Bastardo Grande: Hunting the Largest Black Market Bike Fence In The World

Since 2020, I have (as a BikeIndex.org cofounder) been chasing and hunting the single largest black market bike fence in modern history. This OSINT-heavy, cross-border investigation eventually blossomed into a federal court case in early 2024, so I've only able to partially share that story in public until now. By the time DEFCON happens, I'll be able to give this talk in its fullest and most unredacted form, which I haven't been able to do yet. (This talk was presented at Seattle BSIDES 2023, but even then I couldn't give 'the whole talk' because one of the key players was still being prosecuted in CA court)

 In December 2021, BikeIndex.org published an article that laid out how our OSINT detective work showed residential burglars in Colorado were exporting stolen bikes to Juarez Mexico and selling them on grey-market sites there for excellent profit. This quantified a long suspected 'urban legend' in the cycling community - that high end stolen bikes went to Mexico - but also the economics of the problem, as we tracked over 1000 sales of stolen bikes and were able to capture sales data and study the black market in very great detail. (That write up is here, if you are curious:https://bikeindex.org/news/closing-the-loop-a-deep-dive-on-a-facebook-reseller-of-bikes-stolen-in )

 What we did not disclose at that time was that we were infiltrating and tracking an even larger, more impressive criminal actor in the same space - one whose sales and profits reach into the millions. Through years of surveillance, OSINT work, and a lot of persistence, we eventually identified one of his US side suppliers and got them raided by law enforcement, which then snowballed into a federal prosecution in 2024.

 In this talk, I'll talk about how the motivation to seek justice drives normal people to do extraordinary things with OSINT and other crafty methods to chase down bad guys and recover their stolen goods and seek justice. I'll cover some of the crazier edge cases we've run into in this space, and I'll talk about the secret shadow army of hunters and cyclists who are hunt these kinds of bad guys down online, every day.

 The talk will be audience engaging, with back-and-forth and audience 'spot-the-OSINT-FAIL-here' type participation as we walk through the major breakthroughs that took this project from 'hey, that's an interesting' to names going down into a federal indictment. Specifically, I'll give an overview of how we engage with theft victims to surveil, track, identify, and take down transnational black market bike fences - who often turn out to be even crazier individuals than anybody ever expected.