These cookies do not store any personal information. RELATED: When you have money, you just have different problems: The Loomis Fargo heist, 25 years later, How I held it together is beyond me, Ghantt said. What purpose does that serve other than to denigrate that person into abject poverty?. Restitution is a familiar part of sentencing in federal court. 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. David's share would be sent to Mexico, where he planned to hide and where he expected Kelly to join him. 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. Low 46F. Burks was also ordered to serve 15 years in prison, limiting his ability to balance his books. He added that money can be a motivator for anyone. If it didn't work out, he could return to the United States later with a new identity. Ghantts spending in Mexico was extravagant at first. She will never get beyond the debt. Michelle Chambers paid off only $27,000. Unexplained Mysteries - owned by Aliens since 2011. He allegedly hired a hitman to take Ghantt out, tying up the ultimate loose end. Libraries without that edition should consider purchasing this entertaining and lightly edited version, which reads like a fast-paced novel. Steve Chambers and his wife were living in a trailer and upgraded to what would today be a multi-million-dollar mansion at Cramer Mountain. Asked the purpose of his visit, Johnson had replied, "To visit friends. He quickly found out when you have money, you just have different problems, Wydra said. 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. Loomis, Fargo offered a $500,000 reward for his arrest and conviction. Get an email notification whenever someone contributes to the discussion. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Later that year, he saw a newspaper ad for a job at Loomis Fargo. One number is working in Campbells favor. The money weighed as much as a compact car and he did it all by himself. There was no reason to leave anything, he felt. He wanted to leave his wife for her, and Kelly, who also was married, let him think she wanted the same. Chambers had told Campbell to do whatever she needed to do to get Ghantt to commit the robbery. - 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. I pay (restitution to) thousands of people, but its in drips and drabs.. He was the only employee unaccounted for the next morning, and videotapes recovered at the Loomis Fargo Charlotte office showed Ghantt removing cubes of cash and loading it into a Loomis Fargo armored van for over an hour. He angrily hung up the phone at Loomis, Fargo & Co., his soon-to-be former employer in Charlotte, North Carolina. Its said the current owner now has it in storage in Phoenix, Arizona. 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), JSO K9 escapes kennel, bites three people in Jacksonville neighborhood, To know Nancy was to love Nancy: St. Johns County woman killed in suspected DUI crash, JSO says missing child alert results in deadly drowning, Senator proposes bill giving state emergency jurisdiction over custody of kids with trans parents, Florida woman accused of killing terminally ill husband released from jail. Paying the money back has taken a lot longer, and time is running out for the U.S. government to collect. 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. You can seize property. David and Kelly had driven to Rock Hill, South Carolina, and used the documents to obtain a fake ID that David would also rely on after the theft. uncanny, eerie, unnatural, preternatural, supernatural, unearthly, other-worldly, unreal, ghostly, mysterious, mystifying, strange, abnormal, unusual. Youre supposed to get less time for cooperating, a lesser penalty, and instead, you see what she got hit with. Gronquist said. Library Journal "highly entertaining." document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ). How Did David Ghantt, Kelly Campbell, Steve Chambers Steal More Than It has a certain feel, a smell and weight to it. Campbell used to work for Loomis and continued the friendship with Ghantt, eventually hooking him up with Chambers. He had since held one low-paying job after another. That movie, Masterminds, was filmed in 2014. "For the first year after a crime," he told her, "they're all over you, with six to ten agents. "Don't double-cross us," the woman on the phone told David Ghantt. 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. My knee-jerk reaction was to be angry, and then the sarcastic ass side of me started laughing about it, Ghantt said. 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. If we work together, we can all have plenty of pie.. This technically made it abank robbery afederal offense. He tried again to make the back gate rise, to no avail. There was a book published in 2002 as well, by author Jeff Diamant called,Heist! "What would it take to convince you to do it?" On Oct. 5, the Loomis heist celebrates its 25th birthday. It was David who was hours away from committing the most daring act of his life, and she was going off about Steve being a serious guy? David said he needed Kelly to drive to Loomis before the theft that night to remove a duffel bag from his parked pickup truck. What it does is put a ball and chain on that person for the rest of their lives, they are walking around and they are basically an indentured servant, Gronquist said. Kelly Campbell, 29, a former company employee, entered guilty pleas earlier to bank larceny, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder charges. In David's eyes, Johnson's big mistake was that he did it alone. All of the defendants are out of prison -- the longest sentence was 11 years. He added that he would be able to send the trainee home at about 6:00 p.m. and would then need about an hour to load the money from carts, shelves, and the floor into a Loomis company van. The plan to. It's been 20 years since the Loomis Fargo heist. - Charlotte Observer Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. Then they returned it. For the defendants in the Loomis Fargo heist, its allure was irresistible. By using this website, you accept the terms of our Visitor Agreement and Privacy Policy, and understand your options regarding Ad Choices. His collection case closes in two years. None of the suspects had been in any serious trouble before this. Theres no way to get it back, Butcher told The Charlotte Observer. Twenty people were convicted of roles big and small in the massive 1997 armored-car warehouse heist in west Charlotte. Restitution is a familiar part of sentencing in federal court. 