Alleged bike thief captured in elaborate sting documented on YouTube

Seattle was the setting for a street chase after a Portland man took it upon himself to find his treasured bicycle that had been stolen.

Jake Gillum’s ordeal began Aug. 3 in Portland when he realized his bike was missing and filed a police report.
He has no car and uses it to travel to odd jobs and yard work around town, as well as for exercise. Over the next week, he checked online obsessively.

The quest seemed hopeless, but a week of poring over online postings for his 2009 carbon fiber Fuji paid off when Gillum spotted the road bike offered for sale up in Seattle.

That sparked an elaborate interstate sting operation last weekend in which Gillum not only got his bicycle back, but used it to chase down the suspect before police arrested him.

Gillum documented it all on YouTube under the username ‘Simon Jackson.’

“I just found it on Craigslist posted up in Seattle, Wash. about two days ago,” says Gillum in the intro of his YouTube video. “I contacted the thief under the alias ‘Simon Jackson’ so now me and a couple of friends are going to go up there and hopefully get my bike back and get the guy busted by the cops. I don’t think he stands a chance. I’m wearing my lucky hat today. Let’s go.”

WARNING: Graphic language

The trio drove north and met the seller outside a grocery store. The others called police as Gillum started chatting with the seller, later identified as Craig Eric Ackerman, also of Portland.

Gillum said that about 40 minutes later, police still hadn’t arrived and the seller seemed to be getting nervous, so Gillum agreed to buy it and said he needed to walk inside a nearby bank. A teller told him she would call security and Gillum walked back outside and began filming.

“Here’s the deal. I live in Portland and you stole my bicycle,” Gillum says.

“All right,” the nervous seller replies. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I would like you to apologize.”

“For what?”

“For stealing my bicycle.”

The seller insisted he lives in Seattle and bought the bicycle off Craigslist, though he acknowledged knowing it was stolen. When Gillum says police are on the way, the seller runs away, so Gillum hops on his newly recovered bike, starts chasing and repeats over again: “He cannot get away from me!”

Police arrived and arrested Ackerman for investigation of possessing and trafficking in stolen property. He has not been charged and his lawyer, Holli Giffin, declined to comment because of the pending investigation, except to say, “We have a lot of concerns about the way things have been portrayed.”

The success of the sting heartened bicyclists around the world as the video spread. Such stings are far from unheard of, there have been at least four in Seattle alone recently, two involving the same suspect, but they don’t typically wind up on a video that goes viral.

Sean Whitcomb, Seattle Police spokesman, cautioned people against using stings without being absolutely sure they’re right, which can be difficult using a picture on an Internet message board.

“Personal injury is not worth your bike,” he said.

By 97.3 KIRO FM Staff
The AP’s Gene Johnson contributed to this report.