On the radio, the "John Boy and Billy" show played the song "Take the Money and Run. David said he realized then, for the first time, he might not see the millions he thought he had coming to him. 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. There was in fact a basically similar conversation involving Chambers and Campbell that took place during a barbecue the Campbells were hosting. Though he never found the right moment to carry out the hit, McKinney did find time to make a friend--a shady character named Robert, to whom he revealed more than was prudent. And so, he told her, Google my name. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist seeing a woodpecker after someone dies lectomano que significa. One number is working in Campbells favor. ", "I said, 'If you drive a truck, you're always in a financial bind. Now two NC men face prison. Michelle, meanwhile, purchased new breasts for herself, along with a $43,000 diamond ring and a new convertible BMW Z3. He goes, My name is Bruno. This is the person I counted as my friend. In real life: False. There used to be a consulate in Cancun. The pager entry was 1-4-3. But first they wanted to know if it was a robbery or a robbery-homicide. Kelly drove her pickup to a lot across the street from the Loomis building, on Suttle Avenue in Charlotte. The cash was covered with dog food. . The robbery of some $17 million quickly became one of the wildest bank heists of the last quarter century. It changes you. On March 1, David Ghantt left his hotel to do some laundry. Without really intending to, Kelly recalls, she turned the conversation to the possibility of a heist. The whole town I was staying in was 98.9 percent Mexican, except for when the cruise ships were in, Ghantt recalls. Steve told me to tell [David] whatever was necessary to keep him happy.". You can garnish wages. The number of people involved had ballooned after Steve started asking friends and family to help him launder the stolen cash. What concerned her was the chance of getting caught. There are multiples of thousands of these things coming every year. That was pretty awesome., It felt like a dream vacation until he started running out of money. "But I had to know.". Then he was driving in the darkness with a van full of cash. In real life: True. His new life in Mexico had begun. 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. They sweated, though the night was cool. He had just returned to his home in Jacksonville, Fla., when he agreed to talk about the heist, his life now and what went wrong when a group of friends who thought they could get away with stealing $17 million cash. And with Loomis, were looking at only one case. "We're not the type that questions everything people tell us," Floyd said. He figured Tammy wouldn't go for it, and though his marriage had been troubled, he wasn't certain he wanted to leave her. We got this guy named Bruno. Why had he ever believed he'd get it? He recalled that another agent, Phil King, said, "Hey, there was an article in the [Charlotte] Observer about beeper codes. 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'll never pay it off on my paycheck." Im on the phone with Kelly [Campbell], and Im like, Hey, I really was expecting a package to arrive. 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. Was Queen Charlotte Black? The last time he called me, he said, Hey Ghantt, I just saw a big Loomis Fargo truck. ". ". On Feb. 27, agents listened in on a call from David to Kelly and learned David's location in Mexico. As with Kelly, the worst blotch on 29-year-old Eric's record until now was a driving-while-intoxicated conviction. The FBI was also surveilling Kelly Campbell and followed her to a pay phone that she used to place calls to Mexico. Steve tried keys on a side door. At 7:45, David had finished loading. Hes well thought-out. They tried to break the van's bulletproof windows. It wouldn't work, Kelly told him. "We kept going, '1-4-3, 1-4-3,' " recalled Vic O'Korn, assistant special agent in charge of Charlotte's FBI office. Theres no way to get it back, Butcher told The Charlotte Observer. Guller was the attorney for Steven Chambers, who came up with the original idea for the Loomis theft. Loomis, Fargo offered a $500,000 reward for his arrest and conviction. About the same time, Kelly and McKinney received phone calls from agents who told them to open their doors. I studied up on the FBI. "Things I always wanted to do, but never had the time or the money," he said. ". No hard feelings. So yeah, Ghantt continues, I took a bus from there to Atlanta, and then I hopped a cab from the bus station to the airport in Atlanta., Back in North Carolina, his accomplices were working as fast as they could to hide the $17 million. Records show the government has garnished his Social Security checks. They loaded the wine cellar with Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Steve hung a velvet portrait of Elvis Presley in the basement. He grabbed the tapes from two VCRs that connected to 16 security cameras. Besides her prison sentence, Campbell must undergo mental health and drug treatment and spend two years in a supervised release program. When he said, 'I'll give you $20,000 to hold a million,' I said, 'Sure.' Sandra Floyd, Michele Chambers's mother, remembers the first time she saw the house. Ghantt was missing and no one, not even his wife, knew where he was. 