Ghantt met up with the other members of the plot and offloaded the cash. Well they were in some sense celebrities, Gronquist said. Not all of them, but some of them are going to forgive you, theyre going to overlook it., he said. On the evening ofOctober 4, 1997, the Loomis Fargo & Co branch in Charlotte, North Carolina was in the process of being plundered. Accompanying her was Steve Chambers, who, though unemployed, had recently moved . Former FBI agent John Wydra, 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. We dont have the manpower to track all that (restitution) money down I pay (restitution to) thousands of people, but its in drips and drabs.. be blocked or permanently banned without warning. FILE - Kelly Campbell, one of the 21 people convicted for their involvement in the $17 million Loomis Fargo heist, awaits sentencing for her part in the theft at her mobile home near Mount Holly, N.C. on Aug 16, 1999. So we were able to figure out with all the denominations, it would require about 20 safe deposit boxes to store it all., WSOC TV facebook feed(Opens a new window), Part 2: Channel 9 speaks with the man at the center of Loomis Fargo heist 25 years ago, ALSO READ: 14-year-old boy robbed at gunpoint while waiting for bus in east Charlotte, mom says, ALSO READ: Leader of $3M check theft, bank fraud scheme in Charlotte area sentenced to prison, ALSO READ: Man released from jail, accused of robbing banks while wearing electronic monitor, police say, ALSO READ: Suspect from south Charlotte bank robbery found, CMPD says, NCSHP arrest driver accused of nearly hitting 2 students at bus stop in Statesville, CMS delays opening of new school meant to ease overcrowding, Mooresville orders removal of memorial at park after teens death, Chick-fil-A announces app data breach, tells customers how to protect personal information, Charlotte woman celebrates $1 million scratch-off prize, WSOC - TV Public File Contact / Program Director, WAXN - TV Public File Contact / Program Director. Chambers had broached the possibility of a robbery to Campbell earlier in the summer. The robbery was committed by David Scott Ghantt who was the vault supervisor and accomplices Kelly Campbell, Steve Chambers, Michelle Chambers, Michael Gobies, and other four members. Restitution is a familiar part of sentencing in federal court. Loomis Fargo heist: 25 years later While David Ghantt trusted Steve Chambers enough to leave his cut behind, Chambers had other plans. Steve was a serious guy? I gotta go.". Jim Gronquist was Campbells defense attorney. 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. His collection case, which closes in November 2026, got credit for the couples $540,000 house on Cramer Mountain in Gaston County, Butcher says. What that says is, We will never forgive you for what youve done.. And once he started, he didn't stop with one cartful. 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. 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. Unexplained Mysteries and Strange Things,Cool Interesting stuff has been online since early 2011. David Scott Ghantt, his former co-worker Kelly Campbell and her friends Steve and Michelle Chambers carried out the Loomis Fargo heist on Oct. 4, 1997. In August 1997, Campbell informed Ghantt about an old high school friend of hers named Steve Chambers, who could assist Ghantt to execute a massive cash robbery of the Loomis Fargo vault in one night. What that says is, We will never forgive you for what youve done. His collection case, which closes in November 2026, got credit for the couples $540,000 house on Cramer Mountain in Gaston County, Butcher says. And after two years, the case is just a file. He hired a hitman to take Ghantt out, tying up the ultimate loose end. But if you did, youll never forget it. In all, they recovered $6.6 million. Was the temptation too much? Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Michelle Chambers received a few more months than Ghantt, because she had violated several bond conditions. All but one of the defendants pleaded guilty. That sounds like a lot of money until its compared to the $18,930,201.26 the group was ordered to pay. If we can sit on the money for a year, maybe two, it could work.". Enforcement of this policy is at the It was 2:00 p.m. on October 4, 1997, and tension was building between two planners of what would rank high among the largest heists in United States history. In the parking lot, David sat in his pickup truck smoking a cigarette and waving good-bye as the trainee drove home. The defendants received sentences ranging from probation for several relatives to over 11 years in federal prison for Steve Chambers. The biggest restitution numbers for victims of financial crimes generally involve Ponzi schemes or sweepstakes fraud, not cash thefts. But he wasn't finished. 