John photographed a feature story for the April issue of Wired on a really unusual character: Gerald Blanchard, who—as the magazine describes him—was a sort of “criminal Rain Man” who “possessed a savantlike ability to exploit security flaws.”
The story, written by Joshua Bearman and titled “Art of the Steal: On the Trail of the World’s Most Ingenious Thief,” is a suspense-filled account of Blanchard’s history and his methods, as well as the ATM heist (he specialized in ATMs) that led to his eventual arrest in Winnipeg.
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Gerald Blanchard. Photo by John Midgley for Wired.
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Excerpt from Bearman’s story: “Eight minutes after Blanchard broke into the first ATM, the Winnipeg Police Service arrived in response to the alarm. However, the officers found the doors locked and assumed the alarm had been an error. As the police pronounced the bank secure, Blanchard was zipping away with more than half a million dollars.”
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Gerald Blanchard. Photo by John Midgley for Wired.
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“The following morning was a puzzler for authorities. There were no indications of damage to the door, no fingerprints, and no surveillance recordings — Blanchard had stolen the hard drives that stored footage from the bank’s cameras. Moreover, Blanchard’s own surveillance equipment was still transmitting from inside the ATM room, so before he skipped town, he could listen in on investigators. He knew their names; he knew their leads. He would call both the bank manager’s cell phone and the police, posing as an anonymous informant who had been involved in the heist and was swindled out of his share. It was the contractors, he’d say. Or the Brinks guy. Or the maintenance people. His tips were especially convincing because he had a piece of inside information: One of the bank’s ATMs was left untouched. Blanchard had done that on purpose to make it easier to sow confusion.”
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Winnipeg police officers Larry Levasseur (left) and Mitch McCormick, who pursued Blanchard. Photo by John Midgley for Wired.
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