Gerald Blanchard

Gerald Daniel Blanchard (* around 1972 in Winnipeg ) is a Canadian former thief who went down in criminal history as one of the most successful, most discreet and planning-demanding representatives of his profession . He carried out extensive raids on three continents. Police investigators and prosecutors characterized him as "refined, clever, scheming and creative"; the media dubbed him after his exposure as a “master thief”, “super brain”, “thief of the century” or “gentleman thief”.

Even as a teenager, he was involved in serious crimes that earned him both a fortune and, a little later, his first prison sentence. He was left without formal professional training, but was self-taught and passionately concerned with electronic devices and surveillance technologies, which would become his most important tools as his criminal career progressed. At the age of 26, he stole a precious piece of jewelery belonging to Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary (“Sisi”) from Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna in a daring action . Over the next decade, Blanchard built his own small, criminal organization and looted several million Canadian dollars . His main target was ATMs in bank branches, which he always emptied unarmed and unobserved. The raids were preceded by meticulous planning, weeks of observation and the inconspicuous installation of numerous technical aids. Blanchard and his team worked mostly on their own account, but also took on orders from abroad.

At the beginning of 2007 he was arrested after many years of manhunt and his ring was smashed in a nationwide coordinated police raid . He cooperated fully with the authorities during the investigation and was released early from custody in April 2012.

Life

Personal background

Blanchard first grew up in his native city of Winnipeg . After a few years his mother moved with him and his sister in Omaha in the US state of Nebraska . Because of his criminal involvement (see next section) he had to visit an educational institution at times. He suffered from dyslexia and had a slight speech impediment. Randy Flanagan, a teacher, took him on and invited him to his home mechanics class. There the children and adolescents dealt with simple constructions, woodwork, model making and auto mechanics. Blanchard showed a lot of talent, and Flanagan became a father figure for him. In high school , he found a student job and worked briefly in a supermarket, where he stocked the shelves.

Through his grandmother in Winnipeg, Blanchard kept close family ties to Canada.

Criminal career

Beginnings

According to him, Blanchard has been fascinated by appropriating other people's property since he was six. Back then, the family couldn't afford milk. When he discovered some bottles that had just been delivered on a neighbor's porch, he hid between parked cars and took the bottles for an unobserved moment. At that moment "it grabbed him". In 1984 he made his first experiences with exchange fraud using a radio-controlled model car and once he stole a VCR from a classroom while at school .

At the beginning of his high school years, Blanchard then specifically sought out shop employees and made friends with them. He got them to steal countless products from their own stores, which he then hid . He made tens of thousands of dollars that way. In addition, he developed a passion for electronic devices, cameras and surveillance technology. He studied it very carefully, examined its technical inner workings and wanted to understand how it worked down to the last detail. On an Easter Sunday he broke into a RadioShack store and stole numerous electronic items as well as money. At the age of 16, he bought his own house with the help of a lawyer and paid for it with $ 100,000 in cash. He told his mother that it was a friend's house. He tried to hide his machinations from her and she probably didn't ask either. A little later he was caught by a security guard stealing clothes and arrested. He was detained for several months. Randy Flanagan vouched for him at a court hearing and Blanchard was released into his custody. Even after that, Blanchard did not hide his wealth. He bragged about it, spent money indiscriminately, and lived very lavishly.

In April 1993 he made in the local press headlines when it to him in Council Bluffs ( Iowa succeeded) within two days twice to escape from police custody. Arrested on suspicion of car arson, he sat in the police station's interrogation room until after midnight. He could sneak into an adjoining room, climb a wall, and hide in the ceiling. He stayed there for several hours and watched acoustically as the police officers noticed his escape and assumed that he had escaped through the emergency exit. At an opportune moment, he stole a badge , a pistol, a holster , a police radio , and a cap and jacket as part of a police uniform . Equipped in this way, he left the station through the main entrance and at dawn hitchhiked back to Omaha , which is right on the other bank of the Missouri River . He explained to the driver that he had just come from a costume party. A police SWAT team tracked him down the following day while he was hiding in the maternal attic. In the patrol car, he managed to twist his legs through the handcuffs (which held his hands behind his back), turning his arms and hands back onto the front of his body. While the officers waited outside and left the car key in the car , he sat in the driver's seat, locked the doors and drove away. After a chase , he turned into the parking lot of a steak house and fled on foot, but was soon finally overwhelmed. This time Gerald Blanchard was sentenced to four years in prison. In March 1997 he was released from prison, but this was followed by an immediate deportation to Canada - combined with a five-year travel ban to the United States.

