This is fantastic.
A MAN FROM CORK had his bike stolen, and after finding it for sale online, he concocted a clever and daring plan to get it back.
Kevin O'Brien went full Reservoir Dogs with a few friends and his wife as he pulled off a slick sting operation.
Speaking to Muireen O’Connell on Today FM, Kevin described how he enlisted a friend from Kerry, who works a bouncer, to act as his ‘heavy’, another friend to inconspicuously read a newspaper nearby and his wife to get the entire thing on film.
He’d even organised a special signal to tell his crew when to come over and intervene.
Kevin after getting his stolen bike backHere’s the hilarious story, as told by the mastermind himself:
“I’d left [the bike] outside work and when I finished work, I came out and the bike was gone, but my lock was still on the rail,” Kevin explained.
“I put it on Twitter and a lot of people got in touch and kept telling me to check the online buy-and-sell websites.
“I did that for a few days, but saw nothing and kind of gave up on it. But a week later I decided to have one more look, and I found a bike that looked pretty much exactly like mine.
“I got in touch with the guy selling it, [and] kind of pretended to be interested in buying it.”
Kevin arranged to meet the thief in the car park of a shopping centre in Cork, but he wasn’t going alone.
“I got on to a couple of buddies as well, just in case anything went wrong, you just want a bit of backup for these situations.
“I went there and my buddies kind of stayed in the background. It was busy and they were just trying to blend in with things. I think one of them was kinda reading a newspaper at the newspaper stand and there was another guy smelling flowers at the entrance to Tesco. Just looking inconspicuous, like.
“My wife was there as well trying to get some videos of the guy.”
Reservoir Dogs portrayed a set of gangsters who used aliases and secret identities for their heistsO’Connell, rightly astonished at the level of preparation he’d done to, began to laugh, and Kevin’s response was perfect.
“You have to do it right if you’re going to do it at all,” he joked.
“After five minutes of waiting [the thief] came over and as soon as I saw the bike, I knew for a fact it was mine.
“I’d given my buddies a signal that as soon as I sat on the bike, that was when I would break it to the guy - it was actually mu bike and I was taking it back.
“After chatting to him for a few minutes, I sat on the bike, and just as I was going to tell him and have my big moment, my buddy came from out of nowhere and just told him, ‘look, this was robbed three weeks ago and we’re taking this bike back’.
“All the blood drained from him. He started shaking. He got the fright of his life.
Apparently the bike-thief was so shaken up that once he tucked tail and left, he drove his car the wrong way round on the one-way system out of the car park.
When asked if he was annoyed his friend robbed him of the moment of revealing everything to the thief, Kevin said: “It was nearly worse than when the bike was stolen.”
Top man Kevin, or should I say, top man Mr Pink?
