Scammers have found a way to make thousands of dollars a month moving bicycles around New York City.
Citi Bike, a bike-sharing program operated by Lyft, is the largest of its kind in the country with 25,000 bikes and more than 1,500 stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Jersey City and Hoboken.
To meet demand, the company pays people who want to make a quick buck by moving Citi Bikes from full stations to empty ones.
The Bike Angels program was founded in 2016 and encourages cyclists to move their bikes in exchange for points. These points can be used for rewards such as merchandise, member discounts and gift cards.
People have now found a way to take full advantage of the system by monitoring the app and moving their bikes from one station to another a few blocks away to create demand for their services, then getting paid up to $6,000 a month to ride the bikes a short distance back.
Citi Bike’s Bike Angels program encourages cyclists to move their bikes in exchange for points that can be used for rewards such as merchandise, member discounts and gift cards.
“We expected people to do it as a kind of recreational fitness activity. We never expected anyone to become really obsessed with it,” David B. Shmoys, a data scientist at Cornell University who helped create the rebalancing algorithm, told The New York Times.
Bike Angels noted that the algorithm awards points on a sliding scale based on need.
If you remove a bike from a full station, you will receive up to four points. If you return the bike to an empty station, you will receive up to four points.
People who move at least four bikes in a 24-hour period will have all their points multiplied by a factor of three, according to The New York Times.
Lyft pays 20 cents per point, and each ride can earn up to 24 points. Ideally, a person could earn as much as $4.80 for a single ride.
Some Bike Angels discovered that they could maximize their profits if they worked together to resell the stations.
“This is one of my side hustles. I’m probably a vulture in some people’s eyes. And I think that’s fair enough,” said Bike Angel Mark Epperson.
Some Bike Angels have discovered that if they work together to turn the stations around by moving bikes from full to empty racks and then moving them back again, they can maximize their profits.
The company keeps track of the best performing Bike Angels on a scoreboard. The current leader had collected 19,394 points, which is equivalent to $3,800, as of September 18.
In July, a Reddit poster appeared criticizing the devious Bike Angels for abusing the system and confiscating bikes to make money, instead of letting users take them.
“It’s super frustrating to see these people in action as a long-term member of the Bike Angel community. People like this should lose their membership,” the person wrote.
Flippers told The Times that Lyft tolerated their antics for years, but in August they were given a warning about their behavior.
“It appears that you earned many of your points by participating in station flipping,” the letter reads in part.
‘If station flipping occurs more often, it could lead to removal from the Bike Angels program.’