I don't blame him.". Kelly Jane Campbell, a former Loomis employee; Michael L. McKinney . He then began loading $17 million in unmarked bills inside a company van before driving away. The next day, Kelly drove back to Steve's mobile home to watch the news with Steve and Michele. They were the butt of a national joke. Question: How much of 'Masterminds' is true? 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. 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. On his second trip, Steve gave McKinney David's hotel address.
real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist - molecularrecipes.com Kelly had resisted this suggestion before the heist: She and David were friends. Soon thereafter, he met Kelly Campbell, a co-worker at Loomis Fargo. Loomis, Fargo offered a $500,000 reward after the theft. When neighbors asked where they got their money, Steve said hed played in the NFL. and "I love money!" Some amateur thieves might turn to movies and TV shows for lessons on criminal behavior. It changes you. She declined to take a lie-detector test. I learned something that was valuable at the time: Most criminals never leave a 250, maybe 300-mile circle from their home base. Ghantt:Since I still owe the federal government money I can't get paid. For reasons that remain obscure, Robert spilled the beans to David. Question: What made you, Chambers and the others think you could get away with this? In February 1998, the FBI tapped their phones and listened to Steve discuss depositing $2.5 million in the Cayman Islands. Each week, Michele deposited thousands of dollars in cash. Given his position at the bank, hed be the one to pull off the robbery, and he intended to be ready. But you cant get blood from a stone, Johns said. "But, I hate to admit it, it doesn't faze me one bit.
Too stupid to be true? Five 'Masterminds' missteps that actually happened Then, on a mid-September day, as he reviewed a credit card bill, David did some math. He recalled that another agent, Phil King, said, "Hey, there was an article in the [Charlotte] Observer about beeper codes.
25th anniversary of the incredible Loomis Fargo bank heist | wcnc.com Ghantt:I've always known that story had potential to be a comedy or a drama. 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. In a word, "Teamwork. What concerned her was the chance of getting caught. Inside the Mazda, Steve told Scott Grant to get out and help David. Too many questions remained: Where was the cash? shes now Miss USA. One of them tapped him on the back. About 5:30 the next morning, McKinney knocked on David's door and dropped $8,500 on the bed. He had a favorite restaurant, Zandunga, which had a mariachi band each night and a view of the Caribbean. He was signed by the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent in 2002. ". Kelly Campbell, 29, a former company employee, entered guilty pleas earlier to bank larceny, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder charges. The FBI now knew Chambers had Loomis cash.
Careers | Loomis US 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. Yes, Carrie Underwood adopted a dog in Charlotte. Sweat soaked David's uniform. I thought, Okay, if I get out of that bubble because the cops depend on that, even the feds my chances to get away go way up.. If they could just sit on the money until then, he said, they'd be fine. Scott Grant and Steve pulled up next to her in a Mazda. (The conversation was depicted as 100 percent private on screen). The biggest restitution numbers for victims of financial crimes generally involve Ponzi schemes or sweepstakes fraud, not cash thefts. 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. Zach always plays that bumbling kind of lunatic, but hes not, Ghantt says. 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. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. I loved it. Steve tried keys on a side door. "I thought he was goofing around.". No regrets. David, now 30, says he's sorry he abandoned his wife--who he says still loves him--and his family. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. 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. When he landed in Cancun, his first stop was Walmart. The only person not to plead guilty in the case, former Gastonia attorney Jeff Guller, ended up doing eight years for money laundering. 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. And I was thinking about just showing up there. "She said, 'What would it take to convince you to do it?' He said every year he files his taxes and the IRS takes all of his tax return. Scott Grant and Steve pulled up next to her in a Mazda. 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. He says the Loomis case shows how the criminal justice system and the courts treat lower-income people differently. They entered their dogs in fights and watched them die. We spoke to the FBI agents who investigated the case who say the real-life. The Evergreen State takes the top spot again in the U.S. News Best States ranking on the strength of its tech sector and other industries. Next month, Payne will back in the Charlotte federal courthouse, this time to be sentenced from weapons and methamphetamine trafficking charges. Thanksgiving and Christmas were difficult. In Florida, a Loomis Fargo employee had pulled a gun on his coworkers and gotten away with $18 million, a move that FBI agents theorize Ghantt, Campbell and other employees all sat around talking about - and what they would do with that amount of money - for a while. You're an idiot.'". ". Burks was also ordered to serve 15 years in prison, limiting his ability to balance his books. ", "I said, 'If you drive a truck, you're always in a financial bind. Like David, Kelly was frustrated with her marriage. He rewarded Robert with $3,000 and vowed never to meet McKinney alone. In real life: True. Because surprise! 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. Chambers never held Campbell hostage by locking her in a shed on his property. It wasnt a big hit, but Ghantt, who was played by Galifianakis, gives it a rave review. Then, I started loading the van., Money, when bound in bulk and stacked in canvas bags, is heavier than you might expect. Where I was going was right there near the Cayman Islands. They picked me, he says with a rueful tone. Where was Ghantt? How Bridgerton restarted buzz about her ancestry. By late November, McKinney made a third trip to Mexico, saying he'd help David move to Mexico City. On the evening of October 4, 1997, one man loaded $17.3 million in cash from the vaults of Loomis, Fargo & Co. into the back of a van. As with Kelly, the worst blotch on 29-year-old Eric's record until now was a driving-while-intoxicated conviction. Kelly Campbell, 29, a former company employee, entered guilty pleas earlier to bank larceny, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder charges. And youre like, Come on parachute.
