I'm posting about a specific instance, but thought I'd title the thread such that it could be re-used for similar issues.

I was contacted for advice by a member of the bike community whose daughter had had her bike stolen.

Here's what I put together:

A bike of the same make/model as the victim's was listed on Craigslist:

A woman answered the ad and went to view the bike and became suspicious (don't know exactly why.)

She apparently saw that the bike had a Rapid Transit sticker on it and contacted them; someone at RT connected the suspicious bike to the bike sold to the victim and contacted her.

Victim's dad contacted police but got run-around/dismissive response.

He called me; I pointed him to the correct police district and recommended he get in touch directly with tactical police to see if they might be willing to help recover the bike as a next step.  Victim's daughter called 'informant' again and learned that the bike had not been viewed at an address but in a parking lot, somewhere near Milwaukee/Damen IIRC.  Victim's dad called seller to try to set up a viewing.

The better part of a week has now gone by, and dad was never able to get any calls returned from the tactical office, and never able to get a call back from the seller.  The posting has since expired.  "Cold case..."

Here's the registry listing:

http://chicago.stolenbike.org/node/193175

Why am I posting this . . . well, I thought it would be worth a try to

A) raise a hair of awareness about this bike

B) ask folks who make a regular pursuit out of scanning cl bike ads and checking them out if anything is familiar about this seller's listing.  The phone number only seems to have been used this one time on the web, in as far as Google can dig it up.