They called the police, who brought in the FBI, classifying the heist as a bank robbery. Campbell left her job in the summer of 1997, but she would later use Ghantts feelings for her to her own advantage to get him to agree to carry out the multi-million-dollar heist. Hes well thought-out. Charlotte Agenda is now Axios Charlotte -. Dozens of FBI agents everywhere. As for his new wife, when the two just started dating, he was nervous about letting her know about his past, but he wanted to be honest. Im a very deliberate person. Chambers had no intention of following those rules, believing the FBI would never connect him to Ghantt. 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. Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more! And I think that makes it all the more funny, because it really offends my co-defendants. 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. Until, that is, he decided to hell with it he was going to pull-off the second largest heist in U.S. history. David Ghantt had been a model employee for an armored car company before pulling off the second biggest cash heist in U.S. history, fleeing with more than $17 million in untraceable bills in 1997. Although the history of the predecessor Wells Fargo & Company dates back to 1852, Loomis Fargo & Company was established in 1997 by the consolidation of Wells Fargo Armored Service and Loomis Armored Inc.; the resulting corporation employed 8,500 people and provided armored transportation, cash handling services, and automatic teller machine maintenance. The whole town I was staying in was 98.9 percent Mexican, except for when the cruise ships were in, Ghantt recalls. WebWas Loomis Fargo heist real? $17.3 million in cash was robbed from the Charlotte, North Carolina, regional office vault of Loomis, Fargo & Co. on the evening of October 4, 1997. This was in the 1990s the Columbia Airport back then was closed at around 9:30, 10 oclock. Youre better at planning bank heists than David Ghantt. 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. All of the defendants except for one pleaded guilty and accepted their sentences. ];David Scott Ghanntt [Misc.] On his way out, he grabbed the surveillance video, hoping to cover his tracks. Nine other relatives and friends were also charged with money laundering, as they had co-signed for safe deposit boxes used to store some of the money; prosecutors opted to charge them on the grounds that they should have known the money was obtained illegally. Ghantt sent home a new employee and quickly loaded the money into the back of a bank van. Meanwhile, back in North Carolina, Ghantts wife woke up to find her husband missing. That was great. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. And drastic it was. The conversations werent made up of much more than daydreams that took the vague shape of plansuntilCampbell mentioned that she had a high school friend with connections that could actually get it done. He comes to my door, and hes got a brown paper bag in his hand. The leader was Allen Pace, who turned out to be the worst safety inspector the Dunbar Armored trucking company ever employed. Of course, I went on a spending spree. Chambers and his wife also made some cash payments on a few cars. The Loomis case is another example where the amount of restitution ordered vs. what is actually paid are two dramatically different numbers. Back then, it was one of the hotspots for hiding money. Ghantt planned to live off the interest for the rest of his life. Ghantt was joking in the breakroom with fellow Loomis Fargo employee Kelly Campbell. Loomis Fargo employee David Ghantt and his partners nearly pulled off the perfect crime, but it would be their lavish spending, and an alleged murder plot, that would be their undoing. The plan was to split the money three ways: Chambers, Campbell and Ghantt would each walk away with what Ghantt estimated to be $5 million a piece the kind of money that changes lives forever. It was an open-and-shut case and all authorities had to do now was to find the culprit and identify Ghantts accomplices. When he was done, the man drove off to a nearby printing press, where the money was distributed into private vehicles amongst a handful of people. Eventually, Ghantt called in from Mexico, seeking more money, and the FBI officially recognized Chambers as a co-conspirator. David Ghantt attends the after party for the Premiere Of Relativity Media's "Masterminds" on September 26, 2016 in Hollywood, California. Charlotte Magazine even ran a feature story about the Loomis Fargo heist with the title, White Trash Crime. The headlines, however, never bothered Ghantt. WebWord trickled in to the FBI that Ghantt had a romantic interest in a former coworker, Kelly Campbell, who one day visited a Toyota dealership to purchase a minivan with twenty Get to me. Its that kind of excitement.. Sign up forOxygen Insiderfor all the best true crime content. Because lets be brutally honest: Theyre not wrong, okay? And thats OK with Ghantt, whos 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. On March 1, 1988, Mexican police arrested Ghantt at Playa del Carmen. By the time the month concluded, the couple had purchased a 7,000-square-foot stone mansion in a gated country club community. David