Channel 9 speaks with the man at the center of Loomis Fargo heist 25 Theres no management around. I've got a good woman.".
The true crime behind Asheville-based Galifianakis film The number of people involved had ballooned after Steve started asking friends and family to help him launder the stolen cash. Besides her prison sentence, Campbell must undergo mental health and drug treatment and spend two years in a supervised release program. Field Operations; Corporate; Why Loomis. The platform is designed to engage citizens and government leaders in a discussion about what needs improvement across the country. It was the first Saturday in October. Some of that money is just gone. Her only brush with the law had been a DUI arrest. 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. 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).
'Can I Keep the Velvet Elvis?': The Great Hillbilly Heist of 1997 More agents waited outside to arrest them. As you probably know, it's loosely based on the Loomis Fargo heist in Charlotte back in the late nineties. They heard Michele brag about her $43,000 ring. We got to the end of the day, and he was acting like he wanted to linger. Campbell, a former Loomis employee and one of the original masterminds of the caper, has paid off less than $21,000 of the $4,701,694.18 she was docked. 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.. 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. Agents began picking up signs that David definitely had help: The abandoned Loomis van with $3.3 million in small bills still inside, and phone records showing that somebody beeped him while he stole the money, using David's own cell phone. He placed stacks of currency on a cart and wheeled it to the van about 15 feet away, inside the building. . "I was dumb," Ghantt said Wednesday, the eve before the movie hits screens nationwide. A woman by the name of Kelly Campbell had worked there in 1996, and she and Ghantt had become friends in that time. It's about the 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery also known as the "hillbillly heist" the second largest cash robbery in the history of the United States. Here's what Floyd recalls: After two games of pool, Steve told him, "You know, we do a lot of gambling. Tags: Associated Press, courts, crime, North Carolina. 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. October was "a blast," he said. A version of this story originally appeared on CharlotteObserver.com. Her case closes in 2025. Ghantt:We're both North Carolina boys so we had a lot to talk about from the very beginning. The others, though, went no farther than Cramer Mountain. 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. The best states in the U.S. come from coast to coast.
How Did David Ghantt, Kelly Campbell, Steve Chambers Steal More Than . Our Benefits. One number is working in Campbells favor. She will never get beyond the debt. The pager entry was 1-4-3. That was pretty awesome., It felt like a dream vacation until he started running out of money. Ghantt was missing and no one, not even his wife, knew where he was. In the two days after the robbery, agents interviewed more than 100 people, most connected with David. The bigger the amount, however, the bigger the damages to victims that likely will never be repaid: Amy Paynes collection account was closed in 2020 with her having paid $53,000 of the $274,000 she owed. "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. "I was trying to figure out a way to [leave my husband] and take care of my kids without having to depend on him or any other man," Kelly said. . Kelly drove David to the airport. The mystery 1-4-3 caller had been Kelly, though agents didn't know it yet. An Ohio police officer who shot and killed a Black man as he lay in bed in his home last summer is no longer on the force, Three Kansas City police officers who were shot while serving a search warrant have been released from the hospital, Officials say one passenger died when a business jet experienced severe turbulence, forcing a landing at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut. About the same time, Kelly and McKinney received phone calls from agents who told them to open their doors. 2500 City West Blvd., Suite 2300 Houston, TX 77042. It was an ear-biting, Pierce Brosnan-loving, comet-obsessed world, and were here to relive every minute of it. Thats one of my personality flaws.
October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery - Wikipedia 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. Steve, who had sworn Kelly, Eric and Scott to secrecy the night of the theft, named them all to the FBI. 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. If you want to go ahead and go, I got it. 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. Did you get paid? There it was, "The Heist." Kelly called David at Loomis; he told her he'd be ready for them with the cash at 6:30 or 7 p.m. Alone in the building, David was trying to finish loading cash from the vault into an unmarked white Ford Econoline van belonging to Loomis. He told Steve he hadn't been able to find David. Restitution is a familiar part of sentencing in federal court.