Ghantt knew Chambers as Steve, but didnt find out that his last name was Chambers until the arrests were made. David was sentenced to 7 1/2 years. It was the first Saturday in October. . And it turned Steve into he thought he was Don Corleone all of a sudden.. Getting restitution, its like pulling teeth.. Federal prosecutors would ultimately charge 21 defendants in the case, including the Floyds, who were charged with (and pleaded guilty to) money laundering. Meanwhile, Steve was keeping a close eye on Kelly. But few could have guessed how spectacularly the heist would go wrong after the criminals initially got away with it. The cash was covered with dog food. Mexican police, Interpol officers and an FBI agent were watching him. And to me, if it pisses them off, Im all for it.. Each week, Michele deposited thousands of dollars in cash. She was like, Well, at least you had guts, he says. Michele received the best gift of the night. I thought, Okay, if I get out of that bubble because the cops depend on that, even the feds my chances to get away go way up.. 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 and happy. Steve, who had sworn Kelly, Eric and Scott to secrecy the night of the theft, named them all to the FBI. "Think of how many women would have stood by. Or that hed gotten lucky gambling. I said, Probably, the best time would be on the weekend; theres fewer people there. Michele told her mother she and Steve had been saving gambling winnings for the down payment. ];David Scott Ghanntt [Misc.] Ghantt was apprehended in Mexico and returned to the United States in custody. To celebrate Halloween, about seven of Steve's friends, including Eric Payne and Kelly, gathered for a party at Steve's house. Then another. Chambers, who still lives in Gaston County and operates a gym, declined to comment. At the party, Steve invited Michele's stepfather, truck driver Dennis Floyd, to the basement to play pool. "I thought he was goofing around.". I did a little research into crime statistics and the local cops. And robbing a truck was dangerous. 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. Campbell, a mother of two, was in the process of divorcing her. That's the kind of movie they wanted to make. She'd heard his stories of other successful schemes, like getting refunds on phony tax returns, or operating a loan shark business. Before long, the FBI had wiretaps on the ringleader, Steve Chambers, and then they waited for the right time to make their arrests. "We had David Ghantt and Kelly Campbell tied together, and we had Steven Chambers and Eric Payne with unexplained wealth, but we didn't have a tie between them," Agent John Wydra said. Youre supposed to get less time for cooperating, a lesser penalty, and instead, you see what she got hit with. Gronquist said. 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. Steve bought a truck, a Rolex and a motorboat. The audacity of the act was breathtaking. Ghantt:We're both North Carolina boys so we had a lot to talk about from the very beginning. 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. Hes well thought-out. 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. Gaston County residents remember how that worked out. He kept looking over his shoulder. But Ghantt, who served as an unpaid consultant to the movie and attended the big Los Angeles premiere earlier in the week, has no such reservations. "I missed my family. In hindsight, it doesnt surprise me a bit, Ghantt says, a bitter laugh catching in his throat. These (Loomis) guys, not so much.. Throughout the multi-year-long case and subsequent trials, journalists often referred to Ghantt and the others as trailer trash and hillbillies. "I've moved on with my life," he said Tuesday. 27 febrero, 2023 . They picked me, he says with a rueful tone. . In real life: False. Her only brush with the law had been a DUI arrest. Soon thereafter, he met Kelly Campbell, a co-worker at Loomis Fargo. Question: You were a consultant? "I wanted to be more like my mom and dad were.". Question: You went to Mexico. This time, David told McKinney the truth. Ghantt would go on to spend six and a half years in federal prison. It was late in 1996. When he walked onto the plane, he was wearing big, tall cowboy boots, where hed stuffed a majority of the smuggled cash. The Columbia airport had no available flights. And then I could hear her laughing. ". 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. You cannot fine low-income people millions of dollars. She laughed for like 45 minutes. Meanwhile, back in North Carolina, Ghantts wife woke up to find her husband missing. In real life: False. He had a favorite restaurant, Zandunga, which had a mariachi band each night and a view of the Caribbean. Truth was, David wanted more than help leaving, he wanted company. Question: Any contact with Steve Chambers or any of the others involved with the heist? In mid-November, McKinney carried $10,000 to Cancun but wound up spending most of it on himself. David trusted her. Called Masterminds, the 2016 film stars Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig and Owen Wilson. Fourteen defendants were ordered to make restitution payments to Loomis Fargo totaling almost $19 million. I wanted to make a drastic change and I went for it," Ghantt said. kellis@gastongazette.com 0:04 0:57 On Oct. 4, 1997, former Kings Mountain resident David Scott Ghantt finished his shift as a vault supervisor for Loomis Fargo in Charlotte. I hit the local library the thing that we used to do before Google, Ghantt says with a small laugh. 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. Things were spiraling fast. I just had to call you., Today, Ghantt cant look back on the whole ordeal without some degree of pride. Then he was driving in the darkness with a van full of cash. A few of the Loomis restitution cases have already been closed either because the amount was paid in full or because the 20-year clock wound down. When he finished, the van was filled with $17 million. "I said, 'That's all they gave me,' " McKinney recalled. They tried to break the van's bulletproof windows. Military + Veterans. Not until David was gone did Scott realize he didn't know which key to use. 