Stolen bike

It just goes to show how desired this model is. Years back, people said 6 in Oz; maybe a bunch were private imports. Correct 180 crank; love that. BTW, standard 180 frame or special chassis?
 
Mactriple said:
A Laverda enthusiast steals a Laverda.
Click to expand...
I assume you mean that funny, but...

No. If it is an enthusiast, he would BUY it. If he is an enthusiast that has no money, he would work his ars off to get one. Everything else is not an enthusiast but simply a bastard and a thief.

I once bought a complete set of body parts for a 1000 SFC for a VERY fair price. Turned out that though the seller had checked it with the police before buying, the bike was actually stolen!

He called me up and said that he would ask me to send them to the original owner if I don't mind, even if I could keep them and he wouldn't tell the police my name or address. I told him that absolutely sure I will return the goods to the original owner as soon as I get my money back from him, which I received the next day.

I packed everything together, put a nice letter in the box saying that I am very sorry for having purchased the body parts of his bike though I got asured they are legally purchased and sold and expressed my hope he can get the bike back together fully.

I did not expect a reward or anthing, not even my shipping cost. A call saying thank you would have been nice though, which never came.

Still think I did the right thing, though at that point in time, I could have really made use of it...

In this community, we help each other, we do not steal from eachother... THAT is what makes someone an enthusiast for me.
 
Vince said:
It just goes to show how desired this model is. Years back, people said 6 in Oz; maybe a bunch were private imports. Correct 180 crank; love that. BTW, standard 180 frame or special chassis?
Click to expand...
is in the 3rd Scorch frame, same as my race bikes
being built as a road version of our race bikes
 
With only 400 built it does seem like an opportunist theft by someone that didn’t know how difficult it could prove to sell on either complete or as parts. Hopefully, they will abandon it undamaged and it will be returned unharmed to it’s right owner.
 
Mactriple said:
A Laverda enthusiast steals a Laverda.
Click to expand...

As distasteful as that sounds, I suppose it's a possibility that needs to be considered.

In all my years of association with the Laverda community, I've only ever met (personally or online) decent, honest people who do what they can to help out other Laverdisti.

But if any any group of people is large enough, it's almost a statistical certainty that sooner or later, a sociopathic opportunistic thieving bastard will surface within the group. Perhaps motivated by the potential to glean information for nefarious reasons. I imagine someone like that might lurk on forums such as this, scanning for information while keeping a low profile.

I dunno how many registered members this forum has, but whenever I look at who's online at any particular time, "guests" outnumber members by a couple of orders of magnitude. For example, I just looked now and there are 5 members logged in, and 295 guests. Who knows what all those unknown guests are looking for?

I sincerely hope it's not the case in this instance. But the possibility exists that someone knew exactly what they were stealing, perhaps for parts, most likely to send out of the country to some equally dodgy customer.

Some of you may remember a few years back, the late, legendary Ken Lucas from Wangaratta had some very rare and valuable bikes stolen from his collection. They were unique bikes that would have been unsellable on the open market, but they were never seen again. The rumour at the time was that they were on a ship to Russia within days of being stolen.

The lesson to bear in mind is that this is an open forum visible to the whole world. We need to be cautious when posting information that could reveal what you have in your shed and where you live. My address and contact info is known to trusted members of this forum, which I'm obviously OK with. But it's difficult to keep that information private from the rest of the world. For example, whenever you buy anything online, they need your name and address for delivery. I very much doubt that info is secure.

Apart from a few online market sites like eBay and Amazon, Laverda Forum and a couple of other special interest forums are my only engagement in social media. I don't do facebook, twitter, linkedin, whatsapp or any of that shit because I don't trust any of them to keep my personal information secure.
 
My bike was found after it´s photo was seen in the MC News type online magazine, not social media. We sent pictures of it and the story to every mc club and all the local newspapers as well as all the bike shops. It was gone for a couple of months, I assumed it had gone to eastern Europe like almost everything stolen by the professional thieves here. It turned up at junkie headquarters near the waterfront in Oslo, stolen by a local junkie to get in and buy a fix, it had a numberplate (was on the original Oz plate at the time just after we got here) on it from another bike stolen way up north of Oslo. At the theft time the cops weren´t interested and shelved it, but two weeks later the detectives finally heard about it and were very interested, too late.
It is definitely worth getting the picture out to be seen by as many other riders as possible. I really hope he gets it back in ok condition. It was one of the happiest days when a guy rang and said he was standing beside my bike, he really didn't want the reward that I insisted he accept.
 
What's pretty common in Sydney is groups of tenagers braking into houses at night with sleeping occupants; that's usually just walking through open doors, finding keys and driving away. Its insanly common; there have been ocasions were 2 and 3 Cars get driven away from a house at the same time. And typically, if they're caught and even if the vehicle is destroyed, it takes multiple crimes before they go into detention. Why would you stop doing this if there are no explicit consequences? This has escalated recently, with these kids being coopted by Organised Crime and big money into way more seriuss Crimes, drive by shooting and arson of Cars Bussness and Houses for extortion. So for some, stealing a Motobike is nothing to them. There is no long-term thought brought to this. Sadly, the clock is ticking on this. There was a huge market for every part on my 76 Bonnie, and it just disappeared into the outlaw stolen bike scene. I cannot see that happening with Will's bike; the market is tiny and very well known. It will be some brain-dead idiot who hopefully just leaves it in a park somewhere
 
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Hopefully known to the cops. Fingers crossed. I'm sure if it went to court the defence lawyer would do the rant about 'a disruptive chidlhood and homelife leading to excessive drug and alcohol use, blah blah blah' - like it's an excuse for being a c#nt.
 
As mentioned above, a lot of stuff stolen in UK ends up heading towards Russia (or the Gulf). Is there a growing demand for our bikes by collectors in China or other SE Asian countries who are now starting to feel the need for a classic Laverda in their garage and don't care how they get one?
 
My Google lens said the photo was of an image that was being used by NSW police in connection to gangs around Sydney??
Looking to identify the person in the hoody??
 
Reading all this I can only hope the bike is in one piece when recovered and undamaged.
I am rethinking securing the bikes as well, at home and when out and about!

@ Cam: In all my years of association with the Laverda community, I've only ever met (personally or online) decent, honest people who do what they can to help out other Laverdisti.

True for the most part, but in Germany a few "so called" Laverda specialists have ripped off Laverdisti big time.
Engines FUBAR and eye watering bills for the havoc they wreaked....
 
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