In the two days after the robbery, agents interviewed more than 100 people, most connected with David. "As soon as you start, you realize there's no going back," David recalled. Some family members hid money in bank deposit boxes, other friends were asked to mule cash to the Cayman Islands. However, the fact that a man who formerly lived in a mobile home was lavishly spending money on a luxury home ($635,000 in cash), expensive cars, and a ring ($42,000 in cash) eventually made it easy to connect the dots. Two more defendants in the $17 million Loomis Fargo & Co. robbery last year have agreed to plead guilty, and a third person entered a formal plea in court. Just head on out. And so, he did. In early November, Steve lured the real Mike McKinney, an ex-Marine, to North Carolina from his Illinois home. Michelle, meanwhile, purchased new breasts for herself, along with a $43,000 diamond ring and a new convertible BMW Z3. He and his wife, Tammy, lived in a mobile home in Kings Mountain, N.C. Money was always tight. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. Truth was, David wanted more than help leaving, he wanted company. Depression had led to smoking a lot of marijuana and taking Prozac, a combination she figures affected her judgment. The money weighed as much as a compact car and he did it all by himself. It wouldn't work, Kelly told him. David kissed his sleeping wife on the cheek on the morning of Oct. 4. This meant a bump in pay, up to $8.15 an hour. Masterminds is a 2016 American crime comedy film based on the October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery in North Carolina. . Will Vin Sant Leave You Jacked or Scammed. But after she left, she reached back out to Ghantt and brought up what theyd talked about that day in the break room. His name was Corey. So its one thing to go from up here, thought, to action, he said. The mystery 1-4-3 caller had been Kelly, though agents didn't know it yet. At 7:45, David had finished loading. his keys and wedding ring. Driving away, he said he felt a mix of fear, confidence and excitement that he outsmarted the FBI. He figured Tammy wouldn't go for it, and though his marriage had been troubled, he wasn't certain he wanted to leave her. I was looking at small sailboats and theyre not cheap, he tells me. . Steve bought a truck, a Rolex and a motorboat. Some amateur thieves might turn to movies and TV shows for lessons on criminal behavior. They heard Michele brag about her $43,000 ring. On Feb. 27, agents listened in on a call from David to Kelly and learned David's location in Mexico. The next week, they heard Steve plan to send Mike McKinney to Mexico to kill David Ghantt. Clerk of Court Frank Johns of Charlotte. His mobile home was nicely furnished, on eight acres with a stream in the back. Then he and Campbell drove 90 miles to Columbia, South Carolina, where Ghantt planned to purchase a ticket to Mexico so he could be out of the country before news of the robbery broke the next morning. Well they were in some sense celebrities, Gronquist said. He had stolen $17 million from Loomis Fargo. "I said, 'Yeah, sure.' Then, on a mid-September day, as he reviewed a credit card bill, David did some math. Two days after theyd robbed the Loomis Fargo truck the very same day the police found the abandoned van in the woods Steve and Michelle Chambers walked into a bank and deposited their cut of the stolen money into their account. At the sight of all that money, Scott and Eric had the same thought: They'd made the worst mistake of their lives. and "I love money!" I mentioned it to Kelly. "I felt that if I didn't do something, I was going to snap," David said. Thatd be the time to do it, Ghantt recalls. It changes you. Its kind of like that. Ghantt was the vault manager and was surrounded. Tags: Associated Press, courts, crime, North Carolina. . I said, Probably, the best time would be on the weekend; theres fewer people there. Then another. Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live. 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. White-collar criminals are pretty good at hiding their money, she said. But what did that mean? For the defendants in the Loomis Fargo heist, its allure was irresistible. But as soon as he drove off, I went right back in and opened the vault. 