They put up mauve wallpaper. "But I had to know.". Many of the lesser players in the conspiracy have been the most effective in paying their debts. They set the date, Oct. 4, a Saturday when David knew he could be alone in the building after his shift. ', "He asked me if I'd mind holding some money for him. According to Butcher, Campbells last official payment came in June 2021 when the government appears to have seized a tax refund of $81.24. If you want to go ahead and go, I got it. Kelly had resisted this suggestion before the heist: She and David were friends. In real life: True. They cursed. Almost 19 years after Ghantt and a group of friends from Gaston County pulled off one of the largest cash heists in U.S. history, the movie "Masterminds" will play up the caper for laughs. At one point, the hoodlum shows up and Ghantt is wearing a Jerome Bettis Pittsburgh Steelers jersey; the hoodlums favorite team is the Steelers, and he caves and tells Ghantt that McKinney wants him dead. Thats where they feel comfortable., This piece of information would become critical to his getaway plan. Ghantt, meanwhile, was losing his patience and starting to make threats. Then another. His wife, Tammy, was as shocked as Loomis officials. They picked me, he says with a rueful tone. "I was dumb," Ghantt said Wednesday, the eve before the movie hits screens nationwide. Campbell left her job in the summer of 1997, but she would later use Ghantt's feelings for her to her own advantage to get him to agree to carry out the multi-million-dollar heist. Now two NC men face prison. Question: You were a consultant? (John D. Simmons/The Charlotte Observer via AP) The Associated Press, BY MICHAEL GORDON, The Charlotte Observer. Down in Jacksonville, a Loomis Fargo employee took $18 million from an armored van he was driving. There had been no signs. Why fans love it. Michelle, meanwhile, purchased new breasts for herself, along with a $43,000 diamond ring and a new convertible BMW Z3. Scott Grant and Steve pulled up next to her in a Mazda. Michele tells me you're in a financial bind. I knew it was just a matter of time. She will never get beyond the debt. Steve had already paid McKinney $50,000 for the use of his ID. It's one of the biggest jokes at the place. Ghantt was the vault manager and was surrounded. "He was speechless," said Sandra Floyd. Its hilarious. Heres your money. Then he turns around and leaves., The problem was, it was nowhere near the amount Ghantt had expected: Im looking at it, and theres maybe $8,000. Ghantt was never in Chamberss presence until he actually handed off the money to him. And though she had been made night shift supervisor at Allied Security, she still felt she would never make the money she needed. I didn't think I had the guts. I missed my wife. In Florida, a Loomis Fargo employee had pulled a gun on his coworkers and gotten away with $18 million, a move that FBI agents theorize Ghantt, Campbell and other employees all sat around talking about - and what they would do with that amount of money - for a while. In real life: False. . Despite a mega-watt cast featuring Zach Galifianakis and a handful of some of Saturday Night Lives biggest current and former stars, Masterminds, the comedy about Loomis Fargo robbery completely tanked at the box office in its opening weekend, bowing in sixth place with just $6.6 million. He frequently entertained there, buying steaks for his guests. The van door opened. But it didnt really hit me until later., On March 2nd, when the FBI agents walked up to Ghantt in Playa del Carmen and told him he was under arrest, Ghantt was relieved. Going south, nobody really looks at what youre shipping. The only person not to plead guilty in the case, former Gastonia attorney Jeff Guller, ended up doing eight years for money laundering. Why do we feel its so necessary to treat people like this, to say, OK, well just ruin the rest of your life because you made a bad decision., Punishment should not last a lifetime. He and his wife, Tammy, lived in a mobile home in Kings Mountain, N.C. Money was always tight. But after a year, they'll cut it down to two agents. I've got a good woman.". Purchases included a pool table, jewelry (including a $43,000 diamond ring), a minivan, $20,000 worth of cigars, and the 7,000-square-foot home on the side of Cramer Mountain. ", "I wouldn't do it. Three weeks after the theft, Steve and Michele moved from their Lincoln County mobile home to a $635,000 house in a gated Cramerton, N.C., neighborhood. . More than half of the amount came from the seizure of a luxury home purchased by husband-and-wife