He had stayed in a luxury hotel and paid for expensive food and activities such as scuba diving and parasailing. How? An FBI criminal investigation ultimately resulted in the arrest and conviction of eight people directly involved in the heist, as well as sixteen others who had indirectly helped them, and the recovery of approximately 88% of the stolen money. Now, here we are, two years later. David Ghantt was portrayed by Zackary Hatfield. I felt cornered and one day the joking in the break room about robbing the place suddenly didnt seem so far-fetched.. I'll take the live one. I was working all the time and unhappy I felt cornered and one day the joking in the break room about robbing the place suddenly didnt seem so far-fetched.. We caught up with David Ghantt about life after his $17m heist, hanging out with Zach Galifianakis and the accuracy of Masterminds, a new movie based on. I got no real complaints, not at this point., The heist became the premise for the movie,Masterminds, released in September 2016. On March 1, 1988, Mexican police arrested Ghantt at Playa del Carmen. Two of them, Mike and Kim Goodman, are scheduled to be sentenced today. Steve Chambers and his wife (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) were a little more difficult to connect to the heist. One day, Campbell was speaking to an old friend named Steve Chambers. At the time it was the second largest cash robbery ever to happen on US soil. Si vous ne souhaitez pas que nos partenaires et nousmmes utilisions des cookies et vos donnes personnelles pour ces motifs supplmentaires, cliquez sur Refuser tout. [citation needed], It was later confirmed by the FBI that more than 88% of the stolen cash had been located or otherwise accounted for. Former Cramerton Police Chief David Young soon got wind of the Chambers excessive spending spree and reached out to the FBI. Just days after agreeing to the plan, the group set a day to carry out the robbery. So with the assistance of a co-worker and possible love interest as well as a small-time criminal, David Ghantt pulled off the then-second-largest cash heist in U.S. history. U kunt uw keuzes te allen tijde wijzigen door te klikken op de links 'Privacydashboard' op onze sites en in onze apps. Michele Chambers' sentence was two months longer than that given to David Scott Ghantt, the Loomis employee who removed the money from the company vault on Oct. 4, 1997. David Bragg . The Loomis Fargo robbery was one of the largest heists in history, with $2 million in stolen funds still unaccounted for. At the time it was the second largest cash robbery ever to happen on US soil. Over the next months, Ghantt, Campbell, and Chambers developed a plan. Anonymous tips had the FBI monitoring Chambers calls. Chambers, it turned out, became the biggest source of evidence for the FBI. Chambers was always considered the "mastermind" behind the theft, but he doesn't talkmuch about his Loomis heist days, not even when actor Owen Wilson portrayed him in the 2016comedy about the heist titled"Masterminds.". But because he still owes millions to the IRS, he couldnt be paid. Michelle Chambers received a harsher sentence than Ghantt seven years and eight months because she had violated several bond conditions. Als u uw keuzes wilt aanpassen, klik dan op 'Privacyinstellingen beheren'. Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com, allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. For the New York State assemblyman, see. Q: How do you tell prospective employers you once stole $17 million? Oxygen Insider is your all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more. David Ghantt is more than just a man who was a part of one of the worlds largest heists, he's more than a funny name associated with a comedy movie, he's actually just an every day person who once made a really bad decision. 20 years ago, on the night of October 4, 1997, David Scott Ghantt loaded $17.3 million of cash from the bank vault in Charlotte, North Carolina he was employed to supervise into a van. They had initially agreed to control their spending for a year or two, in the belief that the government would vigorously track the spending habits of any and all suspects for at least a year before relenting. The judge said he would recommend that Michele Chambers be given mental health treatment in prison. But even though he worked for a company that regularly moved millions of dollars, David Ghantt himself was underpaid. Because Ghantt was the only employee who wasnt there that morning, he became the obvious suspect. Campbell was receptive and brought the idea up to Ghantt. Did you know that the SAT offers subject exams, too? Across the border in Mexico, Ghantt was also living it up. David Ghantt (@DavidGhantt) is a man that still holds the record for the second largest bank heist on American Soil. No rift here! Its easy to get somebody to do something if you know that they are that infatuated with you.. Ghantt added, I really enjoyed the movie. When Seymour Hersh Strained to Keep Up With CounterPunch, Nichole Stephens, Administrative Assistant. And so this third camera caught everything that happened next. That usually takes the shine right off of it, when you start explaining that. He continued, Youd be wearing a lot of khaki brown and eating crappy food., Since the films release and its recent Netflix debut, Scott Ghent cited that the most common question he receives is about the missing $2 million never recovered by the FBI; Ive had people actually ask me that question. 