Was Queen Charlotte Black? It was one of those things everyone (at Loomis Fargo) joked about, but in time, it became serious. How Did David Ghantt, Kelly Campbell, Steve Chambers Steal More Than 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. It will be some time before she can commune with domestic animals again. Back in North Carolina, Ghantts former accomplices were living high on the hog. Money'll turn your head, I don't care who you are. According to Butcher, Campbells last official payment came in June 2021 when the government appears to have seized a tax refund of $81.24. The whole town I was staying in was 98.9 percent Mexican, except for when the cruise ships were in, Ghantt recalls. Burks was also ordered to serve 15 years in prison, limiting his ability to balance his books. 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. How Bridgerton restarted buzz about her ancestry. Tags: Associated Press, courts, crime, North Carolina. 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 figures can be astounding. This meant a bump in pay, up to $8.15 an hour. Except the person he offered $150,000 to mule $2.5 million down to Ghantt in Mexico turned him down and instead went to the FBI. Steve had already paid McKinney $50,000 for the use of his ID. Kelly told the FBI she had done drugs with David but denied knowing about the theft. 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. They also purchased tanning beds, a pool table, a Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle and all kinds of expensive furniture. Working together, they got the gate open, then drove in a caravan to the Reynolds & Reynolds parking lot. Throughout the multi-year-long case and subsequent trials, journalists often referred to Ghantt and the others as trailer trash and hillbillies. Kelly was lying. She didn't plan to move to Mexico. David, now 30, says he's sorry he abandoned his wife--who he says still loves him--and his family. Its everything thats coming north.. You might as well go all the way now.". Here's what Floyd recalls: After two games of pool, Steve told him, "You know, we do a lot of gambling. . Agents noticed it two months later when it flowed to them through official channels, along with hundreds of similar reports involving other people. Before long, the FBI had wiretaps on the ringleader, Steve Chambers, and then they waited for the right time to make their arrests. 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. Meanwhile, back in North Carolina, Ghantts wife woke up to find her husband missing. No hard feelings. The movie was overly silly and, based on a post-screening conversation with former Observer reporter Jeff Diamant who wrote a detailed 279-page book about the occasionally funny but mostly just-plain fascinating crime, titled Heist much of what wound up in the film is fiction. Punishment needs to be fair and realistic. No regrets. "I've moved on with my life," he said Tuesday. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist - molecularrecipes.com ". Meanwhile, Michele Chambers was laughing and saying, repeatedly, "Look at all this money!" Then another. Down in Jacksonville, a Loomis Fargo employee took $18 million from an armored van he was driving. Loomis, Fargo offered a $500,000 reward after the theft. What purpose does that serve other than to denigrate that person into abject poverty?. On his second trip, Steve gave McKinney David's hotel address. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 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. The mystery 1-4-3 caller had been Kelly, though agents didn't know it yet. 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. There it was, "The Heist." "But I had to know.". I hear her typing. "He showed me a lot of money," McKinney said. Now two NC men face prison. Theres some things I want to do., Ghantt planned on traveling from Mexico to the Cayman Islands, bypassing customs along the way. So I was glad it was over. He didn't want to abandon his parents. In real life: Mostly true. What that says is, We will never forgive you for what youve done.. Steve tried keys on a side door. I think I always knew that, but lost my way for a while.". I said, Probably, the best time would be on the weekend; theres fewer people there. Meanwhile, Steve was keeping a close eye on Kelly. They soon realized David had stolen more money than would fit in their 55-gallon barrels. Ghantt was the vault manager and was surrounded. Question: Any contact with Steve Chambers or any of the others involved with the heist? In real life: True. Mine did. Ghantt fled to Mexico. I've got a good woman.". "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. Ghantt simply got ready for work one morning knowing it would be his last day on the job. Then FBI agent Wydra watched Steve's wife, Michele, deposit about $8,000 at a Gaston County, N.C., bank. Everything came crashing down on an early March morning in 1998. 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. Chambers went from a mobile home in Lincoln County to a mansion in Cramerton. The real 'Masterminds' Each week, Michele deposited thousands of dollars in cash. Kelly's company. This was in the 1990s the Columbia Airport back then was closed at around 9:30, 10 oclock. You can garnish wages. 