Ghantt met up with the other members of the plot and offloaded the cash. 25 Feb/23. 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. David Ghantt was a Gulf War veteran who never had a problem with the law. Ghantt:I don't think he ever really meant to harm me. Agents speculate that after the Loomis robbery in Jacksonville, many Loomis employees including Ghantt and Campbell, sat around discussing the incident. I wasnt attracted to him or anything, but he was a nice guy, Campbell said. En marzo del 97, la empresa fue vctima del llamado "robo del siglo": un empleado se . 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. He then took the security tapes and sped off in his getaway van. View contact info: Address, Phone, Email & Photos. If you go from a mobile home to a mansion, that's going to attract attention. Along with Ghantt and Campbell, there were eight others, including Campbell's former high school friend Steve Chambers and his wife, Michelle. Loomis Fargo & Company was established in 1997 by the consolidation of Wells Fargo Armored Service and Loomis Armored Inc. He's a very likable person. "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. David Ghantt: Yeah, it feels like it just grazed my biscuits right there betwixt them. Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand. They were the butt of a national joke. } Not many people can say they stole $17 million from their employer and had Zach Galifianakis play them in a movie. Ghantt was an on-set consultant for the film. He loves his motorcycle and enjoys going fishing and, while hes sorry for the past, hes not ashamed to talk about it. The Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery was a robbery of $17.3 million in cash from the Charlotte, North Carolina, regional office vault of Loomis, Fargo & Co. on the evening of October 4, 1997, by vault supervisor David Scott Ghantt, his married girlfriend Kelly Campbell (a former Loomis co-worker), Steve Chambers, his wife Michelle Chambers, Michael Gobbies and four other co-conspirators. https://www.charlotteagenda.com/67457/loomis-fargo-heist-masterminds-movie/, http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/article104506876.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_1997_Loomis_Fargo_robbery#Company, http://retroclt.blogspot.com/2014/07/loomis-fargo-heist.html, . The police, in turn, called the FBI since 95% of the money handled at the facility was owned by banks. In fact, they got carried away and upgraded to a sudden lavish lifestyle. ENTERTAINMENT. He left for the border, winding up at the popular Yucatan Peninsula resort island. Kelly : No, Rio. More than 20 people ended up in the FBI's dragnet. If I could get far enough away in a very short amount of time, my odds of getting away with it were pretty high, Ghantt said. Ghantt was the vault manager and was surrounded daily . That first day in prison was scary, Ghantt said. Zach Galifianakis stars as Ghantt, sporting an impressively pronounced bowl-cut and a perpetually pained smile. Agents found out where Ghantt was living because Chambers had put out a hit on him, foolishly believing Ghantt was the only person the FBI had fingered for the crime. Campbell, 29, had pleaded guilty to charges of bank larceny, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder. He had just returned to his home in Jacksonville, Florida when he agreed to talk about the heist, his life now, and what went wrong with a group of friends who thought they could get away with stealing $17 million cash. Explain? 5 min read. Subsequently, he was to take out as much cash as he could and load it up in a van. Its kind of out of sight, out of mind, she said of the reasoning. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. Accompanying her . Loomis, Fargo offered a $500,000 reward after the theft. Chambers essentially put a hit on Ghantt. Thank you! Ghantt, his former co-worker Kelly Campbell and her friends Steve and Michelle Chambers, carried out the Loomis Fargo heist on Oct. 4, 1997. Pocketing $50,000 for himself, that man, named David Ghantt . Six other people also were arrested, including a couple who suddenly moved from a trailer to a $635,000 house. He was like OK, yeah, we can do that, she recalled. David Ghantt was living an equally luxurious life in Mexico. Twenty years ago this Wednesday, a small group of people stole $17 million in cash from the main vault of a Loomis Fargo & Co. armored-car warehouse in west Charlotte. She's a great speaker and a great writer. This was why he devised a plan for the Loomis Fargo heist. Man died Wednesday. The FBI became more suspicious after they interviewed Campbell for the third time. I just want people to go to the movies and have a good laugh, even if it's at my expense. Within the next two days, investigators found an abandoned van with the security tapes and a staggering $3.3 million! Ghantt was charged in connection with the robbery reported Oct. 5 at Loomis, Fargo & Co. A series of snapshots published in the Observer on March 8, 1998, just as the FBI and everyone else was getting a grip on just how strange the heist had been. Masterminds.2016.MULTi.1080p.BluRay.x264-CINeHD. The next day, before Mike was able to leave the country, the FBI arrested him in his hotel room. The plan to rob Loomis Fargo was spawned by Campbell and her friend Steve Chambers, during a casual bonfire at Chambers home. David Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis), an employee of Loomis Fargo, robbed his own vault, left the $17.3 million in cash with his co-conspirators, Kelly Campbell (Kristen Wiig) and Steve Chambers (Owen Wilson) and fled the country to Mexico. The friends and neighbors of Steve and Michelle Chambers became suspicious soon after the news broke that . .component--type-recirculation .item:nth-child(5) { 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. Based on the October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery. An armored car driver suspected of taking $17 million from his company's vault has been captured in Mexico after a manhunt of nearly five months. He has been open about what he did and how he believes it changed him for the better. All six were charged with aiding, abetting and counseling the commission of a bank larceny and being accessories after the fact, and hindering Ghantt's apprehension. {{start_at_rate}} {{format_dollars}} {{start_price}} {{format_cents}} {{term}}, {{promotional_format_dollars}}{{promotional_price}}{{promotional_format_cents}} {{term}}, Nebraska cheerleader competes by herself at state competition, but crowd doesn't let her feel alone. Ghantt:It's kid-friendly, it's family-friendly (the movie is rated PG-13). Once the heat from the robbery died down, Ghantt would return back to the United States and the cash would be evenly split among all of the co-conspirators. A third surveillance tape was carelessly left behind, and the company was able to identify the man who robbed the vault as David Ghantt. LRM had an exclusive phone . One day, Campbell met up with Steven Chambers, an old high school classmate and a small-time crook. Steve and Michelle Chambers, who had lived in a mobile home, bought a mansion in Cramer Mountain. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. He is an uncomplicated man stuck in a monotonous life. Ghantt:I've always known that story had potential to be a comedy or a drama. It was Chambers' extravagant spending after the Loomis Fargo heist that led to the arrests. The corporation handled armored transportation, ATM maintenance and other cash handling services, and had millions of currency stashed in the vault of the North Carolina branch. The pair began to daydream about whether they could really pull off the heist. Further stating that it was not drug money. It was committed by David Ghantt and the heist subsequently inspired the comedy movie Masterminds. On the evening ofOctober 4, 1997, the Loomis Fargo & Co branch in Charlotte, North Carolina was in the process of being plundered. He has no contact with any of those convicted with him in the crime, including his former wife, and doesn't plan to see the movie, he said. Down in Jacksonville, a . 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. Chambers also promised to join Ghantt in Mexico as soon as she could, but she admitted to Super Heists she never had any intention of actually making the trip. We are talking about the 1997 Loomis Fargo heist. 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 . He rarely went to the nearby beach, she said. The affidavit also cited telephone conversations between Steve Chambers and McKinney that indicated they may have been plotting Ghantt's murder in Mexico only days ago. Prosecutors also resisted Culler's efforts to downplay Michele Chambers' role in the theft. And if that gives people out there a little bit of hope, then Ive served my purpose on this earth., (WATCH BELOW: The Loomis Fargo heist: 25 years later). Not all of them, but some of them are going to forgive you, theyre going to overlook it., he said. 1998 The Associated Press. I actually loved reading through this post. Diamant captures the human side of the crime as well as the bizarre details, including a clown-faced lava lamp. The heist led to a book, TV specials, a major movie. Also charged with money laundering were innocent relatives and friends who had co-signed safe deposit boxes. More calls between the two men, and also between Steve and Kelly Campbell, made it clear that the group was starting to turn on David Ghantt. He have since served time in prison for the crime, and told Channel 9s Glenn Counts he learned a valuable lesson while behind bars. Chaque jour, c'est la mme routine : au volant de son camion blind, il transporte des millions de dollars qui ne lui appartiennent pas. Thank you so much. Question: Are you surprised that Hollywood took this on as a movie? How I held it together is beyond me, Ghantt said. David Ghantt normally came home between 6 and 8 p.m., and often he was late, his wife said. Michele Chambers' sentence was two months longer than that given to David Scott Ghantt, the Loomis employee who removed the money from the company vault on Oct. 4, 1997. This caused them just to leave the cash they could not take with them in the back of the van. Channel 9 speaks with the man at the center of Loomis Fargo heist 25 years ago. Some received probation for money laundering, many others did hard time. This dental device was sold to fix patients' jaws. While they had initially agreed to control their spending for a year or two, Chambers had no intention of following those rules. The plan was to maintain a low profile and wait for things to cool off, allowing Ghantt to return to the states and collect his cut. Since Ghantt was the supervisor, he sent his co-worker home first. Ghantt, his former co-worker Kelly Campbell and her friends Steve and Michelle Chambers carried out the Loomis Fargo heist on Oct. 4, 1997. Ghantt had worked with the branch since 1994, and had been promoted from a driver to the vault supervisor. Ghantt would then take a bulk of the cash, as much as could legally be carried across the border without questions, and flee to Mexico. Campbell, a mother of two, was in the process of divorcing her husband. Kelly Campbell. Founder With Four Million Fake Customers Tricked JPMorgan Out Of $175 Million, Police Search For More Than 70 Bodies After Woman Claims Dad Was A Serial Killer, Mother Turned Her Own Son In To Police As She Was Afraid He Would Attack School. Ghantt:Since I still owe the federal government money I can't get paid. David Ghantt may have walked out of the Loomis Fargo heist with the money in hand but then the problems started piling up. Where things stand in the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial . In all, agents arrested 24 people in the heist. However, he was running short of funds. Once Ghantt loaded the large haul from the vaultwhich could have been close to $20 millioninto a truck, he planned to drive to a second location, then head straight to the airport and fly to Mexico. When the FBI recorded a phone call from Ghantt in Mexico, the final connection was made. Ghantt, his former co-worker Kelly Campbell and her friends Steve and Michelle Chambers carried out the Loomis Fargo heist on Oct. Campbell helped plot the robbery of Loomis' Charlotte vault on Oct. "He quickly found out when you have money, you. She also . They soon realised that their joke was not a far-fetched idea. I knew I was going to be the prime suspect. The move bought him a little extra time to make his escape. Defense lawyer Andy Culler sought a seven-year, three-month sentence. The defendants received sentences ranging from probation for several relatives to over 11 years in federal prison for Steve Chambers. They drove off to a printing business called Reynolds & Reynolds in northwest Charlotte. SPORTS. And the company soon calculated how much was missing--$17 million. David Ghantt's fame was short-lived as he was a prime suspect from the start. A seven-year, three-month sentence by Campbell and her friend Steve Chambers him in his getaway.. 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