defendants during their post-heist spending spree. Or is the loot buried in somebody's yard? Getting restitution, its like pulling teeth.. Loomis Armored Shreveport, LA, 1124 Forum Dr, Shreveport, LA, USA Shreveport, LA, USA Req #1990. I'd probably change jobs. "Every time my conscience would start bothering me," Kelly recalled, "I'd smoke another joint and forget about it.". By the time the month concluded, the couple had purchased a 7,000-square-foot stone mansion in a gated country club community. Twelve hours later, at 6 that evening, Eric Payne drove a rented Budget van to his workplace, a graphics company on Performance Road in western Mecklenburg County called Reynolds & Reynolds, which was closed for the night and had a secluded parking lot where they intended to transfer the cash. Question: You went to Mexico. Steve, who had sworn Kelly, Eric and Scott to secrecy the night of the theft, named them all to the FBI. Punishment needs to be fair and realistic. Campbell, a mother of two, was in the process of divorcing her. They also purchased tanning beds, a pool table, a Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle and all kinds of expensive furniture. Twice a week over the next 12 months, we will take you back to the winter of sheep cloning and the summer of Con Air. David trusted her. Ghantt was scheduled to work a shift at the armored car company Oct. 4. He then began loading $17 million in unmarked bills inside a company van before driving away. In a word, "Teamwork. "I thought he was goofing around.". When he finished, the van was filled with $17 million. Exciting. They entered their dogs in fights and watched them die. In the first days after the arrests, agents recovered or accounted for all but about $2 million of the stolen money. Looking for Kelly Loomis? I don't blame him.". Campbell was another employee at Loomis Fargo and she and Ghantt quickly struck up a relationship, one that Campbell denies was ever romantic though FBI evidence says otherwise, and one that continued after she left the company. He learned to parachute. I had a four-hour layover there, and then from New Orleans to Cancun.. She tried to apologize for the murder plot. But first they wanted to know if it was a robbery or a robbery-homicide. If you go from a mobile home to a mansion, that's going to attract attention. Sweat soaked David's uniform. David kissed his sleeping wife on the cheek on the morning of Oct. 4. Given the presence of the surveillance tapes and a gun belonging to Ghantt, they started with Ghantts phone and pager records and discovered a pattern they attributed to an accomplice. In February 1998, the FBI tapped their phones and listened to Steve discuss depositing $2.5 million in the Cayman Islands. David quickly realized he was the intended victim. I knew that the news wouldnt break until later that morning. Visit us at Loomis.us. There was, however, one problem with his plan. Soon thereafter, he met Kelly Campbell, a co-worker at Loomis Fargo. Military + Veterans. This story was originally published October 3, 2016, 9:12 PM. One day, the two employees were in the break room and got to talking about the news of the day a massive bank heist that just occurred in Florida by someone at their company. Some received probation for money laundering, many others did hard time. LeVaughn Kelly Campbell (born July 23, 1980 in Atlanta, Georgia) is a former football wide receiver. I wanted to make a drastic change and I went for it," Ghantt said. She also assured the teller her cash wasn't drug money. Meanwhile, outside Reynolds & Reynolds, Steve, Scott and Eric needed to move 2,748 pounds of cash, quickly, from the Loomis van into the Budget van. The barrels were Steves idea, Ghantt says. Ghantt worked at Loomis Fargos regional office vault in Charlotte. shes now Miss USA. But you cant get blood from a stone, Johns said. Ive never taken offense to anything like that, he tells me. In mid-November, McKinney carried $10,000 to Cancun but wound up spending most of it on himself. Loomis Fargo Defendants Owe as Much as They Stole in 1997, FILE - Kelly Campbell, one of the 21 people convicted for their involvement in the $17 million Loomis Fargo heist, awaits sentencing for her part in the theft at her mobile home near Mount Holly, N.C. on Aug 16, 1999. I wanted to get as far away as I could. Ghantt: My cut was supposed to be about $5 million, but that's not what I ended up with. Kelly drove David to the airport. Then FBI agent Wydra watched Steve's wife, Michele, deposit about $8,000 at a Gaston County, N.C., bank. He told her he wanted more of "his" cash. That