Ghantt had been a model employee for an armored car company before pulling off Thomas Grant, who served three years in prison for bank larceny, paid off restitution of $70,000; brother Eric Grant paid all of his $26,000; as did David Craig, $40,000; and Dennis and Sandra Floyd; $27,000. Did you know that the SAT offers subject exams, too? Its in the ether. He was like OK, yeah, we can do that, she recalled. speedway of nations manchester 2021. rossignol skis experience 88 Officials suspected that the extravagant purchases stemmed from the fact that all involved got far more money than they anticipated and literally didnt know how to spend or get rid of it, which is perhaps backed up by the fact that Chambers wife once walked into a Belmont Wachovia with $200,000 in a briefcase wanting to know how much she could deposit without the bank reporting it to officials. Soon thereafter, he met Kelly Campbell, a co-worker at Loomis Fargo. Michelle Chambers received seven years and eight months, while Steve Chambers was handed an 11-year sentence. "Wells Fargo and Loomis forming armored car company", Learn how and when to remove this template message, painting of Elvis Presley on black velvet, "FindACase | United States of America v. Steven Eugene Chambers", "The Unperfect Crime | New Dominion Pictures", "Sunday Evening/Late Night September 9, 2001", "Loomis Fargo heist: Q&A with guy who stole $17 million", "MASTERMINDS - Movie Production NotesCinemaReview.com", Ghantt and other gang members arrested in March 1998, Steven Chambers released from prison; announces he is a "retired criminal", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=October_1997_Loomis_Fargo_robbery&oldid=1132065054, Articles with dead external links from February 2020, Articles needing additional references from October 2019, All articles needing additional references, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles needing additional references from February 2020, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2020, Articles with dead external links from July 2022, Articles with permanently dead external links, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Overcoming the mindset that led to the part David Ghantt played in the Loomis robbery and how he started on a new path was the subject of the book, Within days of the robbery, the case was depicted on the television criminal reporting show, An expanded two-hour special episode of the crime documentary series. Most high schools offer a variety of history classes, so make sure youre taking the right ones for you. He didnt even really question me. Before he left, he went into his managers office and removed tapes from two of the security cameras. [1], This robbery was the second-largest cash robbery on U.S. soil at the time, as only seven months earlier, on March 29, 1997 in Jacksonville, Florida, Philip Noel Johnson stole $18.8 million from the Loomis Fargo armored vehicle he was driving.[2]. A couple weeks pass, and I call again, Hey, Id like to get some more money. Her sentence was delayed until Jan. 1 so she could spend the holidays with her family. Butcher says the federal courts in the Western District of North Carolina have never handled a case quite like Loomis. Jeffrey Guller, who at 81 is by far the oldest of the Loomis defendants, still owes almost $1.1 million on his original court debt of $1.14 million and will remain on the governments books for another four years. The next day, Steve and Michelle Chambers, Kelly Campbell, and four others were arrested.[6]. The next morning, Loomis Fargo employees were unable to open the vault. Get all your true crime news from Oxygen. And youre like, Come on parachute. Ultimately, though, the heist wasnt Ghantts idea, which meant he didnt decide who else was involved. He became the target of a nationwide FBI manhunt and was arrested five months later near the Mexican resort of Cozumel. Dont worry, its not drug money.. He had stayed in a luxury hotel and paid for expensive food and activities such as scuba diving and parasailing. Masterminds is a 2016 American comedy film based on the October 1997 Loomis Fargo Robbery in North Carolina. What that says is, We will never forgive you for what youve done.. That suspicion was immediately confirmed by a quick glance at the security camera footage that showed Ghantt doing a little dance after loading all the cash into the van. I felt cornered and one day the joking in the break room about robbing the place suddenly didnt seem so far-fetched.. He then proceeded to load about $17.3 million in cash (approximately $11 million of which was in $20 bills) into the back of a company van. 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.. From there, the money was moved from the company vehicle to private vehicles. 