When someone offers to return your stolen bike
Background: Kid lives 700 miles away. Someone broke into a storage shed and stole a couple of bikes a few days ago. This was his backup/commute bike, $1K new in 2015. Was thinking about selling it and upgrading, but does not have a lot of surplus income, so the bike is worth a fair amount to him. He posted the vitals on BikeIndex and spread the word yesterday. Late in the night, he gets a text from someone saying they purchased his bike from offerup or something like that, offering to return it. No mention of money or identity. Apparently he purchased it from a van full of bikes, so I doubt this person was simultaneously naive enough to do that innocently but then also would get the news from BikeIndex.
What is the best way to proceed? Currently he has notified the police and arranged to meet in a well-lit grocery store parking lot along with several capable friends and a cop on "standby" (whatever that means).
As you can probably tell, I am quite skeptical, but the guy (reluctantly) sent a photo and has the bike.