Some of that money is just gone. Get to me. Its that kind of excitement.. White-collar criminals are pretty good at hiding their money, she said. 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. He figured Tammy wouldn't go for it, and though his marriage had been troubled, he wasn't certain he wanted to leave her. Campbell, a mother of two, was in the process of divorcing her. Its a farce that never farces; a comedy without jokes. She later hired someone to kill Ghantt, though the murder never took place. Campbell used to work for Loomis and continued the friendship with Ghantt,. Speaking of his co-defendants, Ghantt says hes not currently in contact with any of them. . The cash was covered with dog food. She didn't plan to move to Mexico. He then began loading $17 million in unmarked bills inside a company van before driving away. Now that Kelly believes she has found Jesus, she has become more analytical about her past. . I don't blame him.". Its hilarious. All of the primary players got fined millions of dollars --for example, Kelly Campbell was hit with more than $4 million, an amount that she will never come close to paying. You cannot fine low-income people millions of dollars. 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. The next day Chambers, Campbell and few other conspirators were arrested as well. Ghantt spent a solid hour moving what ended up being 2,700 pounds of cash more than an actual ton into an unmarked company van. It didnt take the local police long to put the pieces together. However, the FBI knew immediately who robbed the vault (Ghant was seen on video camera), and it didnt take long for the FBI to loop in Kelly Campbell. David Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis), an employee of Loomis Fargo, robbed his own vault, left the $17.3 million in cash with his co-conspirators, Kelly Campbell (Kristen Wiig) and Steve Chambers (Owen Wilson) and fled the country to Mexico. They also purchased tanning beds, a pool table, a Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle and all kinds of expensive furniture. . For the defendants in the Loomis Fargo heist, its allure was irresistible. It was his goodbye. The FBI's final challenge is finding the remaining $2 million. They agreed that after the heist, David would immediately move to Mexico, alone, but Kelly would soon join him there, with her two children. Now, at 7:45 p.m., with all the money finally inside the van, his aching muscles could take a breather. Things started to go south the night of the robbery. All but one of the 24 defendants pleaded guilty, and the one who didnt take the deal was convicted. He became the target of a nationwide FBI manhunt and was arrested five months later near the Mexican resort of Cozumel. He had even scheduled a follow-up appointment at the dentist. Then, he proceeded to load 2,800 pounds of cash into a van. "She just called me up on the phone and said, 'Hey, let's meet one day after work.' She will never get beyond the debt. Baltimore leaders have agreed to pay a $6 million settlement to the family of a driver who was killed during a 2010 police chase involving Gun Trace Task Force officers, Four family members from Australia who were injured during a crash-landing of a sightseeing helicopter in December are suing a Las Vegas-based tour operator, Massachusetts Gov. From my standpoint, it was just a business deal, Ghantt said. . So yeah, Im kind of proud of it.. Or is the loot buried in somebody's yard? But after she left, she reached back out to Ghantt and brought up what they'd talked about that day in the break room. I mean, it was dark, Ghantt explains. 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. And when everybody else voted to kill me, she voted with them, he explains. 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 and co-worker Kelly Campbell, 27, had developed a close relationship and were spending time together outside of work. They didnt expect it.. This robbery is the largest cash robbery on U.S. soil. His wife, Tammy, was as shocked as Loomis officials. Kelly relayed his message to Steve. Hidden in it was a 3 1/2-carat diamond ring that cost $43,000. I'd probably change jobs. Scott, 26, had a larceny conviction as a teenager, but he'd since cleaned up his act and now had a steady job, a daughter and a girlfriend. David was sentenced to 7 1/2 years. I learned something that was valuable at the time: Most criminals never leave a 250, maybe 300-mile circle from their home base. 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. 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. All rights reserved. He partied, met women, drank, skied and hung out at the beach. Search Tools . Some days, the robbery seems like a memory from a different life, a choice made by a different man. 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. Chambers promised to wire him money in Mexico until the investigation blew over and Ghantt could return to North Carolina. The figures can be astounding. Or as he tells me, How many people in the United States havent thought about robbing a bank? He flew in an ultra-light plane. Chambers, now 32, didn't grant an interview for this article, but last year, in response to written questions, he said the biggest lesson he learned was: "Family is more important and valuable than money. I think if you remember some of her early photographic opportunities, shall we put it that way, she was sort of laughing, not seeming to take it seriously.. But because David's relationship with his Loomis bosses had been rocky, he says, he doesn't feel sorry about what he did to the company. Then FBI agent Wydra watched Steve's wife, Michele, deposit about $8,000 at a Gaston County, N.C., bank. They soon realized David had stolen more money than would fit in their 55-gallon barrels. Even with several vehicles, they underestimated how much space they would need and they had to leave $3 million behind. He worked fueling airplanes, driving a forklift, and in 1994 he got a job as a vault superintendent at Loomis. Tags: Associated Press, courts, crime, North Carolina. She asked about the limit for a cash deposit before "paperwork" was required. But he tried to keep his face averted, so David wouldn't be able to ID him. Her only brush with the law had been a DUI arrest. 