25th anniversary of the incredible Loomis Fargo bank heist | wcnc.com She had previously been making frequent small deposits to avert suspicion. Enforcement of this policy is at the David placed their odds of success at 85 percent, a confidence inspired by faith not just in his planning but also in his feelings for Kelly. He was signed by the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent in 2002. David got a kick out of her. To the community, the Loomis Fargo heist was a big joke -- the largest hillbilly caper of all time. Michelle Chambers paid off only $27,000. Federal law stops government collection efforts 20 years after a defendant leaves prison. He loves his motorcycle and enjoys going fishing and, while hes sorry for the past, hes not ashamed to talk about it. 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, . she asked. Chambers had broached the possibility of a robbery to Campbell earlier in the summer. 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. 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. 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. Its in the ether. He ejected the two VCR tapes that he knew had recorded him stealing the money, took them, and prepared to leave. Sure to be in demand as the book has been made into a movie, Masterminds, to be released in August.Michael Sawyer, Pine Bluff, AR. There are many robberies registered in the history of America, but the Loomis Fargo Robbery is known to be the second largest robbery in the United States. "Just remind Steve," he said, "that I might be trouble my own self." Besides her prison sentence, Campbell must undergo mental health and drug treatment and spend two years in a supervised release program. Join thousands already receiving our daily newsletter. The woman on the phone was Kelly Jane Campbell, and David had a mad crush on her. Ghantt had struck up a relationship with a fellow Loomis Fargo employee, Kelly Campbell; they continued to maintain contact even after Campbell left the company. : The .17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft [Jeff Diamant] on Amazon.com. WOMAN GETS TIME IN LOOMIS HEIST - Greensboro News and Record TWO TO ENTER GUILTY PLEAS IN ARMORED-CAR ROBBERY - Greensboro News and Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps. Aprs de nombreux seconds rles comiques au cinma, elle parvient percer en co-crivant et tenant le rle principal de la Steve began talking about wiring money to overseas accounts, and even purchasing a nightclub. (LogOut/ They could talk about anything, even topics he couldn't discuss with his wife. The loot would later be divided among David, Kelly, and Steve. The True Story of David Ghantt and the Loomis Fargo Heist - PrepScholar They also bought aBMW Z3with cash and made several large purchases, including a $600 statue of aNative American. He knew it would mean leaving Tammy. [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]. Over the next two weeks, David thought about it. Conversations about stealing from the company weren't rare for Loomis employees. Worlds Biggest Heists London Hatton Garden 200m Diamond Robbery, Easter 2015. The Star-Ledger, 06/15/2015On October 4, 1997, an amateurish gang robbed Loomis, Fargo & Co. in Charlotte, NC of $17 million, the second largest heist in U.S. history. There's just one hitch: Ghantt has entrusted the money to an oddball crew of accomplices who had wooed him into committing this massive theft in the first placeand who, he soon learns, are trying to take him out. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. : The $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft. In this outrageously entertaining book, Jeff Diamant, the Charlotte Observer's lead reporter on the case, offers the definitive inside account of this astonishing. People dont seem to understand human nature. Ghantt didnt know the full extent of what was happening back home -- how that lay low plan turned into a flurry of extravagant spending. 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. He'd already done enough, he realized, to get himself fired and arrested, even if the gate prevented him from moving the money outside the building. The walk-in vault was a fortified gray room, more wide than long, with shelves, cabinets, desks, and multiple pushcarts stocked with shrink-wrapped cash. David was thin six-foot-one, one hundred sixty-five pounds and heaving the stacks onto the cart, pushing the cart toward the vault door, and then emptying its contents into the van was exhausting. 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. The $17 million Loomis Fargo heist in Charlotte, North Carolina, was the second largest armored car robbery in U.S. history. A parrot tattoo on her right ankle. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) During one overnight shift, a bumbling conspiracy of thieves just west of Charlotte stole more than $17 million from Loomis Fargo. I was relieved emotionally because I knew there was a good chance my luck might run out, Ghantt said. just generally being a jerk. The 2016 comedy movie, Masterminds is based on the story of the Loomis Fargo Heist. 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. Turns out, most of the thieves and their accomplices have been about as effective coming up with their court-ordered restitution as they were hiding their original crimes. 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. The stated plan was for her to move to Mexico to be with him after the theft. One number is working in Campbells favor. 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. 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. (LogOut/ Its in the ether. 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.