The coup in Vienna

Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary ("Sisi") with the edelweiss stars in her hair. Painting by Franz Xaver Winterhalter (around 1860, workshop repetition, oil on canvas, 80 × 64 cm)

Blanchard committed his most famous crime in early June 1998 in the Austrian capital Vienna . He stole one of the so-called edelweiss stars in Schönbrunn Palace . The kuk court and chamber jeweler and goldsmith Alexander Emanuel Köchert made these originally 27 pieces of jewelery made of diamonds and pearls for the Empress in 1855 for the first wedding anniversary of Franz Joseph I and Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary ("Sisi"). She liked to have the stars in her hair. At the end of the 1990s there were only two copies left. They had been made into brooches but had not been shown to the public for 75 years. This was to happen again for the first time in the days of Blanchard's stay in Vienna. Together with his wife at the time, he was on his honeymoon , which was extended to a six-month tour of Europe, in which his wealthy father-in-law also took part. The trio toured London , Rome , Vienna, Barcelona and the Côte d'Azur , among others . In Vienna, thanks to the prominent status of the father-in-law, they received an exclusive tour of the palace and a preview of the star, which came from a private collection and was to be officially unveiled two days later.

Blanchard was instantly fascinated by the star. Its material value was around 10,000 Canadian dollars , but its ideal value was hardly measurable. He knew that he would never be able to steal with the piece , but rather regarded the theft as a personal challenge. While he was still on the tour, he began to inspect the showroom - the motion sensors , the type of screws on the safety glass box and the windows. He discreetly recorded every detail of the room with his video camera. When the staff had gone on to the adjacent rooms, he secretly opened the window, loosened the screws with a key and made sure that the motion sensors allowed him to move very slowly within the building. In addition, Blanchard memorized the armed guards who were posted at each entrance and regularly patrolled the castle. In the souvenir shop he bought a cheap plastic replica of the star, also to get a feel for the size.

The very next day, Blanchard carried out the theft. Shortly before, he had met a German pilot who, in return for adequate payment, was willing to engage in criminal activities. Blanchard himself was a master of skydiving and had identified the unguarded roof of the castle as a critical point. He could be flown over or near the facility in a small plane. He jumped from a height of about 1,600 meters. He almost missed the roof of the castle, but when sliding over a gable he was able to brake just enough to grab a parapet on the edge of the roof. He got in through the window that was open the day before. There were no guards in the room and if he heard them, he had planned to hide behind the thick, floor-length curtains. He removed the already loosened screws on the cabinet and held the long chopsticks in position with a butter knife, which otherwise would have triggered an alarm. The edelweiss star itself rested on a spring-loaded mechanism that would have registered any change in weight. Therefore, he quickly and seamlessly exchanged it for the duplicate from the souvenir shop.

The next day, Blanchard appeared at the opening ceremony and watched the visitors gaze at the plastic star. Some time later, his parachute was found in a nearby dumpster. However, no connection was made to the theft - as it had not yet been noticed. The exchange of stars was only noticed after two weeks. In the regulator of his scuba gear Blanchard smuggled the jewel on his way back to Canada.

