[LINK] "Igor Kenk wants his bikes back"

[rfmcdonald]

I blogged back in the summer of 2008 about Igor Kenk, the owner of a used bike shop in Toronto who was arrested then in connection to his central role in the theft of some three thousand bikes, secreted in a dozen different locations across Toronto. He's since been convicted, sentenced to sixteen months in jail, while those of his bikes that haven't been returned to their owners are being given to children in poor communities across Ontario. To me, what Jennifer Yang distributed in a writes in the Toronto Star suggests that Kenk's bike theft was less a case fo desiring to profit personally from crime and more a case of spectacular hoarding.

Igor Kenk misses his bikes.

In an unexpected turn of events, the convicted bike-nabber showed up at the Cabbagetown Youth Centre on Monday where nearly 2,000 bikes seized from his property in 2008 were being donated to inner-city youth.

Volunteers were hauling some 1,830 bicycles and parts into the basement for temporary storage when a man in a baby blue track suit showed up and began asking how he could purchase some of the bikes.

The man then offered to help rebuild some of the bicycles before leaving his phone number and a name: Igor.

“My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe it,” said Mary, a centre volunteer who declined to give her last name. “It almost seems like he was visiting his children or something and had a restraining order (against him).”

Kenk claims to have stumbled upon the community event, only realizing later that the bikes being donated originated from his stash.

A peevish Kenk told the Star he still considers the bikes his property and called it “completely and utterly irresponsible” to have them “thrown in the garbage.”

“This is like (taking) Ferrari or Lamborghini cars, throwing them as scrap,” Kenk said.

He added, “Of course they’re my bikes. Think of them as my puppies ...”

“I would love to buy some of my property back.”

[. . .]

Kenk complained he was strong-armed into forfeiting the bikes to the province. Under the Civil Remedies Act, the attorney general can ask a civil court to freeze, take possession of, or forfeit property that is deemed to result from unlawful activity.

Before being forfeited to the province, the bikes were held by the Toronto police’s property and evidence unit — a task that was “logistically challenging to say the least,” according to manager Brenda Radix. Police say as many as 900 of Kenk’s bikes have since been returned to their rightful owners.