The 2015 revised edition of former Observer reporter Jeff Diamants book, Heist: The Oddball Crew Behind the $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft, written by one of the lead reporters who covered the heist and its aftermath. The bizarre true story of the criminals behind the second-largest bank heist in American history. Keeping with the plan, Ghantt took $50,000, which was the maximum that could by law be taken across the border of Mexico without authorization. Ghantt, who by then was long out of prison, served as a consultant. The plan to rob Loomis Fargo was spawned by Campbell and her friend Steve Chambers, during a casual bonfire at Chambers home. Driving away, he said he felt a mix of fear, confidence and excitement that he outsmarted the FBI. Next, he went to the managers office and took out the tapes from two security cameras. Another name the FBI had become very interested in is Eric Payne. The main players had time to conspicuously spend some of their money and, in the case of David Scott Ghantt, the Loomis Fargo employee who removed the money from the vault, flee to Mexico. "I was dumb," Ghantt said Wednesday, the eve before the movie hits screens nationwide. By using this website, you accept the terms of our Visitor Agreement and Privacy Policy, and understand your options regarding Ad Choices. David gets Steve to confess to planning the heist. 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, . This had led the FBI to begin monitoring Chambers' and his wife's activities. 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. All were convicted. Actor Owen Wilson plays him in the movie, which includes the real names of all the major players. David Ghantt, Kelly Campbell, and their friends stole an astonishing $17.3 million. I knew that if we could stay off the radar for about a year, we could basically live a vacation life, Ghantt said. Kelly : No, Rio. I'll never pay it off on my paycheck." According to federal indictments, some of Ghantts co-conspirators were planning to fly to Mexico and kill him. They soon realised that their joke was not a far-fetched idea. One of the FBI's wiretaps caught a conversation between David Ghantt and Kelly Campbell, the one who bought the minivan and shopped for the liposuction. On Oct. 5, 1997, Ghantt carried out the heist during his regular shift after sending another employee home, stealing more than $17 million from the bank vault. Authorities were notified of the robbery in the morning, when employees couldnt open the vault. He talks about how he informs employers about his criminal . It still had almost $3.3 million in cash left in the back of the van. It took me going to prison to realize I was a bag of worms, and it took me years of work to be somebody worthy to come back into our society, he said. A couple by the names of Steve and Shelley Chambers also became people of interest in the investigation due to their extreme sudden increase in spending. Ghantt was an on-set consultant for the film. The movie, about a famous Charlotte bank . Further stating that it was not drug money. Question: Are you surprised that Hollywood took this on as a movie? Kelly Jane Campbell, a former Loomis . Federal Judge Graham Mullen sentenced her to between those lengths. Ghantt fled to Mexico. But neither of those things would matter after he met Kelly Campbell. But former Kings Mountain resident David Scott Ghantt can. 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. Now they only had to track down Ghantt and his accomplices. The plot revolves around Ghantt who teamed up with his former loomis co-worker Kelly Campbell. Loomis Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina found itself the target of a robbery on October 4 th, 1997 by one of their vault security guards, David Ghantt and his girlfriend, Kelly Campbell who had been a former employee at the time.Along with Ghantt and Campbell were eight others including a former high school friend of Campbells, Steve . Kelly Campbell. That first day in prison was scary, Ghantt said. Steve decided to send his cousin, Nathan with money down to Mexico as a ruse, while Mike the bodyguard would follow behind to take care of Ghantt. Ghantt, his former co-worker Kelly Campbell and her friends Steve and Michelle Chambers carried out the Loomis Fargo heist on Oct. 4, 1997. Explain? David Ghantt took $50,000 for himself and fled to Cozumel, Mexico. In fact, they got carried away and upgraded to a sudden lavish lifestyle. David Ghantt worked as a vault supervisor for the armoured cash vehicles at the Charlotte, North Carolina branch of Loomis, Fargo & Co. Ironically even though he worked for a company that moved millions of dollars every day, he was relatively underpaid. The FBI became more suspicious after they interviewed Campbell for the third time. The polices suspicions were further confirmed once they viewed the security cameras. Ghantt: My cut was supposed to be about $5 million, but that's not what I ended up with. 