More crimes

"His ability to plan, his ability to surveil possible criminal targets, his knowledge of electronics that he picked up on his own, the way he carried out his business, the way he organized his own criminal organization, was something that, in combination, and the various offenses and crimes that he was involved in, the diversity of them, is something that we'd never seen. "

- Tom Legge (Winnipeg Police Investigator)

Gerald Blanchard lived in the St. James-Assiniboia district of Winnipeg, but also owned other properties. The continuation of criminal activities on a large scale enabled him to lead a life in abundance, some of which he led in the jet set . He hid his fortune in a total of 13 accounts, including in Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos Islands . The money in Canadian banks was for his real estate business, the one in Europe for emergencies. Over the years he had 32 aliases (including James Gehman, Daniel Wall and Ron Aikins), used 18 different cell phones and telephones and slipped into his different characters with make-up , glasses and hair coloring. He filled out baptismal certificates and marriage certificates with his respective pseudonyms , for example to obtain real driver's licenses or to apply for identity cards. Under the aliases, he even took driving lessons and enrolled in college seminars. He also obtained ID cards and uniforms from numerous security companies and law enforcement agencies.

He often pretended to be a reporter to meet celebrities. He forged VIP passports and press cards . In this way, he attended example playoff games of the National Hockey League and took the former Formula 1 - World Champion Mario Andretti several laps at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway . In Monaco he met Prince Albert II (at that time still heir to the throne) at a yacht race and during one of her concerts he interviewed Christina Aguilera .

• 

  Mario Andretti

• 

  Prince Albert II of Monaco

• 

  Christina Aguilera

At this concert in July 2000 he met Angela James, who was still underage. She said she worked for Ford Models . They hit it off immediately and he quickly found out that she was ready for criminal action. They were never a couple - they were accomplices, because Blanchard liked the idea of ​​having a sidekick .

Gerald Blanchard built up a criminal ring within the next few years , which the investigators later referred to in the absence of an official as Blanchard Criminal Organization . At times it had up to eight members. His activities included international identity theft , credit card fraud , the forgery of gift cards from large companies such as companies such as VISA or Walmart , exchange fraud , break-ins in electronics stores - but above all bank robberies in the Canadian provinces of Alberta , Manitoba , British Columbia and Ontario . However, Blanchard always proceeded unarmed and unobserved. His targets were not the employees at the counters , but the ATMs in the branches . He often emptied these at night and as a rule all raids were preceded by meticulous, sometimes weeks-long monitoring and preparation. He operated with extensive technical equipment, for example with night vision devices , telephoto lenses , infrared glasses, scanners with encryption keys for the police frequencies, or high-gain antennas that received the audio and video recordings from the bank that he recorded. Sometimes he hacked into the bank's security network to turn off the cameras, and other times he would break in through the air conditioning ducts . He simply blocked infrared sensors with lead-coated bags, and by installing additional metal cladding on the walls, he created hiding places in case the police should surprise him. He had the mechanics of the locks from the two companies Mas-Hamilton and La Gard used in most of the machines in his head. He was able to put together a dismantled Mas-Hamilton lock in 40 seconds. In the run-up to the bank robberies, he was usually assisted by Angela James, who stood guard outside the buildings while he scouted the interiors.

Between May 2001 and September 2004, Blanchard carried out four major raids in Edmonton that resulted in the loss of CAD 242,000 in cash and merchandise value (laptops, digital cameras, personal digital assistants, and GPS devices ):

• May 5, 2001: ATB Financial branch
• July 31, 2002: Scotiabank branch
• April 28, 2003: Best Buy store
• September 2, 2004: CIBC branch

The first of these raids set the style for several of his numerous other bank robberies. The ATB Financial branch was still in the early construction phase when he started the observation. Because - according to him - before money actually arrives, the buildings are hardly monitored or protected. He often entered the construction site camouflaged, either as a supplier or as a construction worker - sometimes at night and sometimes in broad daylight. This enabled him to install his spying technology in the machine room. Blanchard knew when the machines would be delivered and what locks they would have. He ordered the same locks online and disassembled them down to the smallest detail at home to understand them. Finally, in the branch, he also took the locks of the machines apart, deactivated them and put them back in again.

