Si vous souhaitez personnaliser vos choix, cliquez sur Grer les paramtres de confidentialit. He was also married. Even though they drove away with less than they had initially intended, they still had more than $17 million in hand. ", After successfully tracing Ghantt's phone call, FBI agents coordinated with Mexican police to arrest Ghantt on March 1, 1998, at Playa del Carmen, a city near Cancun. Everybody thinks being famous and being an actor is stupendous, and the money is fantastic, but they kind of live in afish bowl. [1], Steven Chambers finished serving his sentence in November 2006. Guess what? I really don't miss that guy. . You've decided to give up on a part of your life. (Ghantt works as a heavy machine operator in the construction industry.). Loomis Fargo employees could not open the vault the next morning and called the police. They left behind the cash they couldnt fit in their cars. 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. 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. so make sure youre taking the right ones for you. After meeting up with Chambers, Campbell, and some other co-conspirators, Ghantt hightailed it to Mexico with $50,000 in cash in his car. Unfortunately, he failed to disable the third camera. Her sentence would've been ``substantially' less if she hadn't kept it, officials said. A: I like the 47-year-old David Ghantt more than I did the 20-something David Ghantt. Investigators considered Ghantt to be the prime suspect almost from the beginning. 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. 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. We were two paychecks away from being homeless at any given time.. In October of 1997, I was a vault supervisor for armored truck company Loomis Fargo, when I made off with $17.3 million. The brother of a man killed by a woman now charged with murder in Chambers County said he sees similarities in his brother's case and the case of woman's latest husband's death. BBC Motion Gallery. The defense has finished its closing argument in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh. Just days after agreeing to the plan, the group set a day to carry out the robbery. Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. There is nothing of value in this movie. Naturally, Ghantt started to run out of cash and turned to Chambers, who was annoyed by his requests for more money. Before he decided to steal $17 million from the bank, Ghantt had worked for years as a relatively taciturn and compliant employee. He had never been in trouble with the law. Q: Do you appreciate your normal life now more than you would if you hadn't spent years in prison? The only defendant to not plead guilty, Chambers's attorney Jeff Guller, was found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to eight years in prison. He made his own self miserable. 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. Learning about US history? When he was done, the man drove off to a nearby printing press, where the money was distributed into private vehicles amongst a handful of people. They took a lot of liberty with the story here and there. A: Zach and I have a runningtext conversation going, but he's very busy. The thieves had simply abandoned whatever they couldnt carry away. Michele Chambers declined to make a statement at the hearing. And drastic it was. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. After finding himself in prison he made a concious choice to do things differently. The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points, How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer. Degrowth or Debunk: Do Degrowth proponents have a strategy? Prosecutors also resisted Culler's efforts to downplay Michele Chambers' role in the theft. When I interviewed for this job about three years ago, I told (my boss) that I had some dirt in my background, and if he went digging for it, he would find it. Dustin is the founder and co-owner of Pajiba. Authorities began to hone in on the group and put a wire tap on Campbell's phones. Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here: PrepScholar 2013-2018. [15], "David Ghantt" redirects here. As it turns out, the heist did in fact go as well as you might expect. 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. Ghantt, in order to conserve this money, curtailed his spending. 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. An elderly American couple who went missing in Greece in late January this year were discovered dead in Taygetos mountain range. A lot of people ask me, Oh, do you have any regrets? No, not really. David Ghantt And The Loomis Fargo Heist: The Outrageous True Story. The chief running joke in Masterminds is the Prince Valiant 'do gamely sported by Galifianakis as David Ghantt, . On Oct. 5, 1997, Ghantt carried out the heist during his regular shift after sending another employee home, stealing more than $17 million from the bank vault. By Dustin Rowles | Film | September 30, 2016 |. Masterminds is an atrociously bad comedy, and absolutely everyone is to blame. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. What happens at the end of mastermind? hbspt.cta.load(360031, '4efd5fbd-40d7-4b12-8674-6c4f312edd05', {}); Have any questions about this article or other topics? ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score, How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League, Is the ACT easier than the SAT? And so this third camera caught everything that happened next. You can't get barbecue slaw in this hedonistic state (Florida), and there's nowhere to get real ice cream here like Tony's. Pocketing $50,000 for himself, that man, named David Ghantt, hopped into a car of his own and headed towards Mexico. David Ghantt struck up a relationship with fellow Loomis Fargo employee Kelly Campbell, and they continued to maintain contact even after Campbell left the company. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. For the New York State assemblyman, see. Together with his wife, Chambers bought a new luxury home (upgrading from his mobile home), a BMW Z3, and some extravagant furnishings. 