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. David had grabbed $50,000 cash, but could figure out only how to carry $25,000 with him on the plane. It's one of the biggest jokes at the place. So he got in a cab and went to a mall. But it didnt really hit me until later., On March 2nd, when the FBI agents walked up to Ghantt in Playa del Carmen and told him he was under arrest, Ghantt was relieved. Were others involved? Butcher says the federal courts in the Western District of North Carolina have never handled a case quite like Loomis. A third tape he didn't know about kept recording. What made her abandon an ordinary existence to commit this spectacular, doomed crime? Paying the money back has taken a lot longer, and time is running out for the U.S. government to collect. Our Benefits. 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. 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. The best states in the U.S. come from coast to coast. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Hed be in contact. For reasons that remain obscure, Robert spilled the beans to David. At the Halloween party, though, Kelly gave in to Steve, and agreed it had to be done. Gaston County residents remember how that worked out. He told him McKinney was in Mexico to kill somebody. Heist: The Oddball Crew Behind the $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft by Time passed, and Campbell eventually quit her job at Loomis Fargo. In real life: True. I had to go in there and tell her the whole story, and she was real cool about it. The FBI, in fact, obtained the evidence they needed to bring down the major players, including Chambers, after catching them talking about the murder plot on the telephone via wiretap. I can take it.". Twice a week over the next 12 months, we will take you back to the winter of sheep cloning and the summer of Con Air. Ghantt, meanwhile, was losing his patience and starting to make threats. Going south, nobody really looks at what youre shipping. The audacity of the act was breathtaking. It was late in 1996. The next week, they heard Steve plan to send Mike McKinney to Mexico to kill David Ghantt. He couldn't even bear to stick around for the final tally--though when he left he didn't forget to take $6,000, the first cut of his expected $100,000 share. LeVaughn Kelly Campbell (born July 23, 1980 in Atlanta, Georgia) is a former football wide receiver. The phone rang: Kelly had a problem. First, they loaded the cash into blue 55-gallon barrels, and then they moved the barrels into a rental van. Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand. . how to match 8 hypercubes in bejeweled. Besides her prison sentence, Campbell must undergo mental health and drug treatment and spend two years in a supervised release program. He took bus tours of Mayan ruins. There was a little voice in my head that said, 'Don't do it. 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. I had a four-hour layover there, and then from New Orleans to Cancun.. Thatd be the time to do it, Ghantt recalls. More agents waited outside to arrest them. Steve told me to tell [David] whatever was necessary to keep him happy.". 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. 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. Steve had another conversation with Kelly about killing David. 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. That was the most painful truth to come to. Federal prosecutors would ultimately charge 21 defendants in the case, including the Floyds, who were charged with (and pleaded guilty to) money laundering. The initials on the money wrapper belonged to a Loomis employee who hadn't worked there since before the heist. She declined to take a lie-detector test. David kissed his sleeping wife on the cheek on the morning of Oct. 4. I wish them all a happy life and that's about it. He would pay McKinney $250,000, half upfront. Twenty-five years ago, a small group of rural North Carolinian amateur bank robbers pulled off the second-largest heist in American history. 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. 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 other co-conspirators. The pager entry was 1-4-3. They stocked a wine cellar. The True Story of David Ghantt and the Loomis Fargo Heist - PrepScholar So he convinced a local hoodlum in Mexico to try to kill Ghantt. 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. The number of people involved had ballooned after Steve started asking friends and family to help him launder the stolen cash. They Had 17 Million Dollars and No Sense at All - AMW Magazine Question: You were a consultant? Did you get paid? real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist (No Ratings Yet) . A version of this story originally appeared on CharlotteObserver.com. Should David be killed after he gave them the money? . His wife, Tammy, was as shocked as Loomis officials. Then, on a mid-September day, as he reviewed a credit card bill, David did some math. Scott Grant said he hesitated, but agreed if no guns would be involved. Nah, it was always about the money, he told the agents. Explain? The bizarre true story of the criminals behind the second-largest bank heist in American history. Question: What made you, Chambers and the others think you could get away with this? Fourteen defendants were ordered to make restitution payments to Loomis Fargo totaling almost $19 million. Hes very articulate. But you cant get blood from a stone, Johns