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. The strange story of Mary Reeser Spontaneous Human Combustion. "For the first year after a crime," he told her, "they're all over you, with six to ten agents. The FBI heard about the plot and agents knew they could no longer wait. Growing up, David's family went to Disney World, sent him to religious school, and shopped at places he couldn't afford as a self-supporting adult. These weren't the hardest of criminals, and though there was logic to not knowing each other's names, they had derived some of their methods from Hollywood depictions of crime. She will never get beyond the debt. shaka wear graphic tees is candy digital publicly traded ellen lawson wife of ted lawson real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist 25 Feb/23 (No Ratings Yet) uncanny, eerie, unnatural, preternatural, supernatural, unearthly, other-worldly, unreal, ghostly, mysterious, mystifying, strange, abnormal, unusual. Thirty years! In the grand scheme of things, the prison sentence for stealing $20 million wouldn't be much worse than for stealing just $500,000 maybe a few extra years behind bars. 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. "Everything's gonna be all right," she told him. She was five-foot-seven, had dirty-blond hair, and had worked with him for about a year at Loomis Fargo, until she left for another job in 1996. 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. In August 1997, Campbell informed Ghantt about an old high school friend of hers named Steve Chambers, who could assist Ghantt to execute a massive cash robbery of the Loomis Fargo vault in one night. I actually loved reading through this post. He decided at that moment that if Kelly called again, he would go for it. As a child, he had preferred reading to playing sports, and he would say, as an adult, that although he couldn't have told you "who was on first," he knew as a kid who the Egyptian god of the dead was. On Oct. 5, the Loomis heist celebrates its 25th birthday. In David's eyes, Johnson's big mistake was that he did it alone. Seven p.m. came and went, and so did 7:20. From my standpoint, it was just a business deal, Ghantt said. At about 6:40 p.m., he went back inside. Ghantt took $50,000 for himself and fled to Cozumel, Mexico. Some of the biggest numbers remaining on the Loomis collection board, as is the case with Campbell, belong to those who played the biggest role in the crime: - David Ghantt, the Loomis employee who loaded all that money 2,800 pounds in all into the back of a company van before escaping to Mexico, has paid just under $50,000 of the $3.81 million he was assessed. Despite being caught on camera wheeling the money from the vault to the getaway van, David Ghantt makes off to Mexico before the FBI can blink. When you have money, you just have different problems: The Loomis Fargo heist, 25 years later. From there, the money was moved from the armored car to private vehicles. The FBI became more suspicious after they interviewed Campbell for the third time. Next month, Payne will back in the Charlotte federal courthouse, this time to be sentenced from weapons and methamphetamine trafficking charges. A third surveillance tape was carelessly left behind, and the company was able to identify the man who robbed the vault as David Ghantt. In fact, he had recently finished a book about the FBI and felt it provided insight into the agency's investigative techniques, insight he thought could help the little gang succeed. As it neared its end, David stealthily left the vault door ajar. By then, the FBI had become greatly concerned for Ghantts personal safety; they had learned of Chambersmurder for hirescheme. Steve had hired a bodyguard named Mike McKinney. Down in Jacksonville, a Loomis Fargo employee took $18 million from an armored van he was driving. 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. David would simply empty the vault and deliver the money to the others. 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 to. Records show the government has garnished his Social Security checks. 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. The reason David didn't know Steve's last name was so they couldn't identify each other to the police or FBI, should cops or G-men ever enter the picture. FILE - Kelly Campbell, one of the 21 people convicted for their involvement in the $17 million Loomis Fargo heist, awaits sentencing for her part in the theft at her mobile home near Mount Holly, N.C. on Aug 16, 1999. In the first couple of weeks, they had heard both Steve and Shelley bragging about their new-found fortune, and spending remarkable amounts of money. In Gastonia, David would run into high-school classmates who had never struck him as especially smart. You cannot fine low-income people millions of dollars. Learn about careers at Cox Media Group. Loomis Fargo, the nation's largest privately held armored- car company, used vans to transport hundreds of millions of dollars a day belonging to banks and other businesses, stocking automated teller machines and storing money in the Loomis vault between deliveries. And Kelly thought he was funny. Growing up, David had been a nice kid, a decent student who was at worst a minor troublemaker and prankster. What that says is, We will never forgive you for what youve done.'