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He covers culture, politics, race, and other perplexing mysteries for MEL. Even still, he was 27, married and struggling to provide for his family. 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. 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) And with Loomis, were looking at only one case. I knew it was just a matter of time. The next week, they heard Steve plan to send Mike McKinney to Mexico to kill David Ghantt. From going fishing to riding horses on the beach the whole nine yards. Steve tried keys on a side door. Meanwhile, back in North Carolina, Ghantts wife woke up to find her husband missing. Filming in the Asheville area starting in early July, and is. He goes, My name is Bruno. 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 they've ever had. Some amateur thieves might turn to movies and TV shows for lessons on criminal behavior. The next day, he was sitting next to FBI agent Mark Rozzi on a US Airways flight to Charlotte. Scott Grant and Steve pulled up next to her in a Mazda. If I hadn't done what I did the, the life I have now with my wife and child, I wouldn't have. Updated: 11:31 AM EDT October 4, 2022 CHARLOTTE, N.C. Tuesday is the 25th anniversary of the infamous Loomis Fargo heist in Charlotte, where a bank worker, with the help of two accomplices,. Working together, they got the gate open, then drove in a caravan to the Reynolds & Reynolds parking lot. That October, the Chamberses' bank accounts ballooned. Kelly had resisted this suggestion before the heist: She and David were friends. About 5:30 the next morning, McKinney knocked on David's door and dropped $8,500 on the bed. Visit us at Loomis.us. He gave the rest to Kelly. I had a four-hour layover there, and then from New Orleans to Cancun.. In one case, the restitution for a Loomis defendant may be a moving target. Until, that is, he decided to hell with it he was going to pull-off the second largest heist in U.S. history. Money'll turn your head, I don't care who you are. At 7:45, David had finished loading. 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. We spoke with the inside man, David Ghantt, to get the real story. About 10 frantic minutes later, Scott found the right key. And then I could hear her laughing. He pocketed the money and told Chambers and Campbell to send him his cut in Mexico. . Question: Are you surprised that Hollywood took this on as a movie? Chambers and Campbell were waiting for him in the Loomis Fargo parking lot, both in separate vehicles. Now worried about both the FBI and McKinney, he spent even more time alone in his room. 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. On Feb. 27, agents listened in on a call from David to Kelly and learned David's location in Mexico. ". As soon as you put that first bag of stolen money in that van, theres no going back. "Love" has four. She also must . Chambers did hire McKinney to kill Ghantt, but initially McKinney was making personal cash deliveries to Ghantt in Mexico on behalf of Chambers. And to me, if it pisses them off, Im all for it.. Thats where they feel comfortable., This piece of information would become critical to his getaway plan. The figures can be astounding. 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. I really enjoyed the little scuba diving trip. ];Kelly Jane Campbell [Misc. They were the butt of a national joke. . There it was, "The Heist." Hes very articulate. The phone rang: Kelly had a problem. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. Come for the Chumbawamba, and stay for the return of the Mack. I said, Probably, the best time would be on the weekend; theres fewer people there. Given the presence of the surveillance tapes and a gun belonging to Ghantt, they started with Ghantts phone and pager records and discovered a pattern they attributed to an accomplice. One day, Campbell was speaking to an old friend named Steve Chambers. Thatd be the time to do it, Ghantt recalls. I've got a good woman.". About 200 keys dangled from it. "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. So Im like, Can you get a move on with my money? After a couple of weeks passed, I get a phone call from Kelly: Okay, Brunos coming to you, blah, blah, blah. So I get a phone call from this guy, and I tell him where to meet me. In real life: False. kellis@gastongazette.com 0:04 0:57 On Oct. 4, 1997, former Kings Mountain resident David Scott Ghantt finished his shift as a vault supervisor for Loomis Fargo in Charlotte. I wanted to get as far away as I could. 