York and Peel Police have upped the reward to $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of 'The Vaulter' - the man who they call Canada's most notorious bank robber.
Canada's most notorious bank robber, known as the Vaulter, might have had a past life, as someone known in the United States as the Reebok Bandit.
For more than five years, a grey-haired man had robbed Canadian banks with impunity, without hiding his face – even saying, "Have a nice Mother's Day" to employees as he left one crime scene last May.
Police called him the Vaulter and said Tuesday they believed they had caught him as he travelled in Switzerland.
The suspect was identified as Jeffrey James Shuman, a 53-year-old French-American dual national living in France. Police allege he is responsible for 21 solo bank heists, from Calgary to Ottawa.
Officials didn't provide more details about the suspect, but 20 years ago, a Miami man with a similar name and age pleaded guilty to 14 bank robberies, according to court records and media accounts at the time. Those robberies took place in Florida and Tennessee in the early 1990s.
The man in the U.S. heists was known to the FBI as the Reebok Bandit because he wore white Reebok tennis shoes during the robberies. He operated alone and used a handgun.
Miami FBI agents arrested the Reebok Bandit in 1993 as he was returning a rental car.
In the Vaulter case, Mr. Shuman was at the wheel of a car when he was intercepted Tuesday afternoon in the Geneva area.
The operation was conducted by plainclothes members of the Brigade de répression du banditisme, a Swiss police squad that investigates armed robberies and extortion.
"This gentleman was arrested by our department yesterday in the Geneva area and his identity was quickly confirmed. We immediately informed the Canadian authorities of his arrest," a Swiss investigator said in a telephone interview.
The investigator, who asked that his name not be published, said the man was apprehended after a surveillance operation. "We knew who the suspect was," he said.
That was because Mr. Shuman was named on an outstanding warrant sought by York Regional Police, the lead agency in the investigation.
In May, police officers from Toronto, Peel Region and York Region held a joint news conference, seeking the public's help in identifying the Vaulter. During the summer, they would have identified the suspect and gathered enough evidence to persuade a judge to issue a warrant.
Mr. Shuman did not resist arrest and remains in custody while waiting for procedures to extradite him to Canada, said Jean-Philippe Brandt, a spokesman for the Geneva police.
Last May, the Canadian Bankers Association announced that it had increased to $100,000 the reward for tips leading to the capture of the Vaulter. "The bottom line is that if you commit a bank robbery in Canada, we will find you," said Malcolm Chivers, the CBA's director of corporate security.
The association will pay the reward only if there is a conviction and police determine that any of the leads they received played a key role in the arrest. The initial CBA reward for the Vaulter was $10,000 in 2010, but it was gradually increased over the years as he continued to strike.
The Vaulter started robbing banks in 2010, but he sometimes went months or even more than a year without signs of activity.
He was believed to be operating alone because he was seen with a police radio scanner, indicating that he did not have an accomplice to monitor the police airwaves. He was also seen entering his getaway car on the driver's side.
In their efforts to track him, investigators identified more than 100 people of interest, and tried geographic profiling and face-recognition software.
His series of heists started in the Markham area in February, 2010, when on consecutive days he struck a Royal Bank branch, then a TD Canada Trust outlet. He robbed 12 banks in York Region – including Markham, Vaughan and Richmond Hill – but also banks in Toronto, Calgary, Hamilton, Ottawa and Mississauga.
Each time, he struck in the morning and did not bother hiding his face. Initially, he would leap over the counter to grab money from the teller. Eventually, he adopted a takeover style, confronting employees at gunpoint and locking them in a vault.
On one occasion, a female TD Canada Trust employee kicked him in the groin, forcing him to flee empty-handed.
Earlier this spring, he dressed up as a construction worker and showed up at a TD Canada Trust branch in Mississauga, waiting for employees to open up before threatening them with a handgun.
Tu Thanh Ha