week, the FBI designated the theft its 142nd "major case," putting it on a list--begun in the 1970s--that includes such other infamous crimes as the World Trade Center bombing. Question: Should people go see this movie? Because lets be brutally honest: Theyre not wrong, okay? The last time he called me, he said, Hey Ghantt, I just saw a big Loomis Fargo truck. David was excited, jabbering about their future together. Agents began picking up signs that David definitely had help: The abandoned Loomis van with $3.3 million in small bills still inside, and phone records showing that somebody beeped him while he stole the money, using David's own cell phone. When he said, 'I'll give you $20,000 to hold a million,' I said, 'Sure.' Everybody seemed stunned. In hindsight, it doesnt surprise me a bit, Ghantt says, a bitter laugh catching in his throat. Truth was, David wanted more than help leaving, he wanted company. Chambers and Campbell were waiting for him in the Loomis Fargo parking lot, both in separate vehicles. "I've learned that I'm a fortunate man," he said. . They placed a bust of Caesar in the dining room. And youre like, Come on parachute. Steve Chambers and Kelly Campbell, who had been friends on and off since growing up together in the mid-1980s, were at a cookout, playing cards and drinking Budweiser at Steve's Lincoln County, N.C., mobile home, Kelly recalled. Kelly had no problem fanning the flames of their old flirtation. And to me, if it pisses them off, Im all for it.. Kelly drove her pickup to a lot across the street from the Loomis building, on Suttle Avenue in Charlotte. He drove to the edge of the Loomis compound, which was surrounded by a chain-link fence. And going to see the Mayan ruins. An officer rang the doorbell. In the two days after the robbery, agents interviewed more than 100 people, most connected with David. Kelly says she underestimated the value of her life before the heist. Steve told Scott to ignore the remaining stacks, which were mostly ones and fives. She declined to take a lie-detector test. David said he realized then, for the first time, he might not see the millions he thought he had coming to him. Two more defendants in the $17 million Loomis Fargo & Co. robbery last year have agreed to plead guilty, and a third person entered a formal plea in court. Ghantt was already married when he took part in the heist, to a woman named Tammy who author Diamant described as very nice. It is true, however, that she had no idea about the plot and that he fled to Mexico without telling her. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Its kind of like that. The Loomis case is another example where the amount of restitution ordered vs. what is actually paid are two dramatically different numbers. Ghantt:It started out as a mental exercise and somewhere between the mental exercise and the actual event, it became serious. It was the first Saturday in October. . David had grabbed $50,000 cash, but could figure out only how to carry $25,000 with him on the plane. ];David Scott Ghanntt [Misc.] Then Steve pushed Scott inside, and he began throwing plastic-wrapped bundles of tens, twenties, fifties and hundreds to Eric and Steve, who placed them in three blue 55-gallon barrels. Campbell and her husband had always been just scraping by, however in the weeks following the robbery, the two seemed to have more money than they've ever had. Too many questions remained: Where was the cash? If they could just sit on the money until then, he said, they'd be fine. On his second trip, Steve gave McKinney David's hotel address. Depression had led to smoking a lot of marijuana and taking Prozac, a combination she figures affected her judgment. There was in fact a basically similar conversation involving Chambers and Campbell that took place during a barbecue the Campbells were hosting. Her only brush with the law had been a DUI arrest. But what did that mean? Our success depends on our team members, and that's why it's important for us to offer an employee benefits program that is not only extremely comprehensive but also one of the best in the industry. As with many recent historic events, this one had been caught on videotape, a fact that a few dozen Charlotte FBI agents would learn in a hastily organized Sunday morning meeting. They bought a BMW roadster. Hes well thought-out. We spoke with the inside man, David Ghantt, to get the real story. A third tape he didn't know about kept recording. In the following months, Steve persisted, even floating the notion of placing phony hand grenades on a Loomis truck to scare away the