Lucerne, 2023: A 39-year-old man buys stolen high-end bikes worth 255,000 francs, paying the thieves partly with drugs. Authorities stop two Polish couriers at the Basel border. Vienna, December 2024: Special forces storm a basement unit and discover 32 stolen e-bikes. Value: over 100,000 euros. The network behind it is said to be responsible for 344 criminal offenses. Total damage: nearly half a million euros. Canton of Fribourg, 2025: Five suspects steal 60 high-end bikes from five cantons. Their cover: a legitimate transport company. Their destination: the Balkans. 

Three cases, three successful investigations. Yet the statistics paint a different picture: In Austria, police solved just 1,731 of the 19,455 reported thefts in 2024. That corresponds to a meager 8.9 percent clearance rate. In Germany and Switzerland, too, the clearance rate remains in the low single digits. Most of the time, the thieves are one decisive step ahead of the police.

The border as a shield

The gangs follow a clear pattern: one steals, one buys, one stores. Then the van rides off. The street thief usually doesn’t know the masterminds behind the operation. He needs quick cash or his next fix. The mountain bike disappears into a temporary storage facility, often an inconspicuous rented basement or a remote industrial warehouse. As soon as the load is complete, the van rolls across the border. From that moment on, investigators hit a brick wall: A request for legal assistance abroad takes months. By that time, the bikes have long since been sold, dismantled, or scrapped. 

Fewer cases, more damage

What’s interesting here: The absolute number of thefts is trending downward. In Austria, reported cases fell by around 13 percent in 2025. In Germany, insurers recorded nearly 10,000 fewer cases in 2024 than in the previous year. Nevertheless, costs are skyrocketing. German insurers recently paid out 160 million euros in compensation, a record high in 20 years. The first reason is obvious: Bicycles cost many times more today. Additionally, the perpetrators are targeting their thefts more specifically. Cheap city bikes are often less appealing to organized gangs. E-bikes and expensive mountain bikes are in demand. The effort required for the theft remains the same, but the profit multiplies.

Tracked, but not saved

If you’re smart, you install a GPS tracker. But in practice, this often just means watching live on your smartphone as your bike heads east. If the owner locates their bike in a large apartment building, the police will respond, but they’ll be faced with locked doors. The signal is too scattered. Without a court order and concrete suspicion regarding a specific apartment, there can be no search.

A blinking dot on a cell phone screen is not evidence in the eyes of the law. It is precisely this legal inertia that the networks thrive on. They don’t have to be particularly sophisticated. It’s enough if they’re faster than the police, customs, and the judiciary.