Goodbye to the Jungle Baby - An Involuntary Gift

If you've been reading my posts for a while, you may remember that around a year ago I got into building a bamboo bike. In case you haven't, I retrieved the relating posts from the depths of my profile. The inspiration started out here, then the actual workshop here, here, here, and finally the test ride here.

An Awesome Bike (that nobody wanted)

All together I was really satisfied with this fixie, I named Jungle Baby. But then when I tried to sell it, I got no response. Apparently people were not interested in a bamboo fixie, or they were not ready to spend nearly as much for it as I had paid for the parts. Just to break it down, it cost me $12,000 Mexican pesos (around $600 USD) to build it, plus my own time and work I put into it. How much monetary value I put on that, depends on a number of things, though by the end I was ready to go down to zero, just to break even. Instead I got offers of $3-5,000 pesos, being assured that that's how much the bike was worth, not more. Yeah right!

Postponed Sale

So, since I could not sell it by January, I left the bike hanging out in our Mexico City apartment, to worry about it when I came back from my natural building projects. That took a bit longer than expected, but a couple of weeks ago I made it back. And right in that room where I like to sit by my computer, my Jungle Baby was staring at me, as if asking: so who's gonna ride me now? I had to try selling her again.

A Prospective Buyer

I went back to the pictures I'd taken of her a year ago, and started advertising again. I didn't get too far. Only a few minutes after posting it on Facebook Marketplace, I got a reply from an interested buyer. The $15,000 pesos ($750 USD) I was asking seemed to be okay, he was super happy to have found a bamboo bike, and what we discussed was putting brakes on her. Sure, why would I mind? Once it's sold, it's up the new owner what to put on it. We agreed on a place (on the corner outside my house) and a time (right that afternoon), and I sent him the bank information where to send the money. I was very excited.

When the time came a quick call verified that both of us were almost there, and when the guy came to our meeting spot, he could inspect the bike for himself. He seemed to like it. There were loads of people hanging out around us, and the tires were without much air. This way he couldn't just snatch it from me and ride away. All in all, he seemed to be as pleased as I was, and he used his phone to send out the money by the wire transfer to my wife's account. He took a screenshot, sent it to me, which I forwarded to her, and asked her to check her bank account.

The Part of Getting Scammed

The next few minutes we spent talking about the Tour de France and Eastern Europe, until my wife's message arrived: The $15,000 had made it to her account. Great! We said our goodbyes and I left the bike with him. I was pleased. The $3,000 pesos profit was a fair compensation for my time, of $300 pesos (15 bucks) for each of the approximately ten hours I'd worked on it. I was quite happy... Until the $15,000 vanished in its entirety from my wife's bank account!

How Could This Happen?

Okay, a wire transfer is not like a bounced check, where the amount you are given vanishes as soon as you try to cash or deposit it. Once the money has been transferred to your account, it is there... unless the bank makes it look like it's not!

Yes, indeed, this type of scam requires an accomplice at the bank, who sends out a fake transfer in the name of the bank, from an account that never had any funds to begin with. The next day, when it's clear that there's no money covering it, it will look like a bounced check... except for it was not. And by that time the bike thief is long gone. And the bank covers for them!

So here I am now, majorly discouraged. Had I used that bike for firewood, I may have gotten more out of it. My dedicated lawyer wife has assured me she would fight for that money, but she herself has been the victim of a similar scam of $80,000 pesos. So together with my bike, we're getting close to a hundred grand. Let's hope that lawsuit actually works (and by the time it's resolved the $95,000 pesos will still be worth something).

Finally, let me mention that these kinds of things are quite common here in Mexico. While most of my friends picture armed robberies and gun violence to be a daily thing here, I can't assure them enough that they're not. I mean, of course, they do happen, but never in all these years while living here have I seen any violence, let alone with firearms. On the other hand, that the institutions, such as banks, insurances, or public offices blatantly screw you over, and then try to hide it behind apparent gross incompetence, that seems to be quite a usual thing. All the more reason to avoid big institutions at all costs. And as far as money, I'm really happy about cryptos. May they take over our day-to-day commerce, leaving institutionalized money way back in the dust where they belong.