"A lot of people out there had it worse than me, but . Together, they drove in a convoy to an industrial warehouse eight miles away, where Eric Payne, a fourth accomplice was. "Things I always wanted to do, but never had the time or the money," he said. Criminals dont usually get high-paying jobs after leaving prison. Soon thereafter, he met Kelly Campbell, a co-worker at Loomis Fargo. About 20 ago, Campbell sent him a letter of apology, but he never responded. . And after two years, you're just a file." Federal prosecutors would ultimately charge 21 defendants in the case, including the Floyds, who were charged with (and pleaded guilty to) money laundering. Without really intending to, Kelly recalls, she turned the conversation to the possibility of a heist. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. For reasons that remain obscure, Robert spilled the beans to David. About the same time, Kelly and McKinney received phone calls from agents who told them to open their doors. "I felt that if I didn't do something, I was going to snap," David said. . Where was Ghantt? Then another. ". So yeah, Ghantt continues, I took a bus from there to Atlanta, and then I hopped a cab from the bus station to the airport in Atlanta., Back in North Carolina, his accomplices were working as fast as they could to hide the $17 million. CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS FROM 1998 and ACTORS IN MOVIE. Twenty-five years ago, a small group of rural North Carolinian amateur bank robbers pulled off the second-largest heist in American history. He told her he wanted more of "his" cash. About 200 keys dangled from it. 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. Thatd be the time to do it, Ghantt recalls. Kelly, she says now, was thinking about how happy she would be to send this man far away from her. Based on a true story, the premise itself is fascinating, which makes Masterminds all the more a waste. Campbell left her job in the summer of 1997, but she would later use Ghantt's feelings for her to her own advantage to get him to agree to carry out the multi-million-dollar heist. "I said, 'Yeah, sure.' They also purchased tanning beds, a pool table, a Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle and all kinds of expensive furniture. Were others involved? Scott Grant and Steve pulled up next to her in a Mazda. He worked fueling airplanes, driving a forklift, and in 1994 he got a job as a vault superintendent at Loomis. In real life: False. . They found Ghantts truck, and in it were his keys, some personal items and his wedding ring. Chambers and Campbell were waiting for him in the Loomis Fargo parking lot, both in separate vehicles. He appeared happily matched with his high-spirited wife, Michele, and the two children from her first marriage. In 2017, for example, Paul Burks of Lexington was ordered to pay $244 million to the victims of his worldwide Ponzi scheme, Zeek Rewards. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist (No Ratings Yet) . Find 145 people named Kelly Loomis along with free Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok profiles on PeekYou - true people search. Going south, nobody really looks at what youre shipping. 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. Ghantt ultimately agreed to the plan, largely, due to a mountain of credit-card debt and in hopes of changing his life for the better. In the first days after the arrests, agents recovered or accounted for all but about $2 million of the stolen money. It was unclear whether anyone will get that money, authorities said. He gave the rest to Kelly. At one point, the hoodlum shows up and Ghantt is wearing a Jerome Bettis Pittsburgh Steelers jersey; the hoodlums favorite team is the Steelers, and he caves and tells Ghantt that McKinney wants him dead. . They stocked a wine cellar. Chambers went from a mobile home in Lincoln County to a mansion in Cramerton. Kelly called David at. 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. Loomis, Fargo offered a $500,000 reward after the theft. Thanksgiving and Christmas were difficult. ];Kelly Jane Campbell [Misc. They ditched the Loomis van, then drove the cash-heavy Budget van to Steve's mobile home in Lincoln County, where his wife, Michele, waited with a calculator and rubber bands. That was the most painful truth to come to. . Zach always plays that bumbling kind of lunatic, but hes not, Ghantt says. . (The conversation was depicted as 100 percent private on screen). 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. By late November, McKinney made a third trip to Mexico, saying he'd help David move to Mexico City. By March, Steve Chambers decided he needed to do something more drastic about Ghantt, making plans to send a hitman to Mexico to silence him for good. No hard feelings. These (Loomis) guys, not so much.. Twenty people were convicted of roles big and small in the massive 1997 armored-car warehouse heist in west Charlotte. Field Operations; Corporate; Why Loomis. Cool, I say. "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. The plan called for David to leave the vault door ajar, then maneuver a few minutes alone at the end of his shift, long enough to loot the cash, then pass it to Kelly and Steve. Michelle, meanwhile, purchased new breasts for herself, along with a $43,000 diamond ring and a new convertible BMW Z3. That October, the Chamberses' bank accounts ballooned. Scott Grant said he hesitated, but agreed if no guns would be involved. They planned to kill a man named David Ghantt, the guy who had made their extravagant new lifestyle a reality. Inside the Mazda, Steve told Scott Grant to get out and help David. What that says is, We will never forgive you for what youve done.. In the dark, Scott inserted one key into the back door slot. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. First, in January, he tried to get someone to take some millions down to Mexico. Once in a lifetime, Murdaugh verdict sends a Lowcountry message: No one is above the law | Opinion, Charlotte Waffle House found with live roach, unclean equipment during health inspection. Scott was so nervous, he said, that he couldn't help. "He showed me a lot of money," McKinney said. and "I'm rich!". Ghantt:It baffles me to this day. We need to set up some way for me to get my money. She said, We got it all worked out. "He was in tears. This is where it starts to unravel, Ghantt tells me with a wry laugh. Hidden in it was a 3 1/2-carat diamond ring that cost $43,000. So the last third of the movie is almost entirely fiction. . She was devastated, Diamant said. Paying the money back has taken a lot longer, and time is running out for the U.S. government to collect. Ghantt was the vault manager and was surrounded. In that time, I realized most of my problems were because of me. Where I was going was right there near the Cayman Islands. From going fishing to riding horses on the beach the whole nine yards. To that end, Campbell brought in her childhood friend Steve Chambers, who was characterized in the local press as a small-time drug dealer and a local fence for stolen goods, to lead the team. I was looking at small sailboats and theyre not cheap, he tells me. A woman by the name of Kelly Campbell had worked there in 1996, and she and Ghantt had become friends in that time. 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. Now, I kind of know something is fishy., Alone in Mexico with limited cash, Ghantt thought about turning himself in. "I was thinking, 'They aren't paying me enough,' " McKinney recalled. In December, agents got the tie-in they were looking for: Kelly Campbell had bought a $30,000 Toyota minivan with cash and registered it to one of Steve Chambers's aliases. She declined to take a lie-detector test. He rewarded Robert with $3,000 and vowed never to meet McKinney alone. "That would be living on the run, and I didn't want my kids to live that way. 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. I had to go in there and tell her the whole story, and she was real cool about it. . CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) _ A woman who helped plan the $17 million robbery of armored car company Loomis, Fargo & Co. was sentenced Tuesday to nearly six years in prison and ordered to pay back more than $4 million. . She came from a blue-collar background, a high school dropout who had grown tired of working in a mill and gotten an equivalency diploma. They sweated, though the night was cool. And though she had been made night shift supervisor at Allied Security, she still felt she would never make the money she needed. Ghantt:I've always known that story had potential to be a comedy or a drama. Ghantt and one other employee were the last to leave. (John D. Simmons/The Charlotte Observer via AP) The Associated Press, BY MICHAEL GORDON, The Charlotte Observer. I had a four-hour layover there, and then from New Orleans to Cancun.. The cart held about $2 million, and the thief made multiple trips. That led to better jobs, like the one at Loomis. You see, there's a reason Loomis Fargo used armored cars to move large amounts of cash. He recalled that another agent, Phil King, said, "Hey, there was an article in the [Charlotte] Observer about beeper codes. That sounds like a lot of money until its compared to the $18,930,201.26 the group was ordered to pay. Ultimately, though, the heist wasnt Ghantts idea, which meant he didnt decide who else was involved. Or is the loot buried in somebody's yard? I knew I was going to be the prime suspect. On his second trip, Steve gave McKinney David's hotel address. They involve Loomis armored car driver David Scott Ghantt. He had stolen $17 million from Loomis Fargo. Industry leading Training and Development. Ghantt was never in Chamberss presence until he actually handed off the money to him. Not until David was gone did Scott realize he didn't know which key to use. How Bridgerton restarted buzz about her ancestry. Chambers did hire McKinney to kill Ghantt, but initially McKinney was making personal cash deliveries to Ghantt in Mexico on behalf of Chambers. Instead of lobster, the man who stole $17 million survived on home-cooked pasta and grilled cheese sandwiches. Im a very deliberate person. Heres what happened on Sunday nights episode. Ghantt started at Loomis Fargo in 1994, and soon worked his way up from an armored car driver to a vault supervisor. 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. Its kind of like that. shes now Miss USA. Ghantt was already married when he took part in the heist, to a woman named Tammy who author Diamant described as very nice. It is true, however, that she had no idea about the plot and that he fled to Mexico without telling her. "I said, 'I don't want him killed.' After years of reflection and time in prison to work on himself, Ghantt was able to find a way to a better version of himself. There used to be a consulate in Cancun. He would pay McKinney $250,000, half upfront. And it turned Steve into he thought he was Don Corleone all of a sudden.. They loaded the wine cellar with Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Steve hung a velvet portrait of Elvis Presley in the basement. 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. He went deep-sea fishing. Thatd probably been the best thing for me to do, really. I couldn't understand why I hadn't been more successful," David said. At the end of one session, they wound up kissing outside the pickup. I would call us friends. I really enjoyed the little scuba diving trip. Kelly drove David to the airport. He hadnt checked ahead of time if the airport had any available flights, let alone if it would even be open. Scary. What concerned her was the chance of getting caught. Purchases included a pool table, jewelry (including a $43,000 diamond ring), a minivan, $20,000 worth of cigars, and the 7,000-square-foot home on the side of Cramer. As he and Kelly met in a field behind a shooting range to refine the plan, she allowed him to believe she was falling for him. 