During the series of robberies in Edmonton, Blanchard's most profitable single theft also occurred. It was for an unopened CIBC branch on Empress Street in Winnipeg. Again he had watched and infiltrated the house - the blueprints of which he had - for several nights, with James as a guard. He had exchanged a few locks and made himself sufficiently familiar with others to be able to open them without any problems. Blanchard had installed a transmitter behind an electrical outlet, a pinhole camera in a thermostat, and a baby monitor screen behind a wall. Handles mounted on the plasterboard wall panels should allow him to easily remove them and enter and exit the ATM room. In this attack, however, he was even more conscientious than usual. He measured the space down to the last centimeter and built a copy in a friend's machine shop to practice in. He managed to reduce his time to crack a machine and escape to 90 seconds. The branch was supposed to open on Monday and he knew that the cash boxes had been delivered on Friday. Therefore, he used Saturday - May 15, 2004 - for a robbery. He pried the outer doors open after midnight, snuck in, and bolted them again behind him. The doors to the machine room were unlocked and wide open, so that he didn't have to worry about access there. In total there were seven machines with four drawers each and several money counting machines . Without causing any telltale damage, he opened and emptied all but one. Nevertheless, when the first machine was opened, an alarm was triggered. Then he stole the hard drives that stored the video recordings. After successfully completing his plan, Blanchard escaped through the front doors, which he locked behind him. He drove away in a van parked nearby with Canadian dollars 510,000 in his luggage. The police appeared eight minutes after the alarm. However, the doors were found locked and a false alarm was assumed. When the theft became apparent the next day, Blanchard was able to eavesdrop on the police officers using the surveillance technology that was still in the room and thus learned their names and the status of the investigation. Before he left town, he called both the bank director on his cell phone and the police, posing as an anonymous informant who was involved in the robbery but had been cheated of his share. According to him, the main perpetrators were either employees of the construction company or the Brink’s money transport service, or the caretakers. Importance was given to his tips as they were very meaningful. The “anonymous informant” had inside information and was able to correctly state, for example, that an ATM had been left untouched. In this way, Blanchard wanted to increase the confusion of the police officers.

At this point he was divorced and was living with his new girlfriend Lynette Tien (* 1986 or 1987), who was involved in the criminal machinations.

In the summer of 2006, Blanchard first met a criminal in London whom he - because he could not pronounce his real name - referred to only as "boss". They met in an electronics store when the boss bought eight DVD recorders . Such a number, as Blanchard knew, was usually only used for surveillance purposes. In this way they both started talking. On the same day, Blanchard met him and about a dozen of his Kurdish henchmen in a café. There the boss let him in on his plans for Europe and the Middle East , which included forgery and robbery. The group's method was what is known as skimming . Magnetic stripe data obtained illegally through spying is copied from credit or bank cards onto counterfeit cards, which can be used to withdraw money. It was a lucrative business and the group directed much of the profits to Kurdish separatists in Iraq . According to all findings of the prosecution, Blanchard was informed about this. In order to test Blanchard's skills, the boss wanted to test him: He was supposed to smuggle 25 cards to Canada and withdraw cash. When he returned a few days later with 60,000 euros, they were satisfied.

Gerald Blanchard, Angela James and Balume Kashongwe stayed at the Cairo Marriott Hotel .

On November 16, 2006, Blanchard received a call from the boss to immediately fly to the Egyptian capital Cairo . Since some of his usual accomplices had no time, his team consisted only of James (whose parents he still had to convince of the trip) and his neighbor Balume Kashongwe, a Congolese immigrant , who had immediately agreed. Just a few hours after the call, the trio broke up. Tien organized the travel arrangements and was in charge of administration in Blanchard's Vancouver condominium . In Cairo they stayed in a luxury hotel and the day after their arrival received a visit from three of the boss's helpers whom Blanchard already knew from the London café. They brought about 1000 forged cards with them, which should be used immediately. The aim was to use them to withdraw the daily maximum from the accounts before the theft could be reported. While Kashongwe and the Kurds fitted in well, Blanchard and James disguised themselves in burqas . The teams moved from one machine to the next for about a week, twelve hours a day. They withdrew Egyptian pounds and stuffed the bills into rucksacks, suitcases and bags. As usual, Blanchard filmed the entire undertaking - the tours to the ATMs, the money, but also the leisure activities in the city center. During this period, the equivalent of more than two million US dollars was looted.

