plea8 In Manhattan, Pedaling After Cycling Hustlers

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It dawned upon me that I had worn the wrong shirt for undercover work. It was a hot morning in August, and I was standing on Broadway near Times Square, tracking seven men who did not want to be tracked.

I watched as each man unlocked a bike from a Citi Bike station on Broadway, across from the Ed Sullivan Theater. Then, the group pedaled one block east, deposited bikes at a dock on Seventh Avenue, ran back to Broadway, grabbed more bikes, and did it all over again.

Citi Bike, a bike-sharing network owned by Lyft, uses a few methods to move its bikes from crowded stations to in-demand docks. In 2016, it unrolled a program called Bike Angels, in which Citi Bike users can move bikes in exchange for points, awarded on a sliding scale. Each point is worth 20 cents.

Some savvy scofflaw riders with good stamina, like these seven, discovered that by working together, they could beat the system. By flipping stations — moving all the bikes from one station to another, then back again — they could earn the maximum number of points.

For the top performers — called Power Angels — it could net as much as $6,000 a month.

I followed the men on foot, hiding behind a tree, a dumpster and a magazine kiosk, trying to watch the action without being seen.

I failed. On their second trip, three Power Angels looked straight at me. (I blame the shirt, a purple button-up with cherry blossom flowers and rainbow-colored thread.) The men unlocked their next set of bikes, but instead of returning to Seventh Avenue, they sped off in different directions, abandoning their algorithm-beating streak and leaving me on the sidewalk thirsty, hot and alone.

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