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. When October 1997 began, Steve and Michelle Chambers lived in a double-wide trailer. . No regrets. >> 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,. Sandra Floyd, Michele Chambers's mother, remembers the first time she saw the house. 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. Given his position at the bank, hed be the one to pull off the robbery, and he intended to be ready. In the two days after the robbery, agents interviewed more than 100 people, most connected with David. But agents weren't ready to arrest Kelly and Steve. He flip-flopped on the heist idea three or four times. Loomis officials--forced to break into their own vault because David had taken the keys with him--calculated that he had stolen $17,044,000, making the second biggest heist in U.S. history, following the $18.8 million theft of an armored car by another Loomis Fargo employee just six months earlier. I hit the local library the thing that we used to do before Google, Ghantt says with a small laugh. 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. I didn't think I had the guts. Its really just a matter of timing, more than anything. And she says, How much do you think wed get out of there? I said, Ten to 15 million. But I didnt really know.. It didnt take the local police long to put the pieces together. Is he telling the truth? David kissed his sleeping wife on the cheek on the morning of Oct. 4. They placed a bust of Caesar in the dining room. Hed be in contact. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. Meanwhile, outside Reynolds & Reynolds, Steve, Scott and Eric needed to move 2,748 pounds of cash, quickly, from the Loomis van into the Budget van. They soon realized David had stolen more money than would fit in their 55-gallon barrels. The agents tapped the phone, and it didnt take long to locate Ghantt after that. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Why do we feel its so necessary to treat people like this, to say, OK, well just ruin the rest of your life because you made a bad decision., Punishment should not last a lifetime. Everybody seemed stunned. . "We're not the type that questions everything people tell us," Floyd said. In real life: True. This was in the 1990s the Columbia Airport back then was closed at around 9:30, 10 oclock. . In real life: False. Stay informed daily on the latest news and advice on COVID-19 from the editors at U.S. News & World Report. But after she left, she reached back out to Ghantt and brought up what theyd talked about that day in the break room. Hes very articulate. I didnt pick the heist team. "But, I hate to admit it, it doesn't faze me one bit. But few could have guessed how spectacularly the heist would go wrong after the criminals initially got away with it. Then another. He'd stay up all night, boosted by coffee, waiting for the sunrise over the ocean. And to me, if it pisses them off, Im all for it.. Ghantt worked at Loomis Fargos regional office vault in Charlotte. He was doing what the rest of us were doing making bad decisions. Steve tried keys on a side door. He's a very likable person. Her husband gave her a brown teddy bear. At 6-1 and 220 pounds, Steve was stocky and imposing, a fast talker with a brown goatee. 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. I knew that the news wouldnt break until later that morning. By the time the month concluded, the couple had purchased a 7,000-square-foot stone mansion in a gated country club community. He didn't want to abandon his parents. Things were spiraling fast. Down in Jacksonville, a Loomis Fargo employee took $18 million from an armored van he was driving. The audacity of the act was breathtaking. Meanwhile, Michele Chambers was laughing and saying, repeatedly, "Look at all this money!" The initials on the money wrapper belonged to a Loomis employee who hadn't worked there since before the heist. Soon, the couple would be paying for something else, too: a hitman. Ghantt was in fact hiding out in Mexico using McKinneys I.D., which had been sold to Chambers months earlier. Ghantt:We're both North Carolina boys so we had a lot to talk about from the very beginning. Soon thereafter, he met Kelly Campbell, a co-worker at Loomis Fargo. Kelly would only discover later that leading up to the heist, Steve had been writing bad checks, $17,000 worth, for which he would later be convicted. Inside were, along with other personal items, his keys and wedding ring. It wasnt a big hit, but Ghantt, who was played by Galifianakis, gives it a rave review. I just want people to go to the movies and have a good laugh, even if it's at my expense. He was an old friend from East Gaston High School, tough and sure of himself. If they could just sit on the money until then, he said, they'd be fine. Thats nearly $11 million less than former Kings Mountain resident David Ghantt (played by Galifianakis in the film) helped steal from the vault where he worked in Charlotte back in October 1997. 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 . She just called me up on the phone and said, Hey, lets meet one day after work. And then, we were talking and she says, How do you feel about robbing Loomis Fargo? Ghantt tells me. When McKinney realized Ghantt was wanted for the Loomis Fargo robbery, he backed off personally because he didnt want to be anywhere near a federal investigation. 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. When he walked onto the plane, he was wearing big, tall cowboy boots, where hed stuffed a majority of the smuggled cash. 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 . David, now 30, says he's sorry he abandoned his wife--who he says still loves him--and his family. Kelly drove her pickup to a lot across the street from the Loomis building, on Suttle Avenue in Charlotte. Steve told me to tell [David] whatever was necessary to keep him happy.".
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