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When neighbors asked where they got their money, Steve said hed played in the NFL. 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." Together, they drove in a convoy to an industrial warehouse eight miles away, where Eric Payne, a fourth accomplice was. 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. "I felt that if I didn't do something, I was going to snap," David said. Soon thereafter, he met Kelly Campbell, a co-worker at Loomis Fargo. 27 febrero, 2023 . Then, I started loading the van., Money, when bound in bulk and stacked in canvas bags, is heavier than you might expect. Steven Chambers [Misc. They also purchased tanning beds, a pool table, a Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle and all kinds of expensive furniture. The mystery 1-4-3 caller had been Kelly, though agents didn't know it yet. Then he was driving in the darkness with a van full of cash. Why fans love it. Butcher says the federal courts in the Western District of North Carolina have never handled a case quite like Loomis. He took bus tours of Mayan ruins. Because lets be brutally honest: Theyre not wrong, okay? I think I always knew that, but lost my way for a while.". On the radio, the "John Boy and Billy" show played the song "Take the Money and Run. Fourteen defendants were ordered to make restitution payments to Loomis Fargo totaling almost $19 million. Visit us at Loomis.us. Scott Grant said he hesitated, but agreed if no guns would be involved. Things went from bad to worse when, in November, Michelle strolled into a bank with a briefcase filled with 200 grand and asked the manager, How much can I deposit without the bank reporting the transaction? When she showed the bank manager that she really had the money to invest, the cash was still bound in Loomis Fargo wrappers. For her part, Kelly Campbell spent six years in federal prison. CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) During one overnight shift, a bumbling conspiracy of thieves just west of Charlotte stole more than $17 million from Loomis Fargo. He figured Tammy wouldn't go for it, and though his marriage had been troubled, he wasn't certain he wanted to leave her. Some family members hid money in bank deposit boxes, other friends were asked to mule cash to the Cayman Islands. They entered their dogs in fights and watched them die. You have to remember that it's Hollywood and they'll take what was a minor event and they'll blow it up and make it as funny as they can.". Michelle Chambers paid off only $27,000. Then another. Steve also offered $100,000 to his 26-year-old cousin. Besides her prison sentence, Campbell must undergo mental health and drug treatment and spend two years in a supervised release program. 2500 City West Blvd., Suite 2300 Houston, TX 77042. Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. And youre like, Come on parachute. The biggest restitution numbers for victims of financial crimes generally involve Ponzi schemes or sweepstakes fraud, not cash thefts. 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. The bizarre true story of the criminals behind the second-largest bank heist in American history. CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS FROM 1998 and ACTORS IN MOVIE. There used to be a consulate in Cancun. You might as well go all the way now.". 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 working as a vault supervisor for Loomis Fargo in Charlotte in 1997, earning about $8 an hour and tired of his humdrum life. Here's what Floyd recalls: After two games of pool, Steve told him, "You know, we do a lot of gambling. 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. . The cash was covered with dog food. When he walked onto the plane, he was wearing big, tall cowboy boots, where hed stuffed a majority of the smuggled cash. 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. I wanted to get as far away as I could. You cannot fine low-income people millions of dollars. . "We kept going, '1-4-3, 1-4-3,' " recalled Vic O'Korn, assistant special agent in charge of Charlotte's FBI office. He para-sailed, power-skied and scuba-dived. First, they loaded the cash into blue 55-gallon barrels, and then they moved the barrels into a rental van. It changes you. Ghantt was scheduled to work a shift at the armored car company Oct. 4. He comes to my door, and hes got a brown paper bag in his hand. 