. Each cart, holding about $2 million, was taking David seven or eight minutes to stack, push, and empty into the van, and there were about eight cartloads' worth in the vault. David told Kelly they would have to control themselves and not spend the money too quickly, because the FBI could electronically trace a suspect's recent spending activity through bank papers, credit card records, and land transactions. 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 theyve ever had. A woman by the name of Kelly Campbell had worked there in 1996, and she and Ghantt had become friends in that time. Criminals dont usually get high-paying jobs after leaving prison. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. You can have your whole career and not have a case like that. There was a book published in 2002 as well, by author Jeff Diamant called,Heist! He had since served time in prison for the crime and told our sister station WSOC-TV Channel 9s Glenn Counts he learned a valuable lesson while behind bars. In one case, the restitution for a Loomis defendant may be a moving target. 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, . Though Wydra is retired, 25 years ago, he was an agent with the FBI. He knew it would mean leaving Tammy. Charlotte Observer"more than a crime story, and one that's worth reading." David got a kick out of her. - Husband and wife Steven and Michelle Chambers, whose conspicuous consumption of a luxury home, a BMW convertible, breast implants and a $600 wooden Indian, among other purchases, helped the FBI solve the crime, were assessed $3.81 million and $4.8 million, respectively. David knew this was important from having followed the recent news about a Florida man who had brazenly committed the biggest heist from an armored-car company in United States history, a loner named Philip Noel Johnson, who also had worked for Loomis. How many people have walked the red carpet at a movie premiere in a case that was yours?. Current price is $11.49, Original price is $14.99. Ghantt had worked with the branch since 1994, and had been promoted from a driver to the vault supervisor. "But you can still have a cigarette.". Chambers had no intention of wiring any money to Ghantt and intended to have him killed to keep him from implicating the others. Youre supposed to get less time for cooperating, a lesser penalty, and instead, you see what she got hit with. Gronquist said. What kind of surprised me is how much the car smelled like money, like if you ever hold money up to your nose it has a distinct smell, Wydra said. The October 4 shift was lasting longer than expected, due to delays involving pickups and deliveries. Investigators considered Ghantt to be the prime suspect almost from the beginning. Jim Gronquist, Campbells defense attorney during the Loomis case, says the financial penalties levied against his client and her co-defendants are grossly excessive and unjust, particularly since most of the stolen Loomis money was actually recovered. Tuesday marked 25 years since a group of buddies pulled off the third-largest money grab in U.S. history -- the Loomis Fargo heist. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. They didnt expect it.. That first day in prison was scary, Ghantt said. In total, 24 people were convicted and all but one of the accused pleaded guilty. Ms. Campbell worked at Loomis for 11 months, leaving in November 1996, according to court papers. The bag held his mobile phone and handgun. In the end, the FBI was able to capture the original gang in five months, snaring 21 individuals for their participation in the crime. Loomis has received $978,983.79, according to Sally Butcher, an assistant clerk in the federal courts of the Western District of North Carolina who specializes in criminal debt. Diamant, a journalist who reported on the case at the time, goes into meticulous detail on how the heist was pulled off and its aftermath. One number is working in Campbells favor. Ghantt had fled to Mexico with $50,000 in cash, leaving the rest of the money with Steve Chambers. He was on a budget for clothes, even for work boots; he had recently needed to check seven stores before finding a pair in his price range. Notifications from this discussion will be disabled. (LogOut/ This website uses cookies and some data tracking to improve your experience and serve adverts, We assume you're ok with this, you can opt-out if you wish.
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