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. Prosecutors also resisted Culler's efforts to downplay Michele Chambers' role in the theft. (renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax). I wasnt attracted to him or anything, but he was a nice guy, Campbell said. In total, 24 people were convicted. But thanks in part to the film, the outlandish story of David Ghannt and the Loomis Fargo heist will surely live on for years to come. My name is David Scott Ghantt. I work construction. We were in Old Fortwhen they were shooting the movie and went out to eat. They got to work planning the straightforward heist that would rely on Ghantts existing access to the vault, fewer staff at the warehouse on the weekends, and the ability to use one of the companys armored trucks to make the successful getaway. What happens at the end of mastermind? He then proceeded to load about $17.3 million in cash (approximately $11 million of which was in $20 bills) into the back of a company van. Creative Insights. It's the little things like that that gnaw on you. so make sure youre taking the right ones for you. The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points, How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer. David Ghantt was the vault supervisor for Loomis, Fargo & Co. armored cars, which managed the transportation of large sums of cash between banks in North Carolina. Then, keeping with the plan, Ghantt took $50,000 (the maximum that could by law be taken across the border without further authorization) with him and left for Mexico, winding up at the popular Yucatan Peninsula resort-island of Cozumel. Authorities began to hone in on the group and put a wire tap on Campbell's phones. A movie based on the heist starring Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig, Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones and directed by Jared Hess (the guy who made Napoleon Dynamite) is out now on Blu-ray and DVD. Her reaction seems so far away now, all these years and a Hall of Fame career later. Authorities say Steve. While making only eight dollars an hour in his role as supervisor, Ghantt decided it was time to do something: I was unhappy with my life. I stole $17 million, and Zach Galifianakis played me in a movie. AI Chatbots are Even Scarier Than You Think, DeSantiss Educational Policies Come Right Out of the Fascist Playbook, Erase the Memory to Erase a People? Jared Hess directed Masterminds, and god bless the guy, but if Gentlemen Broncos and Nacho Libre were not proof enough that Napoleon Dynamite was a fluke, Masterminds should seal the deal. David Ghantt : [voice-over] Steve was a petty thief, mostly known for stealing tiny wheelchairs from pediatric hospitals. 43-year-old Margret and her mother both died in 2012 . Loomis Fargo employee David Ghantt and his partners nearly pulled off the perfect crime, but it would be their lavish spending, and an alleged murder plot, that would be their undoing. Based on the October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery. You see, theres a reason Loomis Fargo used armored cars to move large amounts of cash. 4 million images and real time event coverage from coast to coast , ImageCollect is the only celebrity photo site you'll ever need. Will California Save the Iconic Joshua Tree? To find out more about how the thieves got caught and how long they landed behind bars, tune in the Super Heists on CNBC on Monday at 10 p.m. ET/PT. At the. Instead, the bandits just started throwing as much money as they could into the van until they couldnt fit anymore. After loading the massive cache of loot into the armored truck, Ghantt set the time lock on the vault, which locked the door for days unless the employees drilled through the lock. Playing upon David's obvious feelings for her, Kelly is the . After meeting up with Chambers, Campbell, and some other co-conspirators, Ghantt hightailed it to Mexico with $50,000 in cash in his car. I knew it was over then, Ghantt said. 