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. It was the first Saturday in October. They picked me, he says with a rueful tone. Its everything thats coming north.. But former Kings Mountain resident David Scott Ghantt can. "But, I hate to admit it, it doesn't faze me one bit. Ghantt:It's a comedy. He had even scheduled a follow-up appointment at the dentist. Was that really what it was about? Were others involved? He gave the rest to Kelly. Steve led the planning. Steve told me to tell [David] whatever was necessary to keep him happy.". The Chambers, however, didnt fit in with the other members of the gated community. Ghantt:I hate to say it, but I had six years of sitting in a box to think about my life. I did every touristy thing you could possibly do while I was down there. So yeah, Im kind of proud of it.. In real life: Mostly true. How Bridgerton restarted buzz about her ancestry. But I thought this is me being hard-headed Im going to ride this thing to the ground. And so thats what I did.. I wish them all a happy life and that's about it. He frequently entertained there, buying steaks for his guests. "Think of how many women would have stood by. About 200 keys dangled from it. What concerned her was the chance of getting caught. Given his position at the bank, hed be the one to pull off the robbery, and he intended to be ready. CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Kelly Campbell, the woman who helped plan the $17 million robbery of armored-car company Loomis, Fargo was sentenced yesterday to nearly six years in prison and ordered to pay back more than $4 million. Starting Pay Rate: $15.50 per hour Shift: Monday - Friday from 1:00pm to 9:00pm Job Description As a Coin Processor, you work with your team to maintain inventory in our cash vaults for our Loomis customers. 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. In the wee hours of the morning, Chambers and the Erics drove back to the town of Vale, North Carolina, and holed up in a double-wide trailer while counting their cash. Will Vin Sant Leave You Jacked or Scammed? Looking for Kelly Loomis? That was pretty awesome., It felt like a dream vacation until he started running out of money. 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. Then another. Though David had no criminal experience, he felt he could offer expert advice: He'd just finished reading a book on the FBI. Kelly called David at. Loomis employees drive the very core of our business. If you want me to leave, Ill leave. Then, Ghantt went into another room. Should David be killed after he gave them the money? By the time the month concluded, the couple had purchased a 7,000-square-foot stone mansion in a gated country club community. In early September 1997, Kelly found herself chatting on the phone with a friend who still worked at Loomis, a 27-year-old man who, despite being married, had made no secret of the fact that he had a crush on her. I just had to call you., Today, Ghantt cant look back on the whole ordeal without some degree of pride. "I've moved on with my life," he said Tuesday. On his way out, he grabbed the surveillance video, hoping to cover his tracks. Michele received the best gift of the night. ". ];Kelly Jane Campbell [Misc. The robbery of some $17 million quickly became one of the wildest bank heists of the last quarter century. . Chambers went from a mobile home in Lincoln County to a mansion in Cramerton. In real life: True. We need to set up some way for me to get my money. She said, We got it all worked out. 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. It was late in 1996. David told her he'd need help moving the money, getting a new ID and leaving the country. He and his wife, Tammy, lived in a mobile home in Kings Mountain, N.C. Money was always tight. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. On Monday, October 6th, the FBI agents who were investigating the robbery located the Loomis Fargo van abandoned in the woods. 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. When she realized Ghantt never came home from work the night before, she contacted the police and filed a missing persons report. He drove to the edge of the Loomis compound, which was surrounded by a chain-link fence. At 6-1 and 220 pounds, Steve was stocky and imposing, a fast talker with a brown goatee. I'd probably change jobs. 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. I pay (restitution to) thousands of people, but its in drips and drabs.. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist seeing a woodpecker after someone dies lectomano que significa. Until, that is, he decided to hell with it he was going to pull-off the second largest heist in U.S. history. After a couple of weeks, Ghantt and the rest of the heist team were ready to strike. When he landed in Cancun, his first stop was Walmart. Her only brush with the law had been a DUI arrest. I can take it.". They obviously werent trying to get it right they were putting together what they believe is a better story, said Diamant. But few could have guessed how spectacularly the heist would go wrong after the criminals initially got away with 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. Kelly said she had reason to believe Steve might be able to pull off a heist. It affects everybody different. Ghantt would go on to spend six and a half years in federal prison. The others sat in their cars across the street and watched him struggle to open the heavy gate. About the same time, Kelly and McKinney received phone calls from agents who told them to open their doors. 