Free Mike on Crime by Mike McIntyre

uttering death threats, admitting he attacked a guard and caused more than $50,000 damage by setting off the hospital fire alarm and flooding some of the premises with the sprinkler system. It could have been worse, as the hospital doors were automatically unlocked during the emergency, raising the potential of escapes. Some patients were found wandering on the premises.
    Once his sentence is complete, Wiebe will likely be sent to a psychiatric hospital out west. There’s no way he’s going back to Selkirk. If history is any indication, we likely haven’t heard the last of him.

CHAPTER 4
    THE BLANCHARD CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION
    I t was a case so wild and so juicy that even Oprah came calling. And while the Queen of all media never did end up getting the scoop—the key player refused her interview requests—I had a front-row seat to this utterly fascinating story. Gerald Blanchard is the most interesting criminal I’ve ever covered. I couldn’t get enough of this story. Our readers couldn’t get enough of this story.
    There’s no question the vast majority of crime cases we see are impulsive acts, often driven by addictions and/or intoxication. Which makes something like this so unique: A carefully planned, complex series of acts executed with brilliant precision, all in the name of getting filthy stinkin’ rich. It’s still hard to believe, all these years later.
    2004
    It was a seemingly innocent event in a Winnipeg parking lot—but one that caught the eye of an employee working at the nearby Wal-Mart. Two vehicles were parked outside the brand new Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce on Empress Street in the city’s West End, just days before it was set for its grand opening. Curious, the worker took a closer look. There seemed to be nobody around, just two empty cars. He jotted down the licence plate numbers before carrying on with his day. It would be years before anyone realized just how critical a move this was.
    THURSDAY JANUARY 25, 2007
    They had been dubbed the “Blanchard Criminal Organization”—a group of western Canadian con artists who shared a common goal: make as much money as humanly possible. While they may not have had the same instant name recognition of the Hells Angels, police believed members of the “BCO” had quietly stolen millions since they first formed in the fall of 1999.
    A half-million-dollar heist from a series of automated bank machines in Winnipeg. Trafficking in counterfeit credit cards and related data. Defrauding the Royal Bank, CIBC and Bank of Nova Scotia in Vancouver and Winnipeg time and time again. Their high-tech crime spree, which spread as far as Europe and lasted for over seven years, involved taking some Canadian financial institutions to the cleaners and allowed for a jet-set lifestyle. Who were these criminal masterminds? And how had they managed to be so successful for so long, while staying beneath both the public and police radar?
    Investigators in Manitoba were being tight-lipped about developments in the case, which involved the culmination of a three-year undercover investigation through a series of search warrants and arrests in Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia. But court documents offered an introduction into what was expected to be one of the largest and most sophisticated cases of its kind ever uncovered in Canada.
    â€œThis is all quite unbelievable,” said a justice source familiar with the investigation.
    The eight accused, which included two women, were facing a total of 61 charges, including fraud, theft, conspiracy, credit card trafficking and participating in a criminal organization. According to court documents, the alleged leader of the group was a mystery man named Gerald Daniel Blanchard, 35. He was arrested in BC and was being held in custody, according to his Winnipeg-based lawyer, Danny Gunn.
    â€œThis is going to be a very interesting case,” Gunn told the Winnipeg