'Bike rescuer' pleads guilty

A man who claimed to operate a stolen bike rescue program in the Lower Mainland pleaded guilty to 36 charges of possession of stolen property Friday.

Gordon Sinclaire Blackwell, the proprietor of bikerescue.org, was handed a two-year jail sentence and three year probation order in North Vancouver Provincial Court Friday morning.

His co-accused, Mallory Nayomi Haun-Stokes was released on bail.

The 41-year-old had been the prime suspect of a North Vancouver RCMP investigation into a string of similar bike thefts in the city last summer.

Blackwell was arrested Wednesday and charged with 36 counts of possession of stolen property and one count of theft.

Authorities had been trying to shut down his operation since June, when New Westminster bylaw officers handed him a cease-and-desist order for operating his business without a licence.

His New Westminster lockup was raided in November where 153 bikes were recovered. Only 40 of those have since been returned to their rightful owners.

On his website, Blackwell claims he scours the Internet and ads for “too good to be true” bike deals and purchases them back.

He claims that he tries to return the bikes to their owners, and if that fails, he resells them himself.

Blackwell did not outright ask for a recovery fee from the bike owners, but did receive monetary donations.

In all, Blackwell claimed to have returned 256 stolen bikes for a total value of $246,730 as of June.

In a statement posted on the website following the initial November raid, Blackwell condemned the officers’ actions against him while defending his program.

“While I applaud the efforts of the police to finally weigh in and do more than just the passive role they have had (and they have always fought against helping even to that degree) I must say I find it rather suspect that they have chosen to wait until the last possible second to do it,” he wrote.

“ ... the RCMP have effectively ended any chance of the program restarting as I am left with a debt load of over $20,000 and no means to recover that unless they choose to return the hundred + bikes that will clear their vetting process,” the statement continued.

Anyone who has had a bike stolen since 2008 that has not been recovered is asked to email nvstolenbikes@rcmp-grc.gc.ca.

Please provide the make, model, colour, components, accessories, any unique markings and a photograph, if possible.