That would only make sense if Schwinn was stealing them.
I steal your bike, and I sell it to my buddy who himself lost a bike to a thief.
That's a pyramid scheme, to which my original point applies specifically.
How so?
The bottom of the pyramid should fill up with stolen bikes faster than the bikes rust out. Although I guess with 13M more births than deaths each year, there's 13M more potential outlets for stolen bikes. My guess is that most of those buy new or unstolen used, but with only 1.5M bike thefts a year, I may have just data'ed myself out of my OP! (All data for US 2015)
It's not a pyramid scheme, because people who buy stolen bikes are also subject to having their bikes stolen. Pyramid schemes are acyclic, the market for stolen bikes is not.