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. In Campbells case, Gronquist says his client was buried in court-ordered debt despite the fact that she took responsibility for what she had done and cooperated with prosecutors and the FBI. 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. The FBI continues to search for a missing $2 million from the theft. 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.. [Kelly] told me, 'Just think about it.' But it wasnt. . Theyre meant to be trailer-park trash, but they come off as character experiments on a bad night at the Groundlings. As it turned out, Ghantt was zipping up his scuba suit in Mexico. Charlotte Magazine even ran a feature story about the Loomis Fargo heist with the title, White Trash Crime. The headlines, however, never bothered Ghantt. He took bus tours of Mayan ruins. Steve Chambers would keep the rest. In February 1998, the FBI tapped their phones and listened to Steve discuss depositing $2.5 million in the Cayman Islands. "She said, 'What would it take to convince you to do it?' Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. "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. As for his new wife, when the two just started dating, he was nervous about letting her know about his past, but he wanted to be honest. Meanwhile, back in North Carolina, Ghantts wife woke up to find her husband missing. Kelly was no criminal. The barrels were Steves idea, Ghantt says. She tried to apologize for the murder plot. "Steve said, 'I think we ought to do it that night, when he drops off the van,' " Kelly recalled. "I said, 'That's all they gave me,' " McKinney recalled. Its attracted workers like Ghantt. But being the vault supervisor at Loomis Fargo had one perk -- exposure to tons of cash. A week later, another informant told the FBI that Eric Payne had quit his job at a printing company soon after the heist and was spending money he probably hadn't earned legally. In mid-November, McKinney carried $10,000 to Cancun but wound up spending most of it on himself. Campbell was released from federal custody in 2004 after serving five years, meaning her collection case will age out in December 2024. If you want to go ahead and go, I got it. The FBI now knew Chambers had Loomis cash. In the following months, Steve persisted, even floating the notion of placing phony hand grenades on a Loomis truck to scare away the drivers, Kelly said. Exhibit A was that Steve had no steady job but plenty of cash. His assignment was to deliver the cash to David and keep him happy until they could find a way to kill him, McKinney said. Ghantt was caught on videotape loading large amounts of cash into a truck. "As soon as you start, you realize there's no going back," David recalled. The Chambers home is now gated, which means Channel 9 crews cant drive up to it like we used to. 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. "I said, 'Yeah, sure.' So that was kind of like this once-in-a-lifetime thing, Wydra said. That was great. Theres barely a laugh in the entire film, which looks like it was shot entirely in one take while the actors were still working out their characters. All of the co-defendants were arrested the next day, about six months after the heist. . He loves his motorcycle and enjoys going fishing and, while hes sorry for the past, hes not ashamed to talk about it. 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.. He hadnt checked ahead of time if the airport had any available flights, let alone if it would even be open. ", "Even then . But that only tells part of the story. Where I was going was right there near the Cayman Islands. . >> PHOTOS: The Loomis Fargo heist, 25 years later. Kelly was lying. According to Butcher, Campbells last official payment came in June 2021 when the government appears to have seized a tax refund of $81.24. Thanksgiving and Christmas were difficult. Masterminds is a 2016 American crime comedy film based on the October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery in North Carolina. David Ghantt was just an average Joe with an average low-wage job. The number of people involved had ballooned after Steve started asking friends and family to help him launder the stolen cash. He had an endearing smile, a beautiful wife and two children. ". Find 145 people named Kelly Loomis along with free Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok profiles on PeekYou - true people search. When he landed in Cancun, his first stop was Walmart. It will be some time before she can commune with domestic animals again. Her sentence was delayed until Jan. 1 so she could spend the holidays with her family. When McKinney arrived in North Carolina, the plan had changed. Ghantt was the vault manager and was surrounded. Though he never found the right moment to carry out the hit, McKinney did find time to make a friend--a shady character named Robert, to whom he revealed more than was prudent. Steve bought a truck, a Rolex and a motorboat. The property has changed hands several times since then. Theres some things I want to do., Ghantt planned on traveling from Mexico to the Cayman Islands, bypassing customs along the way. On March 1, David Ghantt left his hotel to do some laundry. 