycle’s in the area so the thief called me, unaware that it was my bike.
“He asked for a charger for a Go Cycle and I knew straight away it had to be the thief. I took down as many details for him as possible and then set about tracking him down.
“One of the guys at our warehouse has an old army truck so we piled in to that and turned up at his house.
“He was out, but his mother was in and she got straight on the phone to her son to demand to know why he wanted an electric bike charger.
“A minute later he called me and asked why I was at his house and I said ‘you stole my bike.’
“He hung up and 20 minutes later the bike arrived at the warehouse in a taxi.”
The details have been passed on to police who are now investigating the theft and possible links to other missing bikes in the east London area.
Mr Jaconelli added: “There is a such a close network of dealers and I had alerted them all to the theft.
“Even if he did not ring me, I would have found out about it pretty quickly.”
Police confirmed the matter had been investigated and so far no arrests had been made.