drivers, Kelly said. On Oct. 5, the Loomis heist celebrates its 25th birthday. If you were one of the much-smaller-than-expected group of people who caught Masterminds at the theater this weekend, and are looking for a fact-check of the events depicted on screen, here are some of the highlights of our chat with Diamant. They didn't know it, but they were leaving $3.3 million behind. . The first weekday after the heist, Michele Chambers, co-conspirator Steve's wife, walked into a NationsBank branch with a briefcase containing $5,000. Thanksgiving and Christmas were difficult. Kelly's company. Ghantt ultimately agreed to the plan, largely, due to a mountain of credit-card debt and in hopes of changing his life for the better. But former Kings Mountain resident David Scott Ghantt can. Scott, 26, had a larceny conviction as a teenager, but he'd since cleaned up his act and now had a steady job, a daughter and a girlfriend. "We're not the type that questions everything people tell us," Floyd said. When I call Ghantt to discuss his involvement in the Loomis Fargo heist, he confesses that hes feeling a bit tired from a day of honest labor. Chambers did hire McKinney to kill Ghantt, but initially McKinney was making personal cash deliveries to Ghantt in Mexico on behalf of Chambers. At the time of the real robbery, Chambers was facing criminal charges hed written 30K worth of bad checks and was facing jail time for it. CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) _ A woman who helped plan the $17 million robbery of armored car company Loomis, Fargo & Co. was sentenced Tuesday to nearly six years in prison and ordered to pay back more than $4 million. He grabbed the tapes from two VCRs that connected to 16 security cameras. Clerk of Court Frank Johns of Charlotte. The Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery was the $17.3 million cash robbery of the Charlotte, North Carolina, regional office vault of Loomis Fargo & Company on the evening of October 4, 1997, by armored car driver and vault supervisor David Scott Ghantt. The agents tapped the phone, and it didnt take long to locate Ghantt after that. He says the Loomis case shows how the criminal justice system and the courts treat lower-income people differently. ". Question: What made you, Chambers and the others think you could get away with this? Ghantt ended up doing more than five years in prison, Chambers did more than 11 years. They paid for all of it in cash. Dependent care account. Theres less security. Ghantt fled to Mexico. There are multiples of thousands of these things coming every year. As you probably know, it's loosely based on the Loomis Fargo heist in Charlotte back in the late nineties. Kelly called David at Loomis; he told her he'd be ready for them with the cash at 6:30 or 7 p.m. Alone in the building, David was trying to finish loading cash from the vault into an unmarked white Ford Econoline van belonging to Loomis. His collection case closes in two years. Before long, the FBI had wiretaps on the ringleader, Steve Chambers, and then they waited for the right time to make their arrests. . David, the international fugitive, lived it up, too--for a while. (John D. Simmons/The Charlotte Observer via AP), Police: Officer Who Shot Black Man Retired 'In Bad Standing', 3 Kansas City Officers Who Were Shot Released From Hospital, 1 Killed When Business Jet Encounters Severe Turbulence. She never really worried about the moral end of it--she was focused only on getting what she wanted out of life, what so many others seemed to have in this booming part of the South. The robbery was committed by Loomis vault supervisor David Scott Ghantt, his married girlfriend Kelly Campbell (a former Loomis co-worker), Steven Eugene Chambers (a one-time FBI informant), his wife Michelle Chambers, Michael Gobbies, and four other co-conspirators. In real life: False. ". On Feb. 27, agents listened in on a call from David to Kelly and learned David's location in Mexico. Now worried about both the FBI and McKinney, he spent even more time alone in his room. At 6 that morning, FBI supervisor Rick Shaffer led 12 agents and several Gaston County police officers up a winding road on Cramer Mountain to Steve's home. One of them tapped him on the back. Instead of lobster, the man who stole $17 million survived on home-cooked pasta and grilled cheese sandwiches. Each week, Michele deposited thousands of dollars in cash. There were times when I drank really heavily.". Kelly, she says now, was thinking about how happy she would be to send this man far away from her. I studied up on the FBI. Just head on