Beware! Electric Scooters Thefts on the Rise in Boro Park

by M.C. Millman

For the second time this month, Fun On Wheels suffered the loss of one of their electric scooters after it was stolen from a customer.

"What people don't realize when they rent a scooter," says Simcha Meyer, owner of Fun On Wheels, "is if they turn their back on their scooter for less than twenty seconds, it's likely that it will get stolen."

And that's what happened on Monday when a customer rented a Fun On Wheels electric scooter to get around Boro Park, rode it to yeshiva, left the scooter unattended for just a minute when he left it inside the hallway, and had his scooter stolen by the time he got back to it. The theft was carried out by an Uber driver delivering a package to a boy in the yeshiva.

Luckily for Fun On Wheels, the scooter had a tracker on it, so Shomrim of Boro Park and Shomrim of Flatbush helped track the stolen scooter to a building in Brooklyn. There, they found the helmet from the scooter in the lobby. 

"When the police department showed up," Fun On Wheels says, "they said they couldn't go inside and knock on all the doors, so we had to wait for the tracker to show the scooter was on the move again."

By the next afternoon, Fun On Wheels notified Shomrim that the scooter was moving. Then at 5:45 p.m., The Uber driver with the scooter in hand, minus the FunOnWheels labels, was arrested as soon as he left the building.

"This time, I got my electric scooter back," Fun On Wheels shares, "but the last one stolen didn't have a tracker."

Purim and Pesach are coming up, a time that Fun On Wheels sees a tremendous uptick in customers, with children busy running errands and popping into stores for a minute at a time. By the time they come out, their scooter can already be many blocks away. 

"Don't turn your back on your scooter, not even for a minute," Fun On Wheels warns, "and not even to just run into the store. That's all it takes for a scooter to get stolen. And if you want to protect your scooter, put a tracker in it. It only costs about $25, and there are models that work specifically with android or apple phones."