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. He and his wife, Tammy, lived in a mobile home in Kings Mountain, N.C. Money was always tight. David, now 30, says he's sorry he abandoned his wife--who he says still loves him--and his family. Question: You were a consultant? Called Masterminds, the 2016 film stars Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig and Owen Wilson. Thatd be the time to do it, Ghantt recalls. First, in January, he tried to get someone to take some millions down to Mexico. I said, It comes down to picking the right day, and the right time of the month, and all that good stuff. I even told her, It wouldnt be all that difficult. 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. Steve bought a truck, a Rolex and a motorboat. Throughout the multi-year-long case and subsequent trials, journalists often referred to Ghantt and the others as trailer trash and hillbillies. In the first days after the arrests, agents recovered or accounted for all but about $2 million of the stolen money. Question: Are you surprised that Hollywood took this on as a movie? Or is the loot buried in somebody's yard? Everybody seemed stunned. Steve solicited two others to help move cash during the theft. While the agents initiated their investigation, the Chambers spent money as quickly as they could. 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. I can take it.". It had been drilled into my head that if you give me a team of five good people, I can go anywhere, do anything," David explained. On the evening of October 4, 1997, one man loaded $17.3 million in cash from the vaults of Loomis, Fargo & Co. into the back of a van. It wasnt a big hit, but Ghantt, who was played by Galifianakis, gives it a rave review. Chambers and Campbell were waiting for him in the Loomis Fargo parking lot, both in separate vehicles. On Monday, October 6th, the FBI agents who were investigating the robbery located the Loomis Fargo van abandoned in the woods. The next week, they heard Steve plan to send Mike McKinney to Mexico to kill David Ghantt. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist (No Ratings Yet) . Inside were, along with other personal items, his keys and wedding ring. We spoke with the inside man, David Ghantt, to get the real story. Everything came crashing down on an early March morning in 1998. The case resurfaced in the federal courts on Thursday, Sept. 1, when the U.S. Attorneys Office in Charlotte posted a public reminder in the case file of Loomis defendant Kelly Campbell that she had fallen behind in her restitution. She came from a blue-collar background, a high school dropout who had grown tired of working in a mill and gotten an equivalency diploma. Campbell, a former Loomis employee and one of the original masterminds of the caper, has paid off less than $21,000 of the $4,701,694.18 she was docked. She was devastated, Diamant said. Michelle Chambers paid off only $27,000. Visit us at Loomis.us. Zaron Burnett is an investigative journalist and longform features writer based in Los Angeles. Its kind of like that. Steve, who had sworn Kelly, Eric and Scott to secrecy the night of the theft, named them all to the FBI. (John D. Simmons/The Charlotte Observer via AP) The Associated Press, BY MICHAEL GORDON, The Charlotte Observer. 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. In a word, "Teamwork. Ghantt started at Loomis Fargo in 1994, and soon worked his way up from an armored car driver to a vault supervisor. But I thought this is me being hard-headed Im going to ride this thing to the ground. And so thats what I did.. Exciting. "It probably should bother me," he said. I really enjoyed the little scuba diving trip. I wish them all a happy life and that's about it. "He was in tears. Find 145 people named Kelly Loomis along with free Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok profiles on PeekYou - true people search. Turns out, most of the thieves and their accomplices have been about as effective coming up with their court-ordered restitution as they were hiding their original crimes. If you want to go ahead and go, I got it. They stocked a wine cellar. Steve was sentenced to 11 years 3 months in prison. All rights reserved. But it wasnt. He went deep-sea fishing. How Bridgerton restarted buzz about her ancestry. 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. Besides her prison sentence . . What purpose does that serve other than to denigrate that person into abject poverty?. It was his goodbye. He told her he wanted more of "his" cash. The Loomis case is another example where the amount of restitution ordered vs. what is actually paid are two dramatically different numbers. The phone rang: Kelly had a problem. >> PHOTOS: The Loomis Fargo heist, 25 years later Ghantt, his former co-worker Kelly Campbell and her friends Steve and Michelle Chambers, carried out the Loomis Fargo heist on Oct. 4,. He and co-worker Kelly Campbell, 27, had developed a close relationship and were spending time together outside of work. So the last third of the movie is almost entirely fiction. 