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.. Ghantt started at Loomis Fargo in 1994, and soon worked his way up from an armored car driver to a vault supervisor. His new life in Mexico had begun. And it turned Steve into he thought he was Don Corleone all of a sudden.. We were two paychecks away from being homeless at any given time.. He pocketed the money and told Chambers and Campbell to send him his cut in Mexico. They kept several furnishings from the previous owners, including a painting of Elvis Presley on black velvet. Also charged were several innocent relatives that the robbers had enlisted to help get safety deposit boxes in various banks. I had to go in there and tell her the whole story, and she was real cool about it. Who was the FBI agent in the movie Masterminds? cheap beachfront property for sale in italy. According to an Observer article, signs point to Campbells involvement stemming from the desire to experience what it was like to be rich. 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. We got this guy named Bruno. WebAydin Properties > Uncategorized > real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. Speaking of his co-defendants, Ghantt says hes not currently in contact with any of them. [1], Steven Chambers finished serving his sentence in November 2006. What purpose does that serve other than to denigrate that person into abject poverty?. Her case closes in 2025. In fact, David Ghantt was about to commit the heist of a lifetime. When neighbors asked where they got their money, Steve said hed played in the NFL. He was released in 2006. Join the 119,947 smart Charlotteans that receive our daily newsletter. When Ghantt called Chambers to have the latter wire him more money, Chambers sent just a few thousand dollars. Ghantt has never explained where that money went. We got to the end of the day, and he was acting like he wanted to linger. [7][8], Rocket Science, a 1998 double-disc album by Charlotte-based radio personalities John Boy & Billy, includes a track ("Marvin: The Loomis Caper") mocking the defendants. In spite of Chambers assurance that the money was, you know, totally not illegally acquired, the teller remained suspicious, especially because the stacks of cash still had Loomis Fargo wrappers on them. You cannot fine low-income people millions of dollars. (John D. Simmons/The Charlotte Observer via AP) The Associated Press, BY MICHAEL GORDON, The Charlotte Observer. They left behind the cash they couldnt fit in their cars. But it wasnt. That was pretty awesome., It felt like a dream vacation until he started running out of money. I didnt even have a real home life because I was never there. Ghantt simply got ready for work one morning knowing it would be his last day on the job. I started just chucking it as fast as I could, he said, adding the sweat was pouring off of me.. 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. Two days later, when the FBI found the Loomis Fargo armored van, they discovered almost $3.3 million in cash left in the back of the van; it was later discovered that the thieves had miscalculated the sheer bulk of the small denomination currency, and that they simply left the cash that they could not take with them in the back of the van. Because Ghantt was the only employee who wasnt there that morning, he became the obvious suspect. One day, Campbell was speaking to an old friend named Steve Chambers. He completed his prison sentence in November 2006. ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score, How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League, Is the ACT easier than the SAT? By then Id figured out that Bruno was up to no good, and that Id probably never seen any more of my money. This article will teach you more about the SAT subject testsasync src='https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js' and help you decide whether you should take them. I hit the local library the thing that we used to do before Google, Ghantt says with a small laugh. But after she left, she reached back out to Ghantt and brought up what theyd talked about that day in the break room. Or that hed gotten lucky gambling. On July 10, Jon Daly joined the cast of the film to play an FBI agent. This is where it starts to unravel, Ghantt tells me with a wry laugh. Within two days, the investigators found the van with $3 million in cash and the security camera tapes inside. Across the border in Mexico, Ghantt was also living it up. After his release, Ghantt took a job as a construction worker and was eventually brought on as a consultant for the 2016 movie Masterminds, based on the Loomis Fargo Heist. 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. If you want to go ahead and go, I got it. Webbird adoption adelaide real life kelly campbell loomis fargo. She laughed for like 45 minutes. At first, I just blended in with the tourists and picked up a few translation books, Ghantt explains. In total, 24 people were convicted and all but one of the But his partners soon began to get greedy and were spending large amountswith Chambers and his wife, Michelle, even buying an exclusive mansion in cash. Zaron Burnett is an investigative journalist and longform features writer based in Los Angeles. Galifianakis is game for anything, including eating a dead tarantula (who knew tarantulas were filled with caramel syrup? While making only eight dollars an hour in his role as supervisor, Ghantt decided it was time to do something: I was unhappy with my life. Its really just a matter of timing, more than anything. And she says, How much do you think wed get out of there? I said, Ten to 15 million. But I didnt really know.. Chambers got 11 years. 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