However, the individual withdrawal sums were comparatively small, so after a few days Blanchard sent Kashongwe to Nairobi with 50 cards in order to find more profitable machines. However, the team in Cairo soon discovered that the Congolese had gone into hiding. The boss asked Blanchard to find him. He then made phone calls to Tien, Kashongwe's sister in Brussels and his brother in Ottawa . However, all attempts were unsuccessful. The situation threatened to slip away from Blanchard for good when the boss informed him that he could not leave Cairo until the lost 50 cards were found. Two other men were posted to guard him. However, Blanchard managed to convince his client that James had nothing to do with Kashongwe's double game, whereupon she was allowed to leave. He himself took full responsibility and assured him that he would personally pay Kashongwe's stolen portion of the booty. He was given permission to fly to London. There he and the boss settled their affairs and agreed on further business deals. Ultimately, his share of the profit was "only" about 65,000 Canadian dollars. On December 3, 2006, Blanchard landed back in Vancouver.

He immediately rented a car and drove to Chilliwack . He had already started monitoring and scouting a Scotiabank branch there before the trip to Egypt and he planned to carry out the robbery at the end of the holiday. He reckoned with a loot of about $ 800,000. In the meantime, he kept in touch by phone with the boss, who announced that a team would land in Montreal the next day - December 4th . Another day later, on December 5th, Blanchard sneaked into the bank, explored its pipe system and called the boss again.

Prosecution

"Operation Kite" and arrest

"I've been involved in a lot of investigations involving robbery and fraud, but I have never seen this level of sophistication before."

- Gordon Schumacher (Superintendent of Police and Head of Operation Kite)

The police only gradually became aware of Blanchard after the attack on the CIBC branch in Winnipeg on May 15, 2004. The investigators were initially faced with a riddle the next morning, as the doors showed no damage, no camera images were available and no fingerprints could be found; in addition there were Blanchard's deliberate deception. A little later, however, the police received a call from an employee of a nearby Walmart branch who shared a parking lot with the bank. The employee had been annoyed for a long time about illegally parked vehicles and therefore sporadically monitored the place. On the night of the break-in, he noticed a blue Dodge caravan near the bank. Inside, he saw a hand truck and other equipment, so he wrote down the license plate number . The police determined the owner of the vehicle - it had been rented from Avis by a Gerald Daniel Blanchard. The car and various fingerprints in it were secured in the car rental branch. This is how the police found Blanchard. It remains unclear to this day why he used his real name and did not wear gloves while driving. Because of its sophistication, the robbery fell within the jurisdiction of Winnipeg's Major Crimes Police Department. However, Blanchard learned that he had been convicted and therefore behaved completely inconspicuously for a long time. In the next two years, many investigators involved in the CIBC bank robbery were transferred or retired. The trail, which was so hot at the beginning, cooled down by the beginning of 2006.

Then Mitch McCormick, a seasoned cop, was transferred to Major Crimes and decided to look back at the case. He contacted his longtime colleague, Larry Levasseur, who was an expert in telecommunications surveillance and had just been transferred to the Commercial Crimes division. At first, your superiors were not very convinced of the benefits of this commitment. In the end, although the two were given permission to investigate, they did not have their own budget and had to put together a small team themselves. After a short time they realized that the Blanchard case was growing to an unimaginable size. Little by little, they untangled his extensive network, brought him into connection with numerous other criminal offenses and exposed his aliases. For the first time, Blanchard was now considered a suspect in relation to the robbery of the Edelweiss stars in Vienna almost eight years earlier. Eventually, the investigation results filled 275 pages and convinced a judge to give permission to tap into Blanchard's numerous phones. From this point on, the investigation was carried out on a highly material basis and named "Operation Kite" (from English: kite = wind kite ).

