No matter what you're looking for these days, you can pretty much find it on Craigslist. The online marketplace is just a small part of Sam Wilkie's story. It started the day he noticed his motorcycle missing. "My wife gets home from work earlier than I do, and she called me and said where's your bike," the Roebuck resident remembers. "I said, I'm not riding it, it's supposed to be at home. And she said, well it's gone."
The 46 year old's Yamaha was gone in broad daylight. Wilkie never thought he'd get the bike back, until the family did some digging a month later. "My wife had been on Craigslist and just happened to punch up the make and model of my motorcycle," he says. "An ad popped up and said someone had parts for sale. It was posted the same day mine was stolen and it made me wonder, this could be my bike." Turns out: it was. Deputies believe 18 year old Benjamin Wiley and 19 year old Dustin Smith were behind it all. Investigators have linked the Spartanburg County pair to thefts all over the Upstate, in Union, Spartanburg, Greenville and Pickens counties. They say they've taken everything from golf carts, to motorcycles, to four wheelers. In some cases, deputies think the teens used ads on Craigslist, to track down sellers and steal their stuff. In other cases, like Wilkie's, they tried to re-sell the goods online. "You work hard for something and somebody that's too lazy to work wants to come by and take it and make money off it," says Wilkie.
Both teens are charged with larceny. They're out of jail on bond. The bust has been a big lesson for Wilkie. "Makes you mad more than anything else."
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