Who is Rami’s friend Michel in The Helicopter Heist?
MICHEL is the mastermind behind the titular crime in the nailbiting Netflix drama The Helicopter Heist.
He is based on Charbel Charro, the man who organised the Västberga helicopter robbery in 2009.
Charro’s elaborate scheme
Charro was born to two Syrian immigrants to Sweden and grew up to become a PE teacher in Stockholm.
However, Charro eventually began to become involved with crime and regularly appeared on the list of Stockholm’s most prolific criminals.
In 2009, the criminal mastermind began plotting his biggest scheme yet.
He planned to conduct a multi-million-dollar heist for which he would need an experienced thief.
Charro wanted to break into a G4S cash service building in southern Stockholm, which was under constant surveillance and had exceptionally tough security measures.
Unable to rob the cash depot himself, he decided to build a team to help him carry out the job.
Charro approached Shirwan Safa Kadhum for the job, a man who had been jailed for two years after he stole one Rembrandt and two Renoir paintings from the Swedish National Museum.
He also recruited Goran Bojovic to manage his plan and Mikael Södergran to develop explosives for the robbery.
Alexander Erikkson had been hired to pilot the group to the cash depot in a helicopter.
The plan was executed on September 23, 2009, when the gang stole a Bell 206 helicopter and flew it to Västberga, Stockholm.
They used explosives to open security doors and fled with an amount of money worth £4 million today.
The police were prevented from pursuing them because the gang had placed decoy bombs at the police helicopter base, grounding all of their aircraft.
The authorities were also not able to pursue the thieves on the road because the robbers had scattered caltrops across the roads.
Each of the conspirators were quickly captured though, after fleeing the country.
Kadhum was arrested by local law enforcement when he arrived in the Dominican Republic and Erikkson was arrested in the Canary Islands.
Charro’s surprising arrest
Charro was caught almost by mistake.
He was stopped by traffic police for a routine check when they found a receipt for five prepaid phones and SIM cards.
When they ran the phone numbers through their database, Charro was arrested and eventually handed a five year prison sentence.
The reciept was the only concrete piece of evidence tying him to the case, where DNA traces made it easier to link Kadhum and Södergran to the crime.
The Helicopter Heist
In The Helicopter Heist, the character Michel is based on Charro.
Michel is a close friend of Rami, a fictionalised version of Kadhum, though this was not the case with their real-life counterparts.
He is played by Ardalan Esmaili, an Iranian actor who moved to Sweden when he was just two years old.
The Helicopter Heist is available to stream on Netflix from November 22, 2024.