When Gerald Daniel Blanchard was a young man, he was arrested in Omaha, Neb., after apparently trying to flee a store with a bag full of clothing.
The Canadian-born man's exploits would ultimately become more artful.
He installed a pinhole camera and two listening devices inside the walls and roof of the CIBC bank in Winnipeg while it was still under construction. Then, a few days before its grand opening, he robbed the bank of $510,000. The daring heist introduced police to Mr. Blanchard's international enterprise of fraud and theft. Investigators later discovered a priceless jewel -- stolen in 1998 from a castle in Vienna -- hidden in his grandmother's Winnipeg home. They also learned some of the spoils were used to fund Kurdish terrorists in Iraq.
"Cunning, clever, conniving and creative. Add some foreign intrigue and this is the stuff movies are made of," Crown attorney Sheila Leinburd told a Winnipeg court yesterday, as Blanchard pleaded guilty to 16 charges -- including sophisticated attacks on banks in Winnipeg, Edmonton and British Columbia.
The 35-year-old was sentenced to eight years in prison under an agreement between Crown and defence lawyers. He could have faced a maximum sentence of 164 years in jail.
Evidence before the court portrayed a picture of a criminal mastermind, whose home contained the paraphernalia of the profession: a cache of weapons, night-vision goggles, pinhole cameras, underwater cameras, and fake identification, including police tags and secret service ID.
His long string of covert operations, which have netted millions over the years, were foiled by a Wal-Mart employee in Winnipeg who noted two suspicious vehicles in the area before the CIBC bank heist in 2004. In the early hours, Blanchard and his associates broke into the branch and looted six automated teller machines.
Investigators, who noticed similar robberies elsewhere in Canada, tracked the licence plates to Blanchard who had rented them under an alias.
Police tapped his phones and last November, intercepted a conversation between Blanchard and a man only known as The Boss.
The Boss, a London-based man who had ostensibly employed Blanchard, ordered the Canadian and his crew to immediately fly to Cairo, Egypt and steal money from bank machines using counterfeit credit cards.
Blanchard and his associates spent 10 days in Egypt. Dressed in burkas to avoid detection from surveillance cameras, they stole several hundred thousand dollars.
They stopped in England to give The Boss his cut. Blanchard cleared $65,000.
The court heard yesterday that Blanchard knew that his employer used the money to fuel terrorism.
Back in Canada, Blanchard continued his work. He installed surveillance devices inside the Bank of Nova Scotia in Chilliwack, B.C. However, he called off the heist at the last minute because he knew police were on to him.
In January, police raided more than a dozen locations. Seven of his associates were eventually arrested.
After Blanchard was arrested, he led police to a star-shaped diamond and pearl encrusted jewel hidden in a hollowed out piece of Styrofoam in his grandmother's basement. The Koechert Pearl Diamond -- which has a wholesale value of more than $10,000 but is considered priceless because it belonged to the Empress of Austria-- was taken from a display in the Schonbrunn Palace in June 1998. A thief was able to lift the secured glass case during visiting hours and replace the brooch with a fake purchased from a local gift shop.
Ms. Leinburd, the Crown attorney, said Blanchard was seen days before the heist visiting the jewel.
When asked yesterday if he understood what he was pleading guilty to, Blanchard responded with a calm "Yes."
The Vancouver resident grew up with his sister and mother in Omaha, Neb. A store security guard caught him stealing clothing when he was about 19, according to the Washington Post. He later made headlines in the local Omaha paper when he twice escaped police custody within two days in 1993.
In custody for car theft, he scaled a wall and hid in the ceiling of the police station. Then, he took a police badge, gun, holster, radio, cap and coat, and hitched a ride on the back of a motorcycle wearing the police cap.
Police found him the next day hiding in his mother's attic. In the cruiser, he wriggled his legs through his handcuffs and put his hands in front so he could get into the front seat and drive away while the officers were outside.
He was apprehended and eventually deported from the U.S.
In searches of his homes earlier this year, police found 1,000 rounds of ammunition for a .39 mm handgun and .22 calibre rifle, an airport X-ray film protector, pinhole cameras, computer systems, night-vision goggles, underwater cameras, motion sensors and dozens of cell-phones.
He had bank accounts using eight different aliases and had real drivers licences and fake baptism and marriage certificates as supporting documentation.
"He would even go and take the actual driving test under the alias," Ms. Leinburd said.
He also had press cards allowing him access to NHL hockey games and fake police and security tags, including one identifying him as a member of the U.S. secret service. He agreed to liquidate his assets in B.C., to return about $500,000 to the banks he def rauded. Ms. Leinburd told Queens Bench Associate Chief Justice Jeffrey Oliphant that his arrest has also been invaluable to police and financial institutions, as he has discussed in detail how he was able to defeat their systems.
"They should hire him and pay him a million dollars a year," Mr. Oliphant said.
Ms. Leinburd responded: "That has been discussed."