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. Now he offered to pay him to carry cash to David--Steve said he was a friend hiding out after a bad drug deal, McKinney recalled. He longed for the middle-class lifestyle of his childhood, with its private religious-school education and Disney World vacations. On Monday, October 6th, the FBI agents who were investigating the robbery located the Loomis Fargo van abandoned in the woods. In real life: True. Loomis employees drive the very core of our business. Some family members hid money in bank deposit boxes, other friends were asked to mule cash to the Cayman Islands. He played high school football at Mays High School in Atlanta, and college football at Georgia Tech . Although David was in on most of the planning, one discussion between Steve and Kelly was kept a secret. 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. On Feb. 27, agents listened in on a call from David to Kelly and learned David's location in Mexico. His collection case closes in two years. "As soon as you start, you realize there's no going back," David recalled. She asked about the limit for a cash deposit before "paperwork" was required. Reach our Customer Contact Center by calling 877.877.0560 from 6:30 AM to 11:30 PM CT every day or by completing the provided form. They didn't know it, but they were leaving $3.3 million behind. She was devastated, Diamant said. 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. Ghantt, meanwhile, was losing his patience and starting to make threats. The only person not to plead guilty in the case, former Gastonia attorney Jeff Guller, ended up doing eight years for money laundering. As it turned out, Ghantt was zipping up his scuba suit in Mexico. Paying the money back has taken a lot longer, and time is running out for the U.S. government to collect. Criminals dont usually get high-paying jobs after leaving prison. Why had he ever believed he'd get it? When October 1997 began, Steve and Michelle Chambers lived in a double-wide trailer. "You" has three. They entered their dogs in fights and watched them die. This meant a bump in pay, up to $8.15 an hour. He flew in an ultra-light plane. Sandra Floyd, Michele Chambers's mother, remembers the first time she saw the house. Explain? . You see, there's a reason Loomis Fargo used armored cars to move large amounts of cash. She also must . 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. Ghantt, his former co-worker Kelly Campbell and her friends Steve and Michelle Chambers carried out the Loomis Fargo heist on Oct. 4, 1997. and "I'm rich!". The government does not run debtors prisons, says U.S. The bash had a Cinderella theme, with a three-tiered cake that looked like a castle. The phone rang: Kelly had a problem. If you want to go ahead and go, I got it. "A lot of people out there had it worse than me, but . . 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,. . He couldn't even bear to stick around for the final tally--though when he left he didn't forget to take $6,000, the first cut of his expected $100,000 share. Kelly drove her pickup to a lot across the street from the Loomis building, on Suttle Avenue in Charlotte. Charlotte Magazine even ran a feature story about the Loomis Fargo heist with the title, White Trash Crime. The headlines, however, never bothered Ghantt. He told her he wanted more of "his" cash. Twenty people were convicted of roles big and small in the massive 1997 armored-car warehouse heist in west Charlotte. But you cant get blood from a stone, Johns said. His wife, Tammy, was as shocked as Loomis officials. Even still, he was 27, married and struggling to provide for his family. It's about the 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery also known as the "hillbillly heist" the second largest cash robbery in the history of the United States. Michelle, meanwhile, purchased new breasts for herself, along with a $43,000 diamond ring and a new convertible BMW Z3. Exciting. I missed my wife. Exhibit A was that Steve had no steady job but plenty of cash. That October, the Chamberses' bank accounts ballooned. He told Steve he hadn't been able to find David. There was, however, one problem with his plan. The name she gave the pup is apropos. "We kept going, '1-4-3, 1-4-3,' " recalled Vic O'Korn, assistant special agent in charge of Charlotte's FBI office. . . It's one of the biggest jokes at the place. Going south, nobody really looks at what youre shipping. "He was in tears. I can take it.". Anybody who gets caught up in the system is getting chewed up by it, the now-retired Gronquist told the Observer. Kelly was lying. Then another. Ghantt says he operates a bulldozer for a small company. Should David be killed after he gave them the money? The plan to rob Loomis Fargo was spawned by Campbell and her friend Steve Chambers, during a casual bonfire at Chambers' home. "Things I always wanted to do, but never had the time or the money," he said. I told the lead investigator I was glad to see him.. He hadnt checked ahead of time if the airport had any available flights, let alone if it would even be open. But after a year, they'll cut it down to two agents. He grabbed the tapes from two VCRs that connected to 16 security cameras. Without really intending to, Kelly recalls, she turned the conversation to the possibility of a heist. Husband and wife Steven and Michelle Chambers, whose conspicuous consumption of a luxury home, a BMW convertible, breast implants and a $600 wooden Indian, among other purchases, helped the FBI solve the crime, were assessed $3.81 million and $4.8 million, respectively. David was living under the name Mike McKinney on a phony ID. . It changes you. He gave the rest to Kelly. "I was dumb," Ghantt said Wednesday, the eve before the movie hits screens nationwide. 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. The biggest restitution numbers for victims of financial crimes generally involve Ponzi schemes or sweepstakes fraud, not cash thefts. Just head on out. And so, he did. Though David had said earlier he thought there was $15 million in the vault, the sight of that much cash held them spellbound. 