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. David didn't even know Steve's name. The audacity of the act was breathtaking. I told the lead investigator I was glad to see him.. The initials on the money wrapper belonged to a Loomis employee who hadn't worked there since before the heist. About 20 ago, Campbell sent him a letter of apology, but he never responded. That October, the Chamberses' bank accounts ballooned. Not Ghantt. >> 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,. Ghantt fled to Mexico. And with Loomis, were looking at only one case. David, now 30, says he's sorry he abandoned his wife--who he says still loves him--and his family. Everything came crashing down on an early March morning in 1998. "A lot of people out there had it worse than me, but . He covers culture, politics, race, and other perplexing mysteries for MEL. Question: Are you happy that Wilkesboro-nativeZach Galifianakis plays you in the movie? In real life: True. Steve had already paid McKinney $50,000 for the use of his ID. Michelle Chambers received seven years and eight months, while Steve Chambers was handed an 11-year sentence. Ghantt was never in Chamberss presence until he actually handed off the money to him. Zach always plays that bumbling kind of lunatic, but hes not, Ghantt says. Actor Owen Wilson plays him in the movie, which includes the real names of all the major players. As you probably know, it's loosely based on the Loomis Fargo heist in Charlotte back in the late nineties. He rewarded Robert with $3,000 and vowed never to meet McKinney alone. "It probably should bother me," he said. She was the group's only contact with David, and she was smoking marijuana "like other people smoke cigarettes," she said. They heard Michele brag about her $43,000 ring. All were convicted. With the help of Aldo, a Mexican waiter he had befriended, David found a beach apartment in Cancun. No hard feelings. Ghantt ended up doing more than five years in prison, Chambers did more than 11 years. Question: How much of 'Masterminds' is true? One day, Campbell was speaking to an old friend named Steve Chambers. 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. He hated the sweet smell of the green ink, and the $8.15-an-hour salary. They set the date, Oct. 4, a Saturday when David knew he could be alone in the building after his shift. They soon realized David had stolen more money than would fit in their 55-gallon barrels. Charlotte Magazine even ran a feature story about the Loomis Fargo heist with the title, White Trash Crime. The headlines, however, never bothered Ghantt. 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. Three weeks later, the couple purchased, in cash, a $635,000 stone mansion. It was one of those things everyone (at Loomis Fargo) joked about, but in time, it became serious. On October 5, 1997, FBI agents gathered at the Loomis, Fargo & Co. warehouse in Charlotte, North Carolina, to watch a security videotape of a man loading stacks of cash into a pushcart and wheeling them from the vault. 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. (The conversation was depicted as 100 percent private on screen). As soon as Corey left, I pretended like I was leaving. Steve bought a truck, a Rolex and a motorboat. I mentioned it to Kelly. 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. But agents weren't ready to arrest Kelly and Steve. Ghantt:It's kid-friendly, it's family-friendly (the movie is rated PG-13). I had to go in there and tell her the whole story, and she was real cool about it. 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. And though she had been made night shift supervisor at Allied Security, she still felt she would never make the money she needed. Without really intending to, Kelly recalls, she turned the conversation to the possibility of a heist. The Unexpectedly Sweet Story Behind Those Viral Semi-Truck Pregnancy Photos. They planned to kill a man named David Ghantt, the guy who had made their extravagant new lifestyle a reality. Campbell, a mother of two, was in the process of divorcing her. I couldn't understand why I hadn't been more successful," David said. But after she left, she reached back out to Ghantt and brought up what theyd talked about that day in the break room. Like David, Kelly was frustrated with her marriage. Its kind of like that. He didn't want to abandon his parents. Theres no way to get it back, Butcher told The Charlotte Observer. Now two NC men face prison. Scott Grant and Steve pulled up next to her in a Mazda. Even still, he was 27, married and struggling to provide for his family. 