Telephone surveillance sometimes goes on for years, with the police waiting for little slip of the tongue or hidden clues. Blanchard, however, was unusually talkative. On the second weekend, investigators heard him instruct members of his organization about an exchange fraud at Best Buy . Numerous other raids followed. Little by little they recognized more and more details of his activities. During the trip to Egypt, Blanchard's email account and calls to Tien in Canada were monitored. They learned about the size of the loot and also learned about the major problems caused by Kashongwe's disappearance. After Blanchard's landing in Vancouver, the police played his confusion and nervousness into the cards because he made more mistakes. The policemen clung to his path and listened to his phone calls with the boss and conversations about the next bank robbery. When the boss announced the arrival of a team at Montreal-Trudeau Airport on December 4, 2006, the authorities there were immediately notified, and they could even send their names and flight details. Immediately after landing, the criminals were arrested. In their luggage they found dozens of blank credit cards, a card writer and computers with countless details about the raids in Cairo. The hard drives also contained Blanchard's video recordings of the raids. Now investigators could not only hear him talk about it, but also saw him commit the crimes himself. When Blanchard told the boss during their phone call on December 5 that they were scouting the bank that would be his next target, the officials determined his position by means of trilateration . They knew that he had chosen the Scotiabank branch in Chilliwack.

Blanchard Criminal Organization
Age at the time of arrest on January 23, 2007
Gerald Daniel Blanchard	35
Lynette Tien	21st
Angela Marie James	21st
Aaron Jakob Syberg	26th
Carl Bales	83
Balume Kashongwe	33
Dale Allan Fedoruk	35
Lance Ulmer	38

At the end of January 2007, in addition to the Winnipeg police, investigators from Toronto , Edmonton and Vancouver , the provincial police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took part in "Operation Kite". The attack in Egypt also brought Blanchard into the focus of the FBI and Interpol . At around 4 a.m. on January 23, 2007, more than a dozen SWAT officers stormed Blanchard's Vancouver condominium, where they found and arrested him and his girlfriend Lynette Tien. Several other house search warrants were simultaneously enforced in various Canadian cities. All members of the Blanchard Criminal Organization were arrested - two in Winnipeg, three in Vancouver, two in Edmonton and one in Toronto. Among them were Blanchard's cousin Dale Fedoruk, 83-year-old Carl Bales, whose house Blanchard used as a mailbox address, and Lance Ulmer. He had provided the logistics of his mail and shipping company for the criminal activities.

In Blanchard's apartment as well as his numerous other properties and storage rooms, the police seized a total of ten pallets of materials: 60,000 documents, cash in various currencies, smoke grenades , ammunition, firearms and over 300 electronic devices. In the apartment, the investigators also found a hidden room in which they found sets of theft equipment and a broken down documentation of all his cover identities.

Interrogations and trial

Since his arrest Blanchard sat in the Remand Center in Winnipeg in custody . He later testified that he could have escaped from prison without any significant difficulty. However, in his view, such an action would have made no sense: the police had overwhelming evidence, including 120 video and audio recordings. He would have been tracked down again and he was tired of playing hide and seek.

During the interrogations , he refused to provide any information about his accomplices, but decided otherwise to cooperate fully with the authorities. Investigator Mitch McCormick also attributed this in part to Blanchard's character. He described him as an “extravagant guy and an extroverted person. [...] Part of him just wanted to tell his story. ”It took some time for both sides to coordinate, but then the discussions and interrogations with Blanchard were extremely constructive in a polite atmosphere and his statements turned out to be very good helpful. Finally, he offered to lead the police to the Edelweiss star , which was stolen in Vienna in 1998 . He had him behind a polystyrene - insulation lining hidden in the crawl space of the house of his grandmother. For about a month, Blanchard then explained his raids in detail to the officials, corrected investigative errors, filled gaps in knowledge and confirmed correct results. McCormick and his colleagues were surprised by the level of cooperation:

“Never in policing does the bad guy tell you: 'Here's how I did it, down to the last detail.' And that's what he did. "

Investigators couldn't help but reluctantly develop a respect for Blanchard's sophistication, and he admired her relentless investigation. From the material and information he made available to them, McCormick and Levasseur made a multimedia presentation for bank employees and law enforcement officers while the proceedings were still ongoing.