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. Ghantt didn't actually meet Chambers until the night of the heist, though, according to Diamant, who would go on to write a book about it.The . I told them, Take it, box it up, and youll be able to ship it to me in Mexico. Back in the 1990s, you couldve probably boxed up a hot pink elephant and shipped it to Mexico; no one wouldve ever noticed. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Some amateur thieves might turn to movies and TV shows for lessons on criminal behavior. Besides her prison sentence . Its a yes: Clover teen shakes off nerves to earn American Idol golden ticket, Mail carrier cant believe his eyes after seeing NC lottery win. There are multiples of thousands of these things coming every year. Or that it was an inheritance. Kelly says she underestimated the value of her life before the heist. If I hadn't done what I did the, the life I have now with my wife and child, I wouldn't have. They put up mauve wallpaper. Looking for Kelly Loomis? See all of the stories here. In real life: False. Kelly had resisted this suggestion before the heist: She and David were friends. Careers. The last time he called me, he said, Hey Ghantt, I just saw a big Loomis Fargo truck. shaka wear graphic tees is candy digital publicly traded ellen lawson wife of ted lawson real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist 25 Feb/23 (No Ratings Yet) Ghantt was scheduled to work a shift at the armored car company Oct. 4. Ghantt was in fact hiding out in Mexico using McKinneys I.D., which had been sold to Chambers months earlier. More agents waited outside to arrest them. That time in prison was actually good for me. Clerk of Court Frank Johns of Charlotte. Her case closes in 2025. The pager entry was 1-4-3. Its kind of like that. At the sight of all that money, Scott and Eric had the same thought: They'd made the worst mistake of their lives. Down in Jacksonville, a Loomis Fargo employee took $18 million from an armored van he was driving. Truth be told, Ghantt had something of a crush on Campbell, and so, he told her exactly how hed pull off such a heist. I hope everyone has moved on. Now, I kind of know something is fishy., Alone in Mexico with limited cash, Ghantt thought about turning himself in. As with Kelly, the worst blotch on 29-year-old Eric's record until now was a driving-while-intoxicated conviction. He couldn't talk.". Meanwhile, Michele Chambers was laughing and saying, repeatedly, "Look at all this money!" . Soon, the couple would be paying for something else, too: a hitman. "I" has one letter. 2500 City West Blvd., Suite 2300 Houston, TX 77042. In early December, Steve and Michele invited relatives to their daughter's sixth birthday party. 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. Question: What made you, Chambers and the others think you could get away with this? Because lets be brutally honest: Theyre not wrong, okay? But what did that mean? He was signed by the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent in 2002. Few who were living in the area at the time can forget the "Velvet Elvis" painting Chambers had hanging in his mansion or the tales of cosmetic surgery, BMW convertibles and other signs of excess. I've got a good woman.". Basically, he needed a score to make his problems go away. He partied, met women, drank, skied and hung out at the beach. I didn't think I had the guts. So Im like, Can you get a move on with my money? After a couple of weeks passed, I get a phone call from Kelly: Okay, Brunos coming to you, blah, blah, blah. So I get a phone call from this guy, and I tell him where to meet me. Except the person he offered $150,000 to mule $2.5 million down to Ghantt in Mexico turned him down and instead went to the FBI. He and co-worker Kelly Campbell, 27, had developed a close relationship and were spending time together outside of work. 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. No dry runs, no rehearsals. You might as well take it all, Ghantt tells me. 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. He would pay McKinney $250,000, half upfront. He recalled that another agent, Phil King, said, "Hey, there was an article in the [Charlotte] Observer about beeper codes. No hard feelings. 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. An Ohio police officer who shot and killed a Black man as he lay in bed in his home last summer is no longer on the force, Three Kansas City police officers who were shot while serving a search warrant have been released from the hospital, Officials say one passenger died when a business jet experienced severe turbulence, forcing a landing at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut. About 200 keys dangled from it. Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. He covers culture, politics, race, and other perplexing mysteries for MEL. ". Posted on . On his way out, he grabbed the surveillance video, hoping to cover his tracks. 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. And when everybody else voted to kill me, she voted with them, he explains. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. Ghantt:It baffles me to this day. Basic and voluntary life insurance plan. David had grabbed $50,000 cash, but could figure out only how to carry $25,000 with him on the plane. It affects everybody different. He rewarded Robert with $3,000 and vowed never to meet McKinney alone. Steve told me to tell [David] whatever was necessary to keep him happy.". What that says is, We will never forgive you for what youve done.. As soon as you put that first bag of stolen money in that van, theres no going back. 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. Chambers went from a mobile home in Lincoln County to a mansion in Cramerton. That was great. I was looking at small sailboats and theyre not cheap, he tells me. His new life in Mexico had begun. Dental plans . My love for my family is by far the most important thing in my life. On Nov. 12, a confidential informant told the FBI about Steve Chambers's move from mobile home to mansion. 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. Our Benefits. The plan called for David to leave the vault door ajar, then maneuver a few minutes alone at the end of his shift, long enough to loot the cash, then pass it to Kelly and Steve.