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. Hed be in contact. Not until David was gone did Scott realize he didn't know which key to use. Her only brush with the law had been a DUI arrest. . Each week, Michele deposited thousands of dollars in cash. If we work together, we can all have plenty of pie.. Exhibit A was that Steve had no steady job but plenty of cash. ", "I wouldn't do it. It didnt take the local police long to put the pieces together. They also left behind a life-changing fortune in small bills $3.3 million in fives and ones that they overlooked and the two videotapes that Ghantt had pulled from the security cameras at the bank. Theres less security. Besides her prison sentence, Campbell must undergo mental health and drug treatment and spend two years in a supervised release program. You can have your whole career and not have a case like that. Ghantt, who by then was long out of prison, served as a consultant. The first weekday after the heist, Michele Chambers, co-conspirator Steve's wife, walked into a NationsBank branch with a briefcase containing $5,000. 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. Meanwhile, Michele Chambers was laughing and saying, repeatedly, "Look at all this money!" She later hired someone to kill Ghantt, though the murder never took place. His wife, Tammy, was as shocked as Loomis officials. Thats where they feel comfortable., This piece of information would become critical to his getaway plan. The FBI says Chambers hired a hitman to tie up the ultimate loose end -- Ghantt. Speaking of his co-defendants, Ghantt says hes not currently in contact with any of them. Here's what Floyd recalls: After two games of pool, Steve told him, "You know, we do a lot of gambling. Almost 19 years after Ghantt and a group of friends from Gaston County pulled off one of the largest cash heists in U.S. history, the movie "Masterminds" will play up the caper for laughs. Ghantt studied how to rob his employer . If you want to go ahead and go, I got it. At the party, Steve invited Michele's stepfather, truck driver Dennis Floyd, to the basement to play pool. "He was speechless," said Sandra Floyd. "He showed me a lot of money," McKinney said. "She just called me up on the phone and said, 'Hey, let's meet one day after work.' Kelly drove her pickup to a lot across the street from the Loomis building, on Suttle Avenue in Charlotte. The problem with the movie, however, is that the talented cast had no idea what the hell they were trying to do. 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. The money was heavy. Too many questions remained: Where was the cash? AP 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. Kelly found herself standing beside David while they waited together for a bond hearing. That day, FBI agents also would arrest Scott Grant and Eric Payne, who had spent his share of the money on a motorcycle and breast implants for his wife and two sisters. The FBI was also surveilling Kelly Campbell and followed her to a pay phone that she used to place calls to Mexico. But after a year, they'll cut it down to two agents. Besides her prison sentence, Campbell must undergo mental health and drug treatment and spend two years in a supervised release program. Ghantt was caught on videotape loading large amounts of cash into a truck. Eric watched. Kelly had resisted this suggestion before the heist: She and David were friends. In the meantime, however, Chambers not only refused to wire money to Ghantt in Mexico, but ultimately hired a hitman (Jason Sudeikis) to take him out. Nosotros, Yahoo, somos parte de la familia de marcas de Yahoo. He went deep-sea fishing. Action News Jax facebook feed(Opens a new window), Action News Jax twitter feed(Opens a new window), Action News Jax youtube feed(Opens a new window), Florida Senator proposes bill to cancel Democratic Party in state, Georgia star Jalen Carter charged with racing in fatal wreck, FHP: Man dies after FDOT Road Ranger rear-ends truck, pushes him over edge of Buckman Bridge, Bartram Trail High School girls lacrosse player denied NIL opportunity, Contest: Win tickets to the AMALIE Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville. Kelly was lying. Hes going to start bringing you money. Alright. Michelle Chambers paid off only $27,000. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. All rights reserved. Only a nickel on every dollar have been collected so far. Im a very deliberate person. They decorated their 6,000-square-foot stucco house with antiques, paintings and statues, including a six-foot wooden Indian that Michele had bought for $600. He'd even bragged that he'd killed people. "He said, 'Yeah, right,' and turned his head. Anybody who gets caught up in the system is getting chewed up by it, the now-retired Gronquist told the Observer. FBI video shows the agency searching that home and finding drawers full of cash. Ghantt didn't actually meet Chambers until the night of the heist, though, according to Diamant, who would go