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. ];David Scott Ghanntt [Misc.] But he tried to keep his face averted, so David wouldn't be able to ID him. But in November, money ran low. All I needed was a change of pace.". Careers. What made her do it? David, the international fugitive, lived it up, too--for a while. Not Ghantt. When neighbors asked where they got their money, Steve said hed played in the NFL. Now, I kind of know something is fishy., Alone in Mexico with limited cash, Ghantt thought about turning himself in. She asked about the limit for a cash deposit before "paperwork" was required. Im a very deliberate person. I learned something that was valuable at the time: Most criminals never leave a 250, maybe 300-mile circle from their home base. Filming in the Asheville area starting in early July, and is. Down in Jacksonville, a Loomis Fargo employee took $18 million from an armored van he was driving. Not until David was gone did Scott realize he didn't know which key to use. Mexican police, Interpol officers and an FBI agent were watching him. They entered their dogs in fights and watched them die. 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. "I thought he was goofing around.". So he and some friends decided at the end of his Oct. 4 shift he would load a company van with more than 2,000 pounds of cash and just drive away. He's a very likable person. I was burned out and just didn't know it. Back then, it was one of the hotspots for hiding money. Ghantt planned to live off the interest for the rest of his life. Now worried about both the FBI and McKinney, he spent even more time alone in his room. They cursed. In one case, the restitution for a Loomis defendant may be a moving target. You see, there's a reason Loomis Fargo used armored cars to move large amounts of cash. Here's what Floyd recalls: After two games of pool, Steve told him, "You know, we do a lot of gambling. And after two years, you're just a file." Gaston County residents remember how that worked out. And I knew that by that time, Id be in Cancun no matter what. "As soon as you start, you realize there's no going back," David recalled. I hope everyone has moved on. He frequently entertained there, buying steaks for his guests. So he got in a cab and went to a mall. Scott Grant and Steve pulled up next to her in a Mazda. And I said, Hey, man, I got this. David was excited, jabbering about their future together. . 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. 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. Burks was also ordered to serve 15 years in prison, limiting his ability to balance his books. Why fans love it. He took bus tours of Mayan ruins. Michelle Chambers received seven years and eight months, while Steve Chambers was handed an 11-year sentence. He para-sailed, power-skied and scuba-dived. Youre supposed to get less time for cooperating, a lesser penalty, and instead, you see what she got hit with. Gronquist said. 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. "Love" has four. 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. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Ghantt knew Chambers as Steve, but didnt find out that his last name was Chambers until the arrests were made. You cannot fine low-income people millions of dollars. He flew in an ultra-light plane. Or as he tells me, How many people in the United States havent thought about robbing a bank? There it was, "The Heist." These (Loomis) guys, not so much.. I loved it. 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. They involve Loomis armored car driver David Scott Ghantt. I missed my wife. The next day, he was sitting next to FBI agent Mark Rozzi on a US Airways flight to Charlotte. I've got a good woman.". In the dark, Scott inserted one key into the back door slot. Cool, I say. 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. Explain? Heres what happened on Sunday nights episode. Kelly was no criminal. "I was unhappy with my life. I mean, it was dark, Ghantt explains. 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. In March 1997, after Loomis Fargo & Company has been robbed of $18.8 million in Jacksonville by company security guard Philip Noel Johnson, Steve Eugene Chambers and Kelly Campbell, a former employee of Loomis, decides to rob the company. Steve now needed a hit man. White-collar criminals are pretty good at hiding their money, she said. Tickle Me Kaczynski: How the Inventor of the Ultimate Elmo Toy Became a Unabomber Suspect, A Highly Questionable Cultural History of Richard Geres Ass Gerbil. They set the date, Oct. 4, a Saturday when David knew he could be alone in the building after his shift. ". CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS FROM 1998 and ACTORS IN MOVIE. ". He worked fueling airplanes, driving a forklift, and in 1994 he got a job as a vault superintendent at Loomis. You might as well go all the way now.". They planned to kill a man named David Ghantt, the guy who had made their extravagant new lifestyle a reality. His collection case, which closes in November 2026, got credit for the couples $540,000 house on Cramer Mountain in Gaston County, Butcher says. Question: What made you, Chambers and the others think you could get away with this? Come for the Chumbawamba, and stay for the return of the Mack. Loomis, Fargo offered a $500,000 reward after the theft. In Campbells case, Gronquist says his client was buried in court-ordered debt despite the fact that she took responsibility for what she had done and cooperated with prosecutors and the FBI. They placed a bust of Caesar in the dining room. 