A Cavan resident has been jailed for two years for possession of 117 stolen bicycles with an estimated value of €50,000. 47-year-old Dinas Bimbiras, Maple Drive, Drumgola Wood, Cavan said he spent €20,000 buying the bicycles at markets around the outskirts of Dublin for a "long held ambition" to set up a business of fixing them up and selling them on.
Owners were traced for 34 of the bikes and the rest, also believed stolen, were sold at auction. Bimbiras pleaded guilty to possession of 116 of the bicycles in a container at allotments in south Co Dublin in December 2019 and one bicycle at his home in May 2020.
Garda David Dolan told the court he obtained a warrant to search a container on an allotment. Upon opening the container he found it "full to the brim" of neatly stacked bicycles, separated by cardboard. A national media campaign identified 34 owners of bicycles, the remaining owners were never traced.
Gda Dolan said the bicycles ranged in quality, specifications and value, but the estimated total value of the bicycles found was €50,000. In mitigation, defence counsel said Bimbiras, a married father of two, had been in the country since 2001 and worked hard all that time.
She added that he was a very involved father and his children were doing very well. The court heard Mr Bimbiras was the principal breadwinner for his family and they were dependent on him. In his summation, Judge Martin Nolan said it seemed to him the recklessness involved in the defendant’s acquisition of the bicycles was of the highest level and was almost "wilful blindness".
He added that Bimbiras must have suspected he was handling stolen property. The Judge went on to say that without handlers and receivers of stolen property people would be less inclined to steal. He subsequently imposed a two year prison sentence.
