VIDEO | Man admits to stealing e-bike in Yishun, owner asks him to pay $2,000 or else he will call the police, Netizens ask “Is this not extortion?”

A video of an e-bike owner confronting the man who stole his bike in Yishun has gone viral. After threatening repeatedly to report the thief to the police, the owner gets him to admit to the theft and promise to pay him $2000.

The two-minute video was posted on the Singapore Incidents Facebook page on Monday (June 6). It begins with a man in a blue t-shirt repairing a bicycle, while the man filming approaches him and says, “Bro, why you steal my bike?”

When the man in blue begins to reason out, the other man says, “Don’t argue, bro, be honest. Do you want to settle this peacefully, or…?”

He then points to a bike and says it’s his, remarking, “I don’t know how many you steal.”

“No, I don’t steal!” The man in blue protests. 

“Then why my bike here? I can call police right now, I really make police report.”

The man in blue then gets up and removes his personal items from the other man’s bike, and says, “Paiseh (embarrassed) bro, you can take back.”

He then tries to get the owner to simply take the bike back and perhaps leave, but the owner, getting upset, says, “there’s no paiseh paiseh,” adding that he works as a delivery rider and his time has been wasted.

The video then cuts to a close-up of the man in blue.

Off-cam, the owner tells him he wants him to admit he stole his bike.

“You say you’ll private settlement by paying $2000 in two weeks’ time.”

Otherwise, the owner would make a police report.

“I stole your bike, I’m very sorry,” the thief says, and proceeds to repeat what the owner asks of him.

Surprisingly, some netizens appeared to feel that the owner was wrong to ask the thief to pay $2000.

  But others defended the owner, saying he had lost earnings because of the theft.

Some wrote that the owner should have just reported the man to the police.

/TISG

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