At a press conference on June 1, 2007, the Winnipeg Police Department first made the public aware of the extent of the Blanchard Criminal Organization's crimes . It was said that "some of the most sophisticated crimes ever recorded on three continents". However, the investigators also informed about the fact that Blanchard was suspected from his detention cell in Headingley ( Manitoba ) out - where he had been transferred in the meantime - a hired killer who committed to want to kidnap his former girlfriend, Lynette Tien and kill. Tien was the only one of the arrested members of his ring to be released on bail . At that point, Blanchard faced 41 counts. Another four joined on June 12 when police announced that he was also the prime suspect in the four Edmonton robberies between 2001 and 2004.

The trial eventually began at the Court of Queen's Bench of Manitoba in Blanchard's hometown of Winnipeg . He was threatened with up to 164 years in prison, but his extensive assistance in the course of the investigation was mitigated in the proceedings in his favor. He also showed himself willing to accept a longer term of imprisonment if in return his co-defendants were treated leniently. He continued to refuse to testify against her. In the end, none of his accomplices actually received prison sentences without parole. The last sentence on the Blanchard Criminal Organization was pronounced on April 8, 2009, when Lance Ulmer was sentenced to eighteen months suspended prison sentence. During the trial, Blanchard had his attorney Danny Gunn read a statement:

"My client wishes to recognize that this huge lie that he had been living could now finally fall apart. [...] He recognizes that the men and women of the Winnipeg Police Service made that all possible. "

On October 5, 2007, Gunn announced that they had reached an agreement with the public prosecutor and that his client was ready to plead guilty on 16 counts. All other points - including the suspicion of attempted contract murder - would be dropped. This step should serve, among other things, to shorten the time-consuming process significantly. The admission of guilt took place on November 7th and on the same day Gerald Blanchard was sentenced to eight years in prison. Taking into account the 288 days in pre-trial detention, the remaining detention period was around six years. In addition, he had to pay $ 500,000 in compensation to those disadvantaged for his crimes and agree to sell four of his homes.

As part of the announcement of the verdict, Blanchard once again thanked the police for the diligence of their investigations. Associate Chief Justice Jeffrey Oliphant - who had previously jokingly stated that the banks should hire Blanchard as a security advisor and pay him several million dollars a year - gave him the following advice:

"You're no hero, Mr. Blanchard, but you could have made this a lot more difficult. [...] I think that you have a great future ahead of you if you wish to pursue an honest style of life. Although I'm not prepared to sign a letter of reference. "

Detention

The Stony Mountain Institution in May 2008 while Blanchard was incarcerated there.

Gerald Blanchard was in Stony Mountain Institution in Stony Mountain ( Manitoba imprisoned), a prison of medium security level.

After a three-and-a-half-hour meeting of the responsible parole board , he was granted parole on June 17, 2009 - most likely to be compared with open execution . He moved to a facility in Vancouver and was considering becoming a security advisor in January 2010. The probation should initially be valid for one year, then the authorities wanted to re-examine the case.

In July 2010, Blanchard's parole was revoked for allegedly meeting up with former accomplices and police suspected he was again a criminal. A large number of electronic devices were found in his rooms in the detention center, including a hidden cell phone, several SIM cards , USB sticks , express mail stickers, 33 bank deposit envelopes from two financial institutions, a fountain pen that enables audio and video recordings, an electronic one Card that diverts calls and a device that changes the voice on the phone.