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. Ghantt plead guilty to his charges andserved six years in prison, along with21 other defendantswho received chargesrangingfrom money laundering to bank larceny. Generally, the events of the film are fairly close to reality when they follow the broad details of the case. Thats going to be your life for quite some time, typically. 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. Ten days later, the group was indicted for bank larceny and money laundering. On March 12, a Charlotte grand jury indicted the eight co-conspirators for bank larceny and money laundering; the latter offense was included because of how they spent the stolen money. VIDEO. Explain: The scary part is that as soon as you put that little bit of money in the van, that there's no going back. Als u niet wilt dat wij en onze partners cookies en persoonsgegevens voor deze aanvullende doeleinden gebruiken, klik dan op 'Alles weigeren'. But last Oct. 4, when he still hadn't gotten home by 2:30 a.m., she called his parents in. He and his wife, Michelle, moved from their mobile home in Lincoln County to a luxury house in the wealthy Cramer Mountain section of Cramerton. When asked what the dumbest thing was that Ghantt spent money on, he admitted: The 4 pairs of boots I bought in one day [shrug] what can I say they were nice and I was impulse shopping.. The former star . But because he still owes millions to the IRS, he couldnt be paid. 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.. That suspicion was immediately confirmed by a quick glance at the security camera footage that showed Ghantt doing a little dance after loading all the cash into the van. Ghantt, Chambers, and Campbell came up with the following plan: Ghantt would remain in the vault after his shift on the night of the heist, Oct. 4, 1997, and let his co-conspirators into the vault. FBI security footage of David Ghantt in the midst of the Loomis Fargo heist. His wife, they said, got breast implants and used cash to purchase a 1998 BMW Z3 sports car. Of course, the FBI was already aware of Chambers and his free-spending ways, and the murder plot helped federal agents find Ghantt south of the border. He made it across the border just as his deception was discovered. Officers responded just after 5 a.m. Wednesday to an area near the intersection of Martin Luther King Drive and Carolyn Coleman Way and found , "The Wall Street Journal just so happened to have a supportive op-ed ready to publish within hours of the meeting. Also charged were several innocent relatives that the robbers had enlisted to help get safety deposit boxes in various banks. 121 90 1,443 Show this thread David GhanttRetweeted C.A. Then check out another bank robber who inspired a movie, John Wojtowicz. The pair were both from the United States but had lived in the Peloponnese region of Greece for the past few years. The FBI (Leslie Jones, Jon Daly) made easy work of the case, however, and everyone involved was eventually arrested and imprisoned. 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. Get all your true crime news from Oxygen. 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I didnt even know about it and overlooked it, he said. He worked fueling airplanes, driving a forklift, and in 1994 he got a job as a vault superintendent at Loomis. Authorities say Steve. All rights reserved. (I) bought jewelry, bought a van, Campbell recalled of her own spending. Robbing the 7-Eleven and getting $40 bucks and a pack of Marlboros was not for me. [1], This robbery was the second-largest cash robbery on U.S. soil at the time, as only seven months earlier, on March 29, 1997 in Jacksonville, Florida, Philip Noel Johnson stole $18.8 million from the Loomis Fargo armored vehicle he was driving.[2]. The odds of you actually getting away with something these days is pretty damn slim. CREATIVE. 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, To find out more about how the thieves got caught and how long they landed behind bars, tune in the. Chambers had known enough to insist that no one blows through a ton of cash immediately after the robbery, but once he actually had his hands on the money, he couldnt follow his own advice. ABC7 Eyewitness News Watch Now If you're trying to make yourself better today, that's all most people care about. Q: Do you ever think about what your life would be like if you had gotten away with the money? 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. When the rest of the Loomis Fargo employees showed up the next morning and found that they couldnt open the vault, they called the police. Collections. Ghantt sent home a new employee and quickly loaded the money into the back of a bank van. Its gone! By comparison, Ghantt served seven years in prison and was fined $26,000. Check out never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Her husband, Steve Chambers, whom prosecutors have called the main defendant, began serving an 11-year sentence earlier this year. ``I'm glad she didn't get nine years,' said Sandra Floyd, her mother. 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. Authorities say Steve and Michele Chambers moved from a mobile home into a $635,000 house three weeks after the theft. You can cancel at any time. David Scott Ghantt: Vault Supervisor David Scott Ghantt was the vault supervisor at the regional branch of Loomis, Fargo & Co. in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was released in 2006. I knew that if we could stay off the radar for about a year, we could basically live a vacation life, Ghantt said. Custom Content. Ghantt was joking in the breakroom with fellow Loomis Fargo employee Kelly Campbell. He then began loading $17 million in unmarked bills inside a company van before driving away. The Loomis Fargo heist became something of a media lightning rod. Im like, You need to understand that, that money has been missing for 20 years. Dont come to me for a treasure map, Ill put it to you that way., Michael Sainatos writing has appeared in the Guardian, Miami Herald, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, Buffalo News, the Hill, Alternet, and several other publications . Her reaction seems so far away now, all these years and a Hall of Fame career later. The plan to rob Loomis Fargo was spawned by Campbell and her friend Steve Chambers, during a casual bonfire at Chambers home.