on to write a book about it.The reason Ghantt got involved was always the . Fourteen defendants were ordered to make restitution payments to Loomis Fargo totaling almost $19 million. You might as well go all the way now.". Federal prosecutors would ultimately charge 21 defendants in the case, including the Floyds, who were charged with (and pleaded guilty to) money laundering. There it was, "The Heist." That first day in prison was scary, Ghantt said. They cursed. On his way out, he grabbed the surveillance video, hoping to cover his tracks. The Chambers, however, didnt fit in with the other members of the gated community. Search by Name Search . And then I realized that a lot of people knew who I was and they had followed the case.. He appeared happily matched with his high-spirited wife, Michele, and the two children from her first marriage. A woman by the name of Kelly Campbell had worked there in 1996, and she and Ghantt had become friends in that time. I think I always knew that, but lost my way for a while.". Ghantt was the vault manager and was surrounded daily by millions of dollars worth of temptation. October was "a blast," he said. He became the target of a nationwide FBI manhunt and was arrested five months later near the Mexican resort of Cozumel. ". Twelve hours later, at 6 that evening, Eric Payne drove a rented Budget van to his workplace, a graphics company on Performance Road in western Mecklenburg County called Reynolds & Reynolds, which was closed for the night and had a secluded parking lot where they intended to transfer the cash. About 5:45 a.m., he got into his pickup and began the 45-minute drive to work in Charlotte. He was also a former FBI informant who had tipped the bureau off to a planned robbery of a Loomis Fargo armored truck that never came to fruition. In the meantime, the FBI was closing in looking to bust a total of 21 suspected accomplices. I flew from Atlanta to New Orleans. I did a little research into crime statistics and the local cops. That was pretty awesome., It felt like a dream vacation until he started running out of money. "That would be living on the run, and I didn't want my kids to live that way. "I said, 'I don't want him killed.' A report by the General Accounting Office found that as of budget year 2016, $110 billion in restitution ordered by the federal courts was outstanding and that more than 90% of the amount had been classified as uncollectible.. My love for my family is by far the most important thing in my life. Its a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and I went down and talked to them, got to meet Zach Galifianakis and the director, Ghantt said. Learn about careers at Cox Media Group. To protect themselves, David and Steve didn't meet or talk. Its 90-minutes of mugging for the camera, but the only people who feel mugged are those that pay to see Masterminds. A former FBI agent who helped crack the case sat down with Channel 9 Reporter Glenn Counts to talk about the clues that led to solving the crime, and how the group got caught. 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. Guller was the attorney for Steven Chambers, who came up with the original idea for the Loomis theft. Most people are going to forgive you. Though David had no criminal experience, he felt he could offer expert advice: He'd just finished reading a book on the FBI. The use of this site is restricted to authorized personnel only. Ghantt and one other employee were the last to leave. It is based on the October 1997 Loomis Fargo Robbery in North Carolina, which was the subject of the 2016 American comedy film Masterminds. The FBI continues to search for a missing $2 million from the theft. . The movie was called Masterminds and stars Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig and Owen Wilson. Kelly drove David to the airport. Chambers and Campbell were waiting for him in the Loomis Fargo parking lot, both in separate vehicles. By Dustin Rowles | Film | September 30, 2016 |. All but one took plea deals, including Ghantt, who was sentenced to seven years in prison. Or that hed gotten lucky gambling. Kelly Loomis. The modern company was formed in 1997 by the consolidation of two armoured security concerns, Wells Fargo Armored Service and Loomis Armored Inc. Their international network covers over 200 operating locations in the US and eleven western European countries. Scott was so nervous, he said, that he couldn't help. He worked fueling airplanes, driving a forklift, and in 1994 he got a job as a vault superintendent at Loomis. You're an idiot.'". If you didnt live in the Charlotte area 25 years ago, you might not believe it. Ghantt