said. We spoke to the FBI agents who investigated the case who say the real-life. It was unclear whether anyone will get that money, authorities said. They picked me, he says with a rueful tone. With the help of Aldo, a Mexican waiter he had befriended, David found a beach apartment in Cancun. But McKinney never stopped trying to kill Ghantt although, initally, McKinney thought Chambers had paid for the hit over a drug deal gone bad, Diamant said. Once I start something, Im going to the end., As for how he felt in the moment, he says, Imagine me and you went on an airplane. Her only brush with the law had been a DUI arrest. They sweated, though the night was cool. Kelly had resisted this suggestion before the heist: She and David were friends. They hatched the idea half-jokingly, over a game of Uno, never dreaming they were about to make Bonnie and Clyde look like bottom feeders. He flew in an ultra-light plane. But agents weren't ready to arrest Kelly and Steve. 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. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. The FBI now knew Chambers had Loomis cash. That time in prison was actually good for me. In the two days after the robbery, agents interviewed more than 100 people, most connected with David. Called Masterminds, the 2016 film stars Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig and Owen Wilson. One thing about teammates, in David's view: You could always trust them. But in November, money ran low. In early November, Steve lured the real Mike McKinney, an ex-Marine, to North Carolina from his Illinois home. Figure in Loomis Heist Gets Prison | AP News 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.. Ghantt started at Loomis Fargo in 1994, and soon worked his way up from an armored car driver to a vault supervisor. He grabbed the tapes from two VCRs that connected to 16 security cameras. Steven Chambers [Misc. David said he realized then, for the first time, he might not see the millions he thought he had coming to him. Kelly Campbell, 29, a former company employee, entered guilty pleas earlier to bank larceny, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder charges. 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). Stay informed daily on the latest news and advice on COVID-19 from the editors at U.S. News & World Report. 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. Back then, it was one of the hotspots for hiding money. Ghantt planned to live off the interest for the rest of his life. The government does not run debtors prisons, says U.S. The FBI was also surveilling Kelly Campbell and followed her to a pay phone that she used to place calls to Mexico. It affects everybody different. Everybody seemed stunned. They found Ghantts truck, and in it were his keys, some personal items and his wedding ring. What made her do it? They were the butt of a national joke. "She said, 'What would it take to convince you to do it?' Dependent care account. David trusted her. Records show the government has garnished his Social Security checks. There, Scott and Eric paced the floor as Steve tried to calm them down. . Theres no way to get it back, Butcher told The Charlotte Observer. Theres less security. The next day, he was sitting next to FBI agent Mark Rozzi on a US Airways flight to Charlotte. By the time the month concluded, the couple had purchased a 7,000-square-foot stone mansion in a gated country club community. The Loomis defendants face no additional legal jeopardy for not paying off their debts. Soon, the couple would be paying for something else, too: a hitman. His mobile home was nicely furnished, on eight acres with a stream in the back. The teller, who hadn't asked, filed a "suspicious activity report." 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. 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.. Ghantt went on to explain that he left for his flight to Mexico with about $25,000, and that two or three deliveries of extra money was made to him by the man Chambers would pay to kill him. On Nov. 12, a confidential informant told the FBI about Steve Chambers's move from mobile home to mansion. In real life: False. In the meantime, the FBI was closing in looking to bust a total of 21 suspected accomplices. He approached a longtime friend, Eric Payne, who lived in a mobile home south of Belmont, N.C. Steve offered him $100,000 to help. 25th anniversary of the incredible Loomis Fargo bank heist | wcnc.com Ghantt was working a late shift, and just after 6:30 p.m., his coworkers were packing up and heading for home. I really enjoyed the little scuba diving trip. All the while, Ghantt prepared himself for the task at hand. Clerk of Court Frank Johns of Charlotte. In early December, Steve and Michele invited relatives to their daughter's sixth birthday party. I was expecting her to kick me out of the house., Years later, after they married and had a child together, they watched a movie based on the whole ordeal. I knew I was going to be the prime suspect. So the last third of the movie is almost entirely fiction. I threw you out, and then threw the parachute after you. Find 145 people named Kelly Loomis along with free Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok profiles on PeekYou - true people search. They planned to kill a man named David Ghantt, the guy who had made their extravagant new lifestyle a reality.