A possible relaxation of the prison sentence was examined again in June 2011. On October 27, 2011, another one-day slogan was decided for Blanchard, although the parole commission expressed concerns that he could “glorify his crimes”. This time, however, he had to adhere to strict conditions . He was not allowed to have more than one cell phone (unless all devices were registered in his name), had to stay away from people he knew or suspected to be criminals, had to give his probation officer detailed inspection of his personal financial records and was not allowed to use or own a computer. The parole board told Blanchard:

"While the Board is concerned that you continue to take pride in your criminal past and the Board is skeptical about your expressed remorse, there is no reliable and persuasive information to suggest you have returned to your crime cycle or that your risk to reoffend has elevated . "

Under the same conditions, Gerald Blanchard was officially released from prison on April 23, 2012 as part of a statutory release . He had served two-thirds of the sentence; the rest was used to probation exposed.

literature

• Jennifer Bowers Bahney: Stealing Sisi's star. How a master thief nearly got away with Austria's most famous jewel . McFarland & Company, Jefferson, 2015, ISBN 978-0-7864-9722-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} "Canadian-born robber made theft an art"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . November 8, 2007 on nationalpost.com ( National Post ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.  
2. ↑ ^{a b} "Master thief released from prison" . May 2, 2012 on cbc.ca/news ( CBC News ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} "Criminal mastermind's thefts funded Muslim extremists, court hears"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . November 7, 2007 on the Winnipeg Free Press home page . Retrieved September 21, 2015 from canada.com .  
4. ↑ ^{a b} Thomas Staisch: "The master thief of the 'Sisi star' is free again!" . On May 4th, 2012 on heute.at ( Today ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Lewis Page: "Canadian hi-tech gentleman jewel thief finally nabbed" . November 8, 2007 on theregister.co.uk . Retrieved September 21, 2015.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t} Joshuah Bearman: “Art of the steal. On the trail of world's most ingenious thief " . On March 22, 2010 on wired.com ( Wired ). Retrieved September 20, 2015.
7. ↑ Video interview with Blanchard . On January 11, 2010 at cbc.ca/news ( CBC News ). Retrieved September 22, 2015.
8. ↑ Jörg Diehl: "Sissi's stolen jewels: A coup like in 'Ocean's 11'" . On November 27, 2007 on spiegel.de ( Spiegel Online ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.
9. ↑ ^{a b} "High-tech crook gets 8 years for string of thefts, frauds" . On November 7, 2007 on cbc.ca/news ( CBC News ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.
10. ↑ ^{a b} "Blockbuster crime spree" . June 2, 2007 on liveleak.com ( LiveLeak ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.
11. ↑ Dean Pritchard: “Accused criminal mastermind's lair raided”  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . July 12, 2007 on cnews.canoe.com . Retrieved September 21, 2015.  
12. ↑ Mike McIntyre: "Last link in racket admits to crime" . April 9, 2009 on winnipegfreepress.com ( Winnipeg Free Press ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.
13. ↑ ^{a b c} Aldo Santin: “Crime ring boss Gerald Danny Blanchard to plead guilty to thefts around the globe” . On October 5, 2007 on the Winnipeg Free Press home page . Retrieved September 21, 2015 from groups.yahoo.com ( Yahoo ).
14. ↑ Joe Friesen: "Jet-set thief had designs on gems, police say" . June 2, 2007 on theglobeandmail.com ( The Globe and Mail ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.
15. ↑ "More charges laid against alleged robber" ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . June 12, 2007 on canada.com . Retrieved September 21, 2015.  
16. ^ Dean Pritchard: "Crime spree mastermind gets day parole" . June 19, 2009 on torontosun.com ( Toronto Sun ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.
17. ^ "Super-thief eyes career as security consultant" . On January 11, 2010 at cbc.ca/news ( CBC News ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.
18. ↑ "Super-thief Blanchard has parole revoked" . On September 13, 2010 on cbc.ca/news ( CBC News ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.
19. ↑ "Serial thief out since last fall" . May 2, 2012 on torontosun.com ( Toronto Sun ). Retrieved September 21, 2015.