Pinarello, the renowned Italian bikemaker, lost $273,000 of high-end bicycles in a double robbery on Thanksgiving, according to Italian news media.
As many American families spent the holiday feasting on turkey, a group of bike thieves broke into the Pinarello headquarters in Treviso, Italy. After leaving with many of the store’s most expensive bicycles, the robbers actually returned about 20 hours later for a second heist.
Wearing balaclavas and gloves to conceal themselves, the thieves stole 19 bicycles, La Tribuna di Treviso reported.
“The speed of action is impressive,” the newspaper said of the heist (auto-translated from Italian), suggesting a precise and well-planned operation by professional thieves.
The ‘Italian Job’
The first robbery took place at 3 a.m. Thursday, when the thieves cut the store’s perimeter fence and forced open the panic door of the workshop, tripping Pinarello’s “cutting-edge video surveillance system,” La Tribuna di Treviso wrote. The gang nabbed 12 bicycles, worth $164,000 total, in just 3 minutes. They knew exactly where to find the priciest bikes, suggesting a carefully planned robbery, the newspaper wrote.
