It's not that complicated, legally speaking. The rightful owner gets to get their stuff back, and the new "owner" has a claim against the purveyor of stolen goods for the purchase price.
The new "owner" will keep the bike as he has bought it in good faith.
The shop will claim that it cannot check every used bike.
The rightful owner could try to get money from the person who stole it (if found), but they most likely don't have any money.
It's the perfect crime and the reason why we cannot have nice bikes. People are literally sleeping with their expensive bikes in a room.
I can't believe the law works like that. Are you telling me that if I buy a yacht in Austria "in good faith" from someone who doesn't own it, I can just sail away on the yacht, original owner be damned?
However as soon as you as the buyer feel something is off, you aren't protected anymore because only good faith buyers are protected. For example if you go to the black market or something seems to be extremely cheap you definitively aren't protected anymore.
It's a conflict of interests. This law is trying to do a tradeoff. Imagine you went to Walmart and bought a bike and everything seemed fine but it turned out that an employee stole the bike and sold it to you in the name of Walmart. In this case you can keep the bike.
Surely we can trust hundreds and hundreds of small business owners to be very strict about law enforcement when it pushes against their financial interests, in a country with more bikes then people.
No stolen bikes end up in shops, no siree. Yeah right.
We’re living in an era where people regularly use tracking devices to retrieve their stolen bicycles. If they turn up in a store the owner should run into trouble even without regular checks.
Of course this depends on the police not being lazy which clearly is a big ask but if that is too much any law is pointless.
It seems it depends on the jurisdiction. In the US you can’t launder title for stolen goods like this. If you bought a stolen bike, well it sucks to be you. The bike goes back to the rightful owner.