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. Ghantt:It started out as a mental exercise and somewhere between the mental exercise and the actual event, it became serious. Chambers and his wife Michele moved out of a trailer and into a luxury mansion in a nice neighborhood. 25 years later David Ghantt took $50,000 for himself . It was nearly the perfect crime, but while Ghantt fled to Mexico to lay low, his partners lavish spendingand their own alleged plans for murderwould ultimately be the groups demise. "So it's one thing to go from up here, thought, to action," he said. David ist einer der Mnner, die fr Banken Unsummen an Dollars von A nach B fahren. 0:44. The man at the center of that heist was David Scott Ghantt. The feds say these six were involved with David Scott Ghantt, and were sharing the loot from Ghantt's $17 million armored-car-company heist in . . Agents raided safe deposit boxes, where they recovered more than $11 million. All but one of the defendants pleaded guilty. The ludicrous thing was that the bundles of cash still had Loomis Fargo bands stuck on them. 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. It was nearly the perfect crime, but while Ghantt fled to Mexico to lay low, his partners' lavish spendingand their own alleged plans for murderwould ultimately be the group's demise. Not a documentary. Still facing possible unknowns of other people involved, the FBI needed to gather more information without the suspects getting suspicious of them. Just after the last employees left that day, surveillance footage shows a man enter the vault, and begin to load more than 2,740 pounds in cash into a nearby van, totaling around over $17 million. Learn about careers at Cox Media Group. Upon viewing it the investigators saw exactly what had taken place that night. David Ghantt, a Gulf War veteran, . "I've moved on with my life," he said Tuesday. . When the FBI recorded a phone call from Ghantt in Mexico, the final connection was made. Soon thereafter, he met Kelly Campbell, a co-worker at Loomis Fargo. David Scott Ghantt, 28, was arrested Sunday on an island off the Mexican coast, near the resort city of Cozumel, FBI spokesman William Perry said today. $17.3 million . Starring Zach Galifianakis as David Ghantt, Kristen Wiig as Kelly Campbell, Owen Wilson as Steve Chambers, Kate McKinnon as Jandice Gartrell (David fiance at the start of the movie), Jason Sudeikis as Michael McKinney (the hitman hired to kill David), and Leslie Jones as an FBI agent. When Ghantt was found in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, five months after the heist, DePriest and photographer Kent Johnson raced to the airport, according to Observer records. David Ghantt helps steal $17 million from Loomis Fargo mostly due to his love for Kelly Campbell, but the leader of the operation, Steve Chambers, wants to get rid of David for being a liability. The FBI believed that David Ghatt was in danger because Chambers wanted to kill him using a hitman named Michael McKinney. En marzo del 97, la empresa fue vctima del llamado "robo del siglo": un empleado se . Question: What made you, Chambers and the others think you could get away with this? Ghantt believed the new employee would make a good replacement for his wife, but the feelings were not necessarily reciprocated. As Ghantt was the only employee absent, he was marked as the obvious suspect. They also purchased expensive cars, jewelry and a breast enhancement or two. Its easy to get somebody to do something if you know that they are that infatuated with you.. More than 2 million dollars are still missing to this day. The only person not to plead guilty in the case, former Gastonia attorney Jeff Guller, ended up doing eight years for money laundering. The robbers left it behind as they simply didnt have room for all that cash. Also charged with money laundering were innocent relatives and friends who had co-signed safe deposit boxes. After Ghantts release from prison, he took up a job as a construction worker. Word 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-dollar bills. All rights reserved. "I'm glad I've grown out of that.". Ghantt was the vault manager and was surrounded daily by millions of dollars-worth of temptation. 