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. He comes to my door, and hes got a brown paper bag in his hand. I said, Listen, You all need to get your shit together, or Im just going to walk over here to the government building and tell them who the fuck I am. That lit a little fire under her ass, for a bit.. They put up mauve wallpaper. "It probably should bother me," he said. . Galifianakis seems to be playing a character out of Dumb and Dumber 3: The Dumbening; Kristen Wiig plays what could only be described as her worst SNL character; Owen Wilson plays an Owen Wilson character; and Sudeikis plays a bumbling hitman who cant pull the trigger after he finds out his target shares the same name and birthdate, which is the dumbest twist since the Martha revelation in Batman vs. Superman. And then I realized that a lot of people knew who I was and they had followed the case.. ". October was "a blast," he said. The principals here are David Ghantt, a driver for Loomis, Fargo and Co.; Kelly Campbell, the woman Ghantt had a crush on, and who convinced him to commit the crime; and Steve and Michele Chambers. Guller was the attorney for Steven Chambers, who came up with the original idea for the Loomis theft. You might as well take it all, Ghantt tells me. The Columbia airport had no available flights. He gave the rest to Kelly. Scott Grant said he hesitated, but agreed if no guns would be involved. Temptation to do something that you think you normally wouldnt do can change a lot of minds when its that kind of cash, and thats what it was., (WATCH BELOW: VIDEO: The Loomis Fargo heist: 25 years later). Kelly Campbell, 29, a former company employee, entered guilty pleas earlier to bank larceny, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder charges. By this time, agents knew where he was and had a general idea who the other players were, so they went to every bank in town to see if any of them rented a safe deposit box. Steve also offered $100,000 to his 26-year-old cousin. And then I could hear her laughing. 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. It is based on the October 1997 Loomis Fargo Robbery in North Carolina, which was the subject of the 2016 American comedy film Masterminds. It was an ear-biting, Pierce Brosnan-loving, comet-obsessed world, and were here to relive every minute of it. How many people have walked the red carpet at a movie premiere in a case that was yours?. They picked me, he says with a rueful tone. The participants in the heist also spent lavishly on fancy jewelry, fancy cars and breast enhancement surgeries. But as soon as he drove off, I went right back in and opened the vault. The money weighed as much as a compact car and he did it all by himself. Here, he amps up the most obnoxious excesses of his entire cast and lets their grating bad-improv skills run amok. 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. This was in the 1990s the Columbia Airport back then was closed at around 9:30, 10 oclock. If we work together, we can all have plenty of pie.. The next day, Kelly drove back to Steve's mobile home to watch the news with Steve and Michele. That was pretty awesome., It felt like a dream vacation until he started running out of money. In a word, "Teamwork. Kelly says she underestimated the value of her life before the heist. In the meantime, however, Chambers not only refused to wire money to Ghantt in Mexico, but ultimately hired a hitman (Jason Sudeikis) to take him out. These (Loomis) guys, not so much.. It was the first Saturday in October. After a couple of weeks, Ghantt and the rest of the heist team were ready to strike. Together, they drove in a convoy to an industrial warehouse eight miles away, where Eric Payne, a fourth accomplice was. Not Ghantt. Kelly drove David to the airport. About six months before the Charlotte theft, on March 29, a total of $18.8 million was taken from Loomis, Fargo in Jacksonville, Fla., in what was believed to be the largest heist in U.S.. By now, you probably know the names -- David Ghantt, Steve Chambers and his wife Michelle, and Kelly Campbell. I just had to call you., Today, Ghantt cant look back on the whole ordeal without some degree of pride. Cool, I say. 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. Besides her prison sentence, Campbell must undergo mental health and drug treatment and spend two years in a supervised release program. Throughout the multi-year-long case and subsequent trials, journalists often referred to Ghantt and the others as trailer trash and hillbillies. They stocked a wine cellar. Meanwhile, Steve was keeping a close eye on Kelly. Soon thereafter, he met Kelly Campbell, a co-worker at Loomis Fargo. By Dustin Rowles | Film | September 30, 2016 |. When October 1997 began, Steve and Michelle Chambers lived in a double-wide trailer. 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. Loomis (formerly Loomis, Fargo & Co.) is a cash handling company. My love for my family is by far the most important thing in my life. 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. 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. 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. Punishment needs to be fair and realistic. Steve told me to tell [David] whatever was necessary to keep him happy.". It has a certain feel, a smell and weight to it. Steve was sentenced to 11 years 3 months in prison. But few could have guessed how spectacularly the heist would go wrong after the criminals initially got away with it. [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]. 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. 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