pulled out $50,000 from the back of the unmarked Loomis Fargo van. At 6 that morning, FBI supervisor Rick Shaffer led 12 agents and several Gaston County police officers up a winding road on Cramer Mountain to Steve's home. The biggest restitution numbers for victims of financial crimes generally involve Ponzi schemes or sweepstakes fraud, not cash thefts. Then, I started loading the van., Money, when bound in bulk and stacked in canvas bags, is heavier than you might expect. Ghantt simply got ready for work one morning knowing it would be his last day on the job. An officer rang the doorbell. They discussed it further, and Campbell asked him when they should do it. Scott Grant said he hesitated, but agreed if no guns would be involved. The number of people involved had ballooned after Steve started asking friends and family to help him launder the stolen cash. Throughout the multi-year-long case and subsequent trials, journalists often referred to Ghantt and the others as trailer trash and hillbillies. Scott didn't want to, but then he remembered the hundred-grand payday. By late November, McKinney made a third trip to Mexico, saying he'd help David move to Mexico City. Sandra Floyd, Michele Chambers's mother, remembers the first time she saw the house. He longed for the middle-class lifestyle of his childhood, with its private religious-school education and Disney World vacations. A few of the Loomis restitution cases have already been closed either because the amount was paid in full or because the 20-year clock wound down. Scary. By now, you probably know the names -- David Ghantt, Steve Chambers and his wife Michelle, and Kelly Campbell. One thing about teammates, in David's view: You could always trust them. Hed never really been in trouble, he wasnt a career criminal, said retired FBI agent John Wydra. On his second trip, Steve gave McKinney David's hotel address. I studied up on the FBI. He pocketed the money and told Chambers and Campbell to send him his cut in Mexico. That sounds like a lot of money until its compared to the $18,930,201.26 the group was ordered to pay. The next day, Kelly drove back to Steve's mobile home to watch the news with Steve and Michele. The property has changed hands several times since then. But being the vault supervisor at Loomis Fargo had one perk -- exposure to tons of cash. ". The teller, who hadn't asked, filed a "suspicious activity report." Its attracted workers like Ghantt. She was a wife and mother with two children. He recalled that another agent, Phil King, said, "Hey, there was an article in the [Charlotte] Observer about beeper codes. But what the bank didnt tell Michelle, and Michelle didnt know, was that one of those forms get filled out if you ask about it, or if its close to $10,000 or if they suspect that any part of that transaction is suspicious, Wydra said. All the while, Ghantt prepared himself for the task at hand. I told the lead investigator I was glad to see him.. As with many recent historic events, this one had been caught on videotape, a fact that a few dozen Charlotte FBI agents would learn in a hastily organized Sunday morning meeting. Of course the problem was, the money belonged to someone else. What concerned her was the chance of getting caught. 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. And with Loomis, were looking at only one case. She will never get beyond the debt. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]. He didn't want to abandon his parents. Kelly says she underestimated the value of her life before the heist. So we were able to figure out with all the denominations, it would require about 20 safe deposit boxes to store it all.. Agents noticed it two months later when it flowed to them through official channels, along with hundreds of similar reports involving other people. Masterminds which opens nationwide today (though youd be hard pressed to know that given the decided lack of promotion) is proof again that all the talent in the world cannot salvage a bad script, and not even a good screenwriter can make up for terrible performances. Now worried about both the FBI and McKinney, he spent even more time alone in his room. . Then another. Still, she wasn't happy. On Nov. 12, a confidential informant told the FBI about Steve Chambers's move from mobile home to mansion. "So he stays behind and moving over two thousand pounds. And it turned Steve into he thought he was Don Corleone all of a sudden.. "I said, 'That's all they gave me,' " McKinney recalled. About 5:30 the next morning, McKinney knocked on David's door and dropped $8,500 on the bed. 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