Chiswick boy’s stolen bike returned after BackPedal goes after thief

Technology is key to retrieving a stolen bike

A Gunnersbury teenager, who was given a bike for his 13th birthday, feared it was lost for ever until his dad called upon a specialist recoverer

In normal circumstances BackPedal, who run a theft recovery scheme for bikes (backed up by insurance), work only for clients who’ve had the foresight to pay for their state-of-the art tracker to be installed on a bicycle.

Known for their astonishing record of retrieving 80 per cent of the bikes they protect, BackPedal often look after expensive cargo bikes, e-bikes and models typically worth over £750.

A thirteen-year-old from Gunnersbury didn’t have theft recovery insurance when his bike was stolen at Westfield. Nor did he have much chance of recovering his much-loved bike because fewer than two per cent of thieves are caught.

The teenager on the Specialized model that attracted the thief’s attention

The victim of an opportunistic thief

He did have a high-quality D-lock but instead chained his bike up with a friend’s using his mate’s combination lock. The opportunistic thief had no trouble detaching the new higher-value bike from the other and the boys’ attempts to obtain CCTV footage from Westfield’s customer service proved futile.

“I had put an Apple AirTag on it,” said the teenager’s father, Ed Saper, who also cycles.

“Unfortunately, the tracker hadn’t worked all day – it relies on Bluetooth and is quite short range – but the next morning it started pinging.”

The thief, who was only half a mile away, had taken the stolen bike out for a ride and cycled around west London before returning to the same address – an indicator that the bike might be at the location for a while.

Getting a bike back is tricky

But how to get the bike back? Police are already inundated with tales of woe of lost phones that people say are ‘in that building somewhere’. Even a well-resourced police force cannot cope with theft – whether phones or bikes – on the scale that happens in big cities just because technology allows us that information.

Increasingly, there is a case for tracking and retrieval to be in the hands of specialist operators, who can work independently, or in some cases involve the police.

BackPedal operate in cities but also in rural areas

Highly trained retrieval experts are needed

“I wasn’t a customer of BackPedal,” said Ed Saper. ‘I had looked at their services though, so I got in contact.”

“Normally we just don’t have resources to help non-customers” said co-founder of BackPedal Richard White, “because we’re busy recovering our client’s bikes, but on this occasion, we assessed the information, we had an agent in the vicinity, and decided let’s do it.”

In this case, they had to rely on the AirTag signal.

“AirTags are interesting technology,” explained Richard, “but they are not designed specifically for the recovery of bikes. You don’t know when they’re going to ping and they’ve got anti-stalking safeguards so the thief will be alerted that their phone, or one near them, is being used as a transmitter.”

An exact location must be pinpointed

“With our GPS tracker, we can control when it’s going to ping and we also have custom beacons that help us pinpoint the exact location on the ground.

“Using our beacons, we’ve even got bikes back from the 42nd floor of a block of flats. We’ll send our recovery agent up a high-rise building one floor at a time.”

Fortunately, the Westfield thief didn’t notice that the AirTag was on the seat post of the bike.

BackPedal was able to locate the thief, have a conversation and return the bike to the teenager whereupon the family immediately signed up for their retrieval services for the future.

“It’s a real hassle to lose a bike,” said Ed. “Even if you do get a payout from a [traditional] insurance company, you find yourself without a bike. My son uses his bike daily to go to school.”

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Cleverly concealed GPS trackers are used

So far BackPedal, who have been operating since 2022, have recovered over 1,000 bikes at last count, using GPS trackers and highly trained recovery agents.

Their secret is having a tracker that is hidden to the eyes of even the most experienced thief.

“We have over 60 designs of casings,” said Richard. “They can be hidden in the components on a bicycle or in everyday accessories. Of course, bike designs vary so having designs that fit on every bike is a tough problem to crack.”

Operatives are trained to handle tricky scenarios

How a recovery works

Confronting a thief is not just about courage (though not for the fainthearted) but more about skill and experience: BackPedal’s operatives are highly practiced in extricating a bike and some agents have clocked up 300+ returned bikes.

“When our recovery agents turn up they don’t say ‘you’ve got a stolen bike’ nor do they criticise as they don’t want to escalate the situation,” explained Richard.

The objective is simply to retrieve their client’s property and not to hand someone over to the police.

“If you’ve caught a thief at home, they are very vulnerable and acutely aware that – if the police did get called – there might be an investigation into what else they’re doing. Invariably they hand over that stolen bike.”

A calm and respectful approach

“Sometimes you get thrown into the deep end,” said veteran recovery agent Bilal. “Nothing teaches you better than being under pressure.”

“Our agents are very competent,” said Richard. “If a member of the public had gone to retrieve their own bike, they would be full of adrenaline, but our agents are calm, cool-headed and have access to all the information.”

In this scenario, the AirTag was helpful, but it may not have been, so Ed and his son were extremely lucky. Even with knowledge of where the bike was, they would not have been advised to retrieve the bike themselves but were able to do so safely with a trained recovery agent.

If the teenager had hoped that his bike lock folly would go unnoticed, then he hadn’t reckoned on the intense interest in BackPedal’s retrieval service. As well as being told to the Chiswick Calendar, the tale was retold on BBC Radio Two’s Jeremy Vine show by his dad and the co-founder of BackPedal. And the thief – if he was listening – hopefully won’t try that again in a hurry!