out. And so, he did. It will be some time before she can commune with domestic animals again. One night in a small North Carolina town, a down-on-his-luck guard at Loomis Fargo manages to steal $17 millionliterally more than one ton of cash. He covers culture, politics, race, and other perplexing mysteries for MEL. But few could have guessed how spectacularly the heist would go wrong after the criminals initially got away with it. The best states in the U.S. come from coast to coast. Back then, it was one of the hotspots for hiding money. Ghantt planned to live off the interest for the rest of his life. Michelle Chambers paid off only $27,000. "I said, 'I don't want him killed.' He went deep-sea fishing. Some of that money is just gone. [Kelly] told me, 'Just think about it.' Twenty people were convicted of roles big and small in the massive 1997 armored-car warehouse heist in west Charlotte. When he walked onto the plane, he was wearing big, tall cowboy boots, where hed stuffed a majority of the smuggled cash. Scott Grant and Steve pulled up next to her in a Mazda. A version of this story originally appeared on CharlotteObserver.com. I was looking at small sailboats and theyre not cheap, he tells me. . Even still, he was 27, married and struggling to provide for his family. When McKinney arrived in North Carolina, the plan had changed. Twenty-five years ago, a small group of rural North Carolinian amateur bank robbers pulled off the second-largest heist in American history. He had a favorite restaurant, Zandunga, which had a mariachi band each night and a view of the Caribbean. Kelly, using David's cell phone, kept beeping him. That day, FBI agents also would arrest Scott Grant and Eric Payne, who had spent his share of the money on a motorcycle and breast implants for his wife and two sisters. That was the most painful truth to come to. But I thought this is me being hard-headed Im going to ride this thing to the ground. And so thats what I did.. A week later, another informant told the FBI that Eric Payne had quit his job at a printing company soon after the heist and was spending money he probably hadn't earned legally. . On Oct. 7, 1997, two FBI agents arrived at Kelly Campbell's home after two Loomis employees had told agents she and David had once dated. Eric Payne got out of prison in 2006 for his role in the heist and has since paid $11,357 on his $292,000 debt. They hatched the idea half-jokingly, over a game of Uno, never dreaming they were about to make Bonnie and Clyde look like bottom feeders. Kelly would only discover later that leading up to the heist, Steve had been writing bad checks, $17,000 worth, for which he would later be convicted. I can take it.". Ghantt pulled out $50,000 from the back of the unmarked Loomis Fargo van. And after two years, you're just a file." By March, Steve Chambers decided he needed to do something more drastic about Ghantt, making plans to send a hitman to Mexico to silence him for good. He kept looking over his shoulder. Kelly told the FBI she had done drugs with David but denied knowing about the theft. Scott Grant said he hesitated, but agreed if no guns would be involved. At the sight of all that money, Scott and Eric had the same thought: They'd made the worst mistake of their lives. Once I start something, Im going to the end., As for how he felt in the moment, he says, Imagine me and you went on an airplane. Things were spiraling fast. Back in North Carolina, Ghantts former accomplices were living high on the hog. The platform is designed to engage citizens and government leaders in a discussion about what needs improvement across the country. She just called me up on the phone and said, Hey, lets meet one day after work. And then, we were talking and she says, How do you feel about robbing Loomis Fargo? Ghantt tells me. He gave the rest to Kelly. As he and Kelly met in a field behind a shooting range to refine the plan, she allowed him to believe she was falling for him. What concerned her was the chance of getting caught. "But, I hate to admit it, it doesn't faze me one bit. Yes, Carrie Underwood adopted a dog in Charlotte. He told Steve he hadn't been able to find David. