A man being painted as a serial con man by those who say he duped them was arrested in West Vancouver recently after one of his most recent targets orchestrated a sting with the help of police.
Wesley Devries, 43, is in custody, charged with theft over $5,000 and fraud.
Those charges stem from deceptions allegedly foisted on both a North Vancouver bike shop and the North Shore Credit Union.
But others around the Lower Mainland say they're also keen to see Devries answer to the long arm of the law.
In fact, it was two of those other people who tracked Devries online through a Craigslist ad and arranged to meet him in a parking lot at Park Royal July 31 - with plainclothes West Vancouver police in attendance.
The man who arranged to meet Devries in West Vancouver last week was an employee of Dunbar Cycles in Vancouver - a shop staff said Devries had recently visited. According to store employees, Devries left his passport at the shop before taking a $7,000 carbon fibre bike out for a test ride. He didn't return.
When store employees at the Vancouver store posted their experience in online biking forums, it was all very familiar to Sasha Tomchenko, general manager of Cove Bikes in Deep Cove.
"I know that guy," he thought.
Tomchenko said a man with the same name and description had pulled an identical stunt in his store, looking at several bikes before riding off into the sunset with a $6,000 model, leaving behind a piece of fake ID.
"He's a well-spoken guy," said Tomchenko. "He's well-dressed. He is a con man."
Devries has now been charged with the Cove bike theft as well as breaches of probation related to a 2012 fraud conviction.
But commercial establishments aren't the only ones who allegedly fell prey to Devries' charms.
One Lower Mainland woman, Lisa Dwyer, recently started a blog, detailing her experience of being wooed - and then duped out of $2,700 - by a Wes Devries, who asked her to help him out by cashing a cheque.
By the time she realized what had happened, the cheque had already bounced.
Dwyer quickly learned she wasn't the only woman claiming to have been scammed out of money in the same fashion.
Laura Ansley of North Vancouver recalls a virtually identical experience shortly after she started dating Wes Devries in July 2011. "He was very charming," she said.
Ansley ended up losing $3,300 after Devries convinced her to hand over a bank card and PIN number to him.
"Yes I made a stupid mistake," she said.
Ansley said she felt devastated by the betrayal, even after she reported it to police - who told her it was unlikely they could help her.
Ansley said more recently, she's been shocked to learn about the numbers of other women who've reported similar experiences with Devries. "He's very, very good at what he does," she said. Up until that point, she said, "It never dawned on me it could happen
to other people."
Nine years ago, Devries was sentenced to five and a half years in jail for defrauding a number of women of more than $85,000 with bogus cheques. At the time, the judge described Devries as "a predator and a chronic recidivist."
Devries' next court appearance on his most recent charges is Aug. 22.