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. Even the outtakes during the credits are bad. Just the ability to come and go as I please and walk barefooted in the backyard means so much. As Campbell would later explain, If David got killed, there couldnt be any finger pointing. Also charged were several innocent relatives that the robbers had enlisted to help get safety deposit boxes in various banks. Guess what? Pocketing $50,000 for himself, that man, named David Ghantt, hopped into a car of his own and headed towards Mexico. Fed up, exhausted, and seeing a way out, Ghantt agreed. And drastic it was. Als u niet wilt dat wij en onze partners cookies en persoonsgegevens voor deze aanvullende doeleinden gebruiken, klik dan op 'Alles weigeren'. The problem with the movie, however, is that the talented cast had no idea what the hell they were trying to do. The FBI knew they needed to make their move. David Ghantt was a nuisance to Steve Chambers and Kelly Campbell, John Wydra, a retired FBI agent who handled the case, told Super Heists.. You can reach Kevin Ellis at 704-869-1823 or www.Twitter.com/TheGazetteKevin. All of the cash from the Loomis Fargo heist was recovered or accounted for, except for $2 million. Although the history of the predecessor Wells Fargo & Company dates back to 1852, Loomis Fargo & Company was established in 1997 by the consolidation of Wells Fargo Armored Service and Loomis Armored Inc.; the resulting corporation employed 8,500 people and provided armored transportation, cash handling services, and automatic teller machine maintenance. He worked fueling airplanes, driving a forklift, and in 1994 he got a job as a vault superintendent at Loomis. Campbell used part of her share of the money to buy a Toyota Sienna minivan in two cash installments. And, with the help of several others David made off with $17.3 million dollars, 11 million of which was in 20's. A: I like the 47-year-old David Ghantt more than I did the 20-something David Ghantt. Chambers and his wife also made some cash payments on a few cars. I learned that I was an a--hole. 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).. The police then called the FBI because most of the money handled at the facility belonged to banks, which technically made it a bank robbery a federal offense.[5]. . For a time, it was nicknamed "the hillbilly heist" because nearly all of the major players in the case came from small towns around Charlotte. Now looking back, with the life I have now, Ive got a great family, got a great kid. [1], Steven Chambers finished serving his sentence in November 2006. He was insecure. So he hatched a plan to rob his employers. And Ghantt hadnt really thought about the physical challenge of moving such a large sum of money. He also took various measures to change his appearance, such as shaving, after a patron at a restaurant pointed out to him that he "looked like the man who robbed a bank of $20 million. Campbell knew theyd need the help of the warehouses vault supervisor, who just happened to have a crush on her, and she called Ghantt to ask for his help. It was an open-and-shut case and all authorities had to do now was to find the culprit and identify Ghantts accomplices. Here, he amps up the most obnoxious excesses of his entire cast and lets their grating bad-improv skills run amok. Not only was Ghantt the only unaccounted for employee the morning after the heist, there was also footage of Ghantt moving the cash into the back of the Loomis Fargo van. Separating the Red and Blue. Culler acknowledged that she had overheard her husband and co-defendant Kelly Campbell talk about the plan, ``but she thought it was fantasy world.'. Chambers and his wife Michele moved out of a trailer and into a luxury mansion in a nice neighborhood. Her husband, Steve Chambers, whom prosecutors have called the main defendant, began serving an 11-year sentence earlier this year. afficher des publicits et des contenus personnaliss en fonction de vos profils de centres dintrt; mesurer lefficacit des publicits et contenus personnaliss; et. This article will teach you more about the SAT subject tests. The chief running joke in Masterminds is the Prince Valiant 'do gamely sported by Galifianakis as David Ghantt, . And with that, David Ghantt took off for Mexico. Ghantt has never explained where that money went. 5 min read. Theyre meant to be trailer-park trash, but they come off as character experiments on a bad night at the Groundlings. They received sentences and probation ranging from several years to 11 years and three months in federal prison for Steve Chambers, who was also fined more than $3,500,000. Retro CharlotteFBI security footage of David Ghantt in the midst of the Loomis Fargo heist. Then you end up in a eight by ten cube and youre going to share that cube with two other people. They kept several furnishings from the previous owners, including a painting of Elvis Presley on black velvet. his wife-to-be. He was angry a lot. In 2020, the television show Super Heists portrayed the heist in Episode 3, "Van Full of Dollars". ``I wish she'd gotten less. Its a farce that never farces; a comedy without jokes. The couple was married for 22 years before her untimely death in 2012. As the FBI listened in to Chambers calls, they discovered that he was also planning to have Ghantt assassinated, hoping to keep all the money for himself. Dont worry, its not drug money.. But neither of those things would matter after he met Kelly Campbell. While Ghantt spent more than 6 1/2 years in