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. and "I'm rich!". The plan to rob Loomis Fargo was spawned by Campbell and her friend Steve Chambers, during a casual bonfire at Chambers' home. Zach always plays that bumbling kind of lunatic, but hes not, Ghantt says. All rights reserved. But it was the rural, Southern backgrounds of many of the key players, along with the many botched twists and bungled turns, that led the media to dub it the hillbilly heist.. "Steve said, 'I think we ought to do it that night, when he drops off the van,' " Kelly recalled. So it was weird when during the middle of the week, there were these very clean-cut, very Midwestern looking, obviously American guys in the town. My love for my family is by far the most important thing in my life. As soon as you put that first bag of stolen money in that van, theres no going back. And that's OK with Ghantt, who's just a few weeks shy of his 47th birthday, out of federal prison for more than a decade, married with a 9-year-old daughter . Without really intending to, Kelly recalls, she turned the conversation to the possibility of a heist. It changes you. And I think that makes it all the more funny, because it really offends my co-defendants. He'd even bragged that he'd killed people. We need to set up some way for me to get my money. She said, We got it all worked out. How Bridgerton restarted buzz about her ancestry. Not many people can say they stole $17 million from their employer and had Zach Galifianakis play them in a movie. Ghantt would go on to spend six and a half years in federal prison. Did you get paid? Were others involved? Scary. Burks was also ordered to serve 15 years in prison, limiting his ability to balance his books. Ghantt went on to explain that he rarely even looks at his debt statement to the government, but believes the IRS says he still owes them $3.8 million. We spoke to the FBI agents who investigated the case who say the real-life. Kelly drove her pickup to a lot across the street from the Loomis building, on Suttle Avenue in Charlotte. Guller was the attorney for Steven Chambers, who came up with the original idea for the Loomis theft. Him and I still talk every now and then. Soon thereafter, he met Kelly Campbell, a co-worker at Loomis Fargo. Steven Chambers [Misc. I told the lead investigator I was glad to see him.. We got to the end of the day, and he was acting like he wanted to linger. He was signed by the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent in 2002. . The Unexpectedly Sweet Story Behind Those Viral Semi-Truck Pregnancy Photos. "I wanted to be more like my mom and dad were.". Almost 19 years after Ghantt and a group of friends from Gaston County pulled off one of the largest cash heists in U.S. history, the movie "Masterminds" will play up the caper for laughs. Then he was driving in the darkness with a van full of cash. His name was Corey. Before long, the tales of high living by Chambers and his now former wife, Michelle, led the thieves to be labeled either the "Cramer Mountain Hillbillies" or "The gang that couldn't steal straight." But as he later recalled to the media, as soon as he stepped through those big-box doors, he realized he was flush with cash, and he didnt need to shop at Walmart ever again. On his way out, he grabbed the surveillance video, hoping to cover his tracks. Ghantt:We're both North Carolina boys so we had a lot to talk about from the very beginning. Working together, they got the gate open, then drove in a caravan to the Reynolds & Reynolds parking lot. Actor Owen Wilson plays him in the movie, which includes the real names of all the major players. Steve tried keys on a side door. But because David's relationship with his Loomis bosses had been rocky, he says, he doesn't feel sorry about what he did to the company. Hed be in contact. The next day, he was sitting next to FBI agent Mark Rozzi on a US Airways flight to Charlotte. Updated: 11:31 AM EDT October 4, 2022 CHARLOTTE, N.C. Tuesday is the 25th anniversary of the infamous Loomis Fargo heist in Charlotte, where a bank worker, with the help of two accomplices,. The FBI, in fact, obtained the evidence they needed to bring down the major players, including Chambers, after catching them talking about the murder plot on the telephone via wiretap. Jim Gronquist, Campbells defense attorney during the Loomis case, says the financial penalties levied against his client and her co-defendants are grossly excessive and unjust, particularly since most of the stolen Loomis money was actually recovered. Everything came crashing down on an early March morning in 1998. At the end of one session, they wound up kissing outside the pickup. Chambers never held Campbell hostage by locking her in a shed on his property. They loaded the wine cellar with Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Steve hung a velvet portrait of Elvis Presley in the basement. I did every touristy thing you could possibly do while I was down there.
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