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. DePriest talked to employees at the hotel where Ghantt had stayed under the name James T. Kelley and claiming to be an oilrigger on vacation. Crimes, guns, suspensions and dropouts soar in NC public schools after the pandemic. To make a successful getaway, Ghantt had to lift nearly 2,800 pounds of currency. Its like, me and you sat down, I have access to pie, you like pie, all I want is my share of the pie. This dental device was sold to fix patients' jaws. In less than a month after the heist, Chambers and his wife moved out of their trailer and relocated into a 7,000-square-foot, $635,000 mansion. Kelly Campbell: [looks at his buttocks] I think that bullet just went straight between your cheeks. Two of them, Mike and Kim Goodman, are scheduled to be sentenced today. That movie, Masterminds was filmed in 2014. The reason for this was because, after the Loomis Fargo heist, the thieves had miscalculated the sheer bulk of the small denomination currency. Along with Ghantt and Campbell, there were eight others, including Campbell's former high school friend Steve Chambers and his wife, Michelle. And then I realized that a lot of people knew who I was and they had followed the case.. But things didnt quite work out that way. He insisted that Chambers send more money, while Chambers was actually plotting to have Ghantt killed. But as she didnt want to seem suspicious, she just asked the teller, how much could she deposit without attracting the attention of the feds. In all, agents arrested 24 people in the heist. David Ghantt was living an equally luxurious life in Mexico. Their relationship continued after she left the company. What to know about Shigella bacteria as drug-resistant strain spreads Ghantt:It's kid-friendly, it's family-friendly (the movie is rated PG-13). HOME. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. I knew that if I did something like that, I would take a huge amount of money, Ghantt said of the brash robbery on an upcoming episode of, To find out more about how the thieves got caught and how long they landed behind bars, tune in the, Rebel Wilson 'collapsed' after Ramona Agruma proposal: 'I was so overwhelmed', Amy Grant recalls being 'so scared' to return to touring following serious bike accident, Travis Scott being sought by NYPD after alleged nightclub assault, Zachary Levi talks Shazam! future after DC shake-up: 'I'll keep playing this role as long as I can', Get your Din Djarin on with this replica 'Mandalorian' helmet. Diamant captures the human side of the crime as well as the bizarre details, including a clown-faced lava lamp. They had to be extremely careful not to tip off the group, as they could lose potential conspirators or more information important to a conviction. Authorities had the receipt and had known it was missing. However, they didnt heed their own advice. Question: You were a consultant? 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. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. The Loomis Fargo heist happened in Charlotte, North Carolina when this bank was the target of a robbery. The Legend of the Green Man: Raymond Robinson, The Incredible Dunkirk Evacuation- in rare pictures, Elizabethan Food and Drink- Brief History & Key Facts, 10 Famous Female Warriors Who Made Their Mark On History, 15 Intriguing Facts About The Middle Ages. Masterminds.2016.MULTi.1080p.BluRay.x264-CINeHD. Bank heists are ideally supposed to have meticulous planning right? David Ghantt was a Gulf War veteran who never had a problem with the law. One fact at a time! Kelly Campbell is scheduled to be sentenced in October. "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. Flying bug found at Walmart turns out to be rare Jurassic-era insect A woman by the name of Kelly Campbell had worked there in 1996, and she and Ghantt had become friends in that time. 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. Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand. 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. David Ghantt, who pulled off the Loomis, Fargo & Co. vault robbery in 1997 and was sentenced to seven years in prison for the crime, served as a consultant for the film (in theaters Friday . display: block; The Gaston Gazette spoke with Ghantt, who is now in his late 40s and lives in Florida as a free man. The receptionist told DePriest that she could see the pain on Ghantts face, though she didnt know what caused it. He wasnt just being paranoid. 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. She recruited an old friend, Steve Chambers, a convicted criminal who was once an FBI informant. The eight accomplices were also apprehended. Consequently, they called the police. Ghantt:I don't think he ever really meant to harm me. The irony is that before the Loomis Fargo heist they had all agreed to keep their spending to a minimum. 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