federal prison, he said he usedthat time to"re-invent" himself. But it was Ghantt, now 47 and living with his wife and daughter in Jacksonville, Florida, who actually took more than 2,000 pounds of cash and just drove away from his job. After years of working hard, the realisation hit . The connection to Chambers took more time. I didnt even know about it and overlooked it, he said. Ask below and we'll reply! Will Mcintyre/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images. When the cheerleading coach broke the news to Katrina Kohel that she was the only one left on the cheer squad, Kohel was determined to compete anyway. All rights reserved. But even though he worked for a company that regularly moved millions of dollars, David Ghantt himself was underpaid. Finally, in March 1998, the FBI traced a call from Ghantts phone and he was arrested in Mexico. Campbell used to work for Loomis and continued the friendship with Ghantt, eventually . Chambers promised to wire him money in Mexico until the investigation blew over and Ghantt could return to . Collections. Authorities had the receipt and had known it was missing. You'd be amazed at how much stress you can relieve yourself from in your life by just taking 20 or so minutes a day for yourself and just letting the world go. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. Kelly Campbell is scheduled to be sentenced in October. The morning after the height, employees of Loomis Fargo realized they couldnt open the vault. Galifianakis will play the armored car driver, David, who evades authorities, will be searching for his co-conspirators who betrayed him, Kelly (Kristen Wiig) and Steve (Owen Wilson). Q: North Carolina native Zach Galifianakis portrayed you in "Masterminds." So Chambers decided to solve the problem by putting a hit on Ghantt. The College Entrance Examination BoardTM does not endorse, nor is it affiliated in any way with the owner or any content of this site. Steven Chambers, left, and David Scott Ghantt leave federal court. Back then all I really wanted to do was just, I wanted to change my life. The FBI (Leslie Jones, Jon Daly) made easy work of the case, however, and everyone involved was eventually arrested and imprisoned. You may email him here, follow him on Twitter, or listen to his weekly TV podcast, Podjiba. Until it's gone, you don't appreciate it. Dustin is the founder and co-owner of Pajiba. The judge said he doubted she would be able to pay the $4.8 million restitution, but said federal law required him to impose it. During the hearing, Culler recounted his client's difficult personal life: her parents' divorce when she was 2 or 3 years old; a teenage stay in a Baptist Children's home; a teenage pregnancy; and various medical conditions. A: I'm in dire need for some RO's barbecue and some Tony's Ice Cream. Holding her hands behind her back, Michele Chambers was sentenced Tuesday to seven years and eight months in prison for her role in the $17 million heist from Loomis, Fargo & Co. She was also ordered to pay $4.8 million in restitution.It was the fourth-most severe sentence given in the case, which has 21 defendants. It was nearly the perfect crime, but while Ghantt fled to Mexico to lay low, his partners lavish spendingand their own alleged plans for murderwould ultimately be the groups demise. And it didn't take long to figure out that this was not the place for me. From the beginning, the FBIs prime suspect was David Ghantt. Youre better at planning bank heists than David Ghantt. 1) David Ghantt is underpaid and unhappy. Thats the big thing. I knew that if I did something like that, I would take a huge amount of money, Ghantt said of the brash robbery on an upcoming episode of CNBCs Super Heists, airing Monday at 10 p.m. Ghantt, a U.S. Army veteran, was living a relatively boring life working as the vault superintendent at a Loomis Fargo armored car warehouse just outside Charlotte, North Carolina making a relatively meager paycheck, when he crossed paths with Kelly Campbell. I realized a lot of things that were wrong with me as a person. But of course, then they had to decorate that spectacular new space and so they spent tens of thousands of dollars on things like cigar store Indians, paintings of Elvis, and a bulldog dressed up like George Patton. Authorities said they hired a man named Michael McKinney to meet up with Ghantt and kill him, under the guise that he was planning to give Ghantt more of the money he was owed. David Ghantt normally came home between 6 and 8 p.m., and often he was late, his wife said. A comedy film called Masterminds, based on the Loomis Fargo heist and starring Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig, Owen Wilson, and Jason Sudeikis, was released in 2016. A lot of people ask me, Oh, do you have any regrets? No, not really. If you can see the obvious flaw in this plan, namely that Chambers would have no reason whatsoever to actually wire Ghantt any money, then congratulations.
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