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. Too many questions remained: Where was the cash? Guller was the attorney for Steven Chambers, who came up with the original idea for the Loomis theft. Things started to go south the night of the robbery. You might as well go all the way now.". . He drove to the edge of the Loomis compound, which was surrounded by a chain-link fence. The money was heavy. CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS FROM 1998 and ACTORS IN MOVIE. Scott was so nervous, he said, that he couldn't help. Is he telling the truth? In that time, I realized most of my problems were because of me. Things were spiraling fast. (The conversation was depicted as 100 percent private on screen). Steve and Michele invited everyone back for a Christmas party, where they gave Michele's stepfather a special gift--the pickup truck he'd always wanted. She'd heard his stories of other successful schemes, like getting refunds on phony tax returns, or operating a loan shark business. His wife, Tammy, was as shocked as Loomis officials. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist (No Ratings Yet) . And after two years, you're just a file." She declined to take a lie-detector test. She was a wife and mother with two children. Steve solicited two others to help move cash during the theft. So the last third of the movie is almost entirely fiction. Chambers, who still lives in Gaston County and operates a gym, declined to comment. If you want me to leave, Ill leave. Then, Ghantt went into another room. 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. On March 1, David Ghantt left his hotel to do some laundry. But as soon as he drove off, I went right back in and opened the vault. Before David left for the airport, he had handed Scott an eight-inch key ring. If they could just sit on the money until then, he said, they'd be fine. But I thought this is me being hard-headed Im going to ride this thing to the ground. And so thats what I did.. Kelly relayed his message to Steve. David didn't even know Steve's name. Sandra Floyd, Michele Chambers's mother, remembers the first time she saw the house. Three weeks later, the couple purchased, in cash, a $635,000 stone mansion. I was just going to get the money into the van. I mean, it was dark, Ghantt explains. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. 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. Steve was sentenced to 11 years 3 months in prison. When I call Ghantt to discuss his involvement in the Loomis Fargo heist, he confesses that hes feeling a bit tired from a day of honest labor. He grabbed the tapes from two VCRs that connected to 16 security cameras. As it turned out, Ghantt was zipping up his scuba suit in Mexico. . Loomis employees drive the very core of our business. It changes you. Question: Should people go see this movie? 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. They also purchased tanning beds, a pool table, a Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle and all kinds of expensive furniture. In real life: False. The robbery of some $17 million quickly became one of the wildest bank heists of the last quarter century. His new life in Mexico had begun. David was sentenced to 7 1/2 years. Almost 19 years after Ghantt and a group of friends from Gaston County pulled off one of the largest cash heists in U.S. history, the movie "Masterminds" will play up the caper for laughs. He flew in an ultra-light plane. "I said, 'That's all they gave me,' " McKinney recalled. Because surprise! I mentioned it to Kelly. They stocked a wine cellar. Two more defendants in the $17 million Loomis Fargo & Co. robbery last year have agreed to plead guilty, and a third person entered a formal plea in court. I wish them all a happy life and that's about it. And so, he told her, Google my name. One thing about teammates, in David's view: You could always trust them. 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. She also assured the teller her cash wasn't drug money. Theres some things I want to do., Ghantt planned on traveling from Mexico to the Cayman Islands, bypassing customs along the way. 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. 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). He figured Tammy wouldn't go for it, and though his marriage had been troubled, he wasn't certain he wanted to leave her. Ghantt was the vault manager and was surrounded. So he got in a cab and went to a mall. 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. Its in the ether. 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. Ghantt would go on to spend six and a half years in federal prison. Steve, who had sworn Kelly, Eric and Scott to secrecy the night of the theft, named them all to the FBI. . She could visit friends. . Ghantt fled to Mexico. Or that it was an inheritance. . Yes, Carrie Underwood adopted a dog in Charlotte. ", "Even then . Not until David was gone did Scott realize he didn't know which key to use. He couldn't talk.". 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. I did every touristy thing you could possibly do while I was down there.