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. This was in the 1990s the Columbia Airport back then was closed at around 9:30, 10 oclock. Steve and Michele invited everyone back for a Christmas party, where they gave Michele's stepfather a special gift--the pickup truck he'd always wanted. At the end of one session, they wound up kissing outside the pickup. Steve also offered $100,000 to his 26-year-old cousin. All the while, Ghantt prepared himself for the task at hand. Ghantt was apprehended in Mexico and returned to the United States in custody. David thought about it. . "I missed my family. As you probably know, it's loosely based on the Loomis Fargo heist in Charlotte back in the late nineties. Kelly had recently left a job driving an armored-car for Loomis, Fargo & Co. "He's the one who brought it up first," said Kelly, a year after her arrest. Basic and voluntary life insurance plan. In that time, I realized most of my problems were because of me. They obviously werent trying to get it right they were putting together what they believe is a better story, said Diamant. 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. When we worked together [for Loomis], we'd joke about it. Ghantt was working a late shift, and just after 6:30 p.m., his coworkers were packing up and heading for home. 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. He hated his job, with its 12-hour shifts. From going fishing to riding horses on the beach the whole nine yards. Even still, he was 27, married and struggling to provide for his family. 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.. . Meanwhile, Steve was keeping a close eye on Kelly. Some family members hid money in bank deposit boxes, other friends were asked to mule cash to the Cayman Islands. 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. Federal law stops government collection efforts 20 years after a defendant leaves prison. Michele tells me you're in a financial bind. Many of the lesser players in the conspiracy have been the most effective in paying their debts. 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. And I think that makes it all the more funny, because it really offends my co-defendants. He'd stay up all night, boosted by coffee, waiting for the sunrise over the ocean. At 6-1 and 220 pounds, Steve was stocky and imposing, a fast talker with a brown goatee. Exhibit A was that Steve had no steady job but plenty of cash. Thats nearly $11 million less than former Kings Mountain resident David Ghantt (played by Galifianakis in the film) helped steal from the vault where he worked in Charlotte back in October 1997. . . She laughed for like 45 minutes. She declined to take a lie-detector test. Thanksgiving and Christmas were difficult. Why did this Charlotte engineer leave her job? Key benefit components include: Health insurance plans. About 10 frantic minutes later, Scott found the right key. 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. I did a little research into crime statistics and the local cops. 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. Truth be told, Ghantt had something of a crush on Campbell, and so, he told her exactly how hed pull off such a heist. Working together, they got the gate open, then drove in a caravan to the Reynolds & Reynolds parking lot. Agents noticed it two months later when it flowed to them through official channels, along with hundreds of similar reports involving other people. In December, agents got the tie-in they were looking for: Kelly Campbell had bought a $30,000 Toyota minivan with cash and registered it to one of Steve Chambers's aliases. It was one of those things everyone (at Loomis Fargo) joked about, but in time, it became serious. Industry leading Training and Development. Was that really what it was about? . When he finished, the van was filled with $17 million. She could visit friends. David complained it wasn't enough. In real life: False. Loomis employees drive the very core of our business. The Loomis defendants face no additional legal jeopardy for not paying off their debts. 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. The FBI now knew Chambers had Loomis cash. Chambers never held Campbell hostage by locking her in a shed on his property. To celebrate Halloween, about seven of Steve's friends, including Eric Payne and Kelly, gathered for a party at Steve's house. Eric watched. Loomis has received $978,983.79, according to Sally Butcher, an assistant clerk in the federal courts of the Western District of North Carolina who specializes in criminal debt. Ghantt:It started out as a mental exercise and somewhere between the mental exercise and the actual event, it became serious.
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