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. She tried to apologize for the murder plot. Ghantt started at Loomis Fargo in 1994, and soon worked his way up from an armored car driver to a vault supervisor. That sounds like a lot of money until its compared to the $18,930,201.26 the group was ordered to pay. But you cant get blood from a stone, Johns said. Our Benefits. They tried to break the van's bulletproof windows. Kelly was lying. Im on the phone with Kelly [Campbell], and Im like, Hey, I really was expecting a package to arrive. In early December, Steve and Michele invited relatives to their daughter's sixth birthday party. Not until David was gone did Scott realize he didn't know which key to use. "For the first year, they're all over you. 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. . Copyright 2022 TheAssociated Press. He told her he wanted more of "his" cash. He hadnt checked ahead of time if the airport had any available flights, let alone if it would even be open. By then Id figured out that Bruno was up to no good, and that Id probably never seen any more of my money. Truth was, David wanted more than help leaving, he wanted company. We spoke with the inside man, David Ghantt, to get the real story. They involve Loomis armored car driver David Scott Ghantt. 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. . Speaking of his co-defendants, Ghantt says hes not currently in contact with any of them. At the Halloween party, though, Kelly gave in to Steve, and agreed it had to be done. 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.. This is where it starts to unravel, Ghantt tells me with a wry laugh. Kelly's company. Still, she wasn't happy. All the while, Ghantt prepared himself for the task at hand. Inside the Mazda, Steve told Scott Grant to get out and help David. "Things I always wanted to do, but never had the time or the money," he said. She'd heard his stories of other successful schemes, like getting refunds on phony tax returns, or operating a loan shark business. Best States is an interactive platform developed by U.S. News for ranking the 50 U.S. states, alongside news analysis and daily reporting. In the dark, Scott inserted one key into the back door slot. Called Masterminds, the 2016 film stars Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig and Owen Wilson. . . This meant a bump in pay, up to $8.15 an hour. By late November, McKinney made a third trip to Mexico, saying he'd help David move to Mexico City. Eric watched. 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. This is the person I counted as my friend. It wouldn't work, Kelly told him. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. David was excited, jabbering about their future together. One thing about teammates, in David's view: You could always trust them. Instead of lobster, the man who stole $17 million survived on home-cooked pasta and grilled cheese sandwiches. He was signed by the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent in 2002. Ghantt was the vault manager and was surrounded. That was the most painful truth to come to. 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. On March 1, David Ghantt left his hotel to do some laundry. I really enjoyed the little scuba diving trip. I knew that the news wouldnt break until later that morning. As it turned out, Ghantt was zipping up his scuba suit in Mexico. 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. Guller was the attorney for Steven Chambers, who came up with the original idea for the Loomis theft. At the time, it was the largest cash heist in history. They loaded the wine cellar with Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Steve hung a velvet portrait of Elvis Presley in the basement. He told him McKinney was in Mexico to kill somebody. A third tape he didn't know about kept recording. Twenty-five years ago, a small group of rural North Carolinian amateur bank robbers pulled off the second-largest heist in American history. It didnt take the local police long to put the pieces together. The next day, he was sitting next to FBI agent Mark Rozzi on a US Airways flight to Charlotte. In 2017, for example, Paul Burks of Lexington was ordered to pay $244 million to the victims of his worldwide Ponzi scheme, Zeek Rewards. Charlotte hotel chef who serves with a smile recognized as outstanding ambassador, Eritrean, Ethiopian restaurant owner was a big brother and father to many in Charlotte, Home tours: This wired-up Weddington smart home has a pool big enough for the neighborhood. The bigger the amount, however, the bigger the damages to victims that likely will never be repaid: Amy Paynes collection account was closed in 2020 with her having paid $53,000 of the $274,000 she owed. Kelly Campbell, 29, a former company employee, entered guilty pleas earlier to bank larceny, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder charges. 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. and "I love money!" 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.