real life kelly campbell loomis fargo
To protect themselves, David and Steve didn't meet or talk. Michele tells me you're in a financial bind. [Kelly] told me, 'Just think about it.' Next month, Payne will back in the Charlotte federal courthouse, this time to be sentenced from weapons and methamphetamine trafficking charges. David was living under the name Mike McKinney on a phony ID. But as he later recalled to the media, as soon as he stepped through those big-box doors, he realized he was flush with cash, and he didnt need to shop at Walmart ever again. Purchases included a pool table, jewelry (including a $43,000 diamond ring), a minivan, $20,000 worth of cigars, and the 7,000-square-foot home on the side of Cramer Mountain. About the same time, Kelly and McKinney received phone calls from agents who told them to open their doors. 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. 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). No dry runs, no rehearsals. Chambers went from a mobile home in Lincoln County to a mansion in Cramerton. Money'll turn your head, I don't care who you are. "I thought he was goofing around.". "He was in tears. When Ghantt was on the plane home from Mexico with the FBI, he admitted to the agents that while Campbell had been integral to why hed done it and that he did indeed have a crush on her it was never his true motivation. He'd even bragged that he'd killed people. . Before long, the FBI had wiretaps on the ringleader, Steve Chambers, and then they waited for the right time to make their arrests. The theft at the time the second-largest cash robbery in U.S. history has been the brunt of mocking movies and books, mostly on how the thieves, who had little money to begin with, could not control their spending habits once they did. Its in the ether. Then another. Guller was the attorney for Steven Chambers, who came up with the original idea for the Loomis theft. At one point, the hoodlum shows up and Ghantt is wearing a Jerome Bettis Pittsburgh Steelers jersey; the hoodlums favorite team is the Steelers, and he caves and tells Ghantt that McKinney wants him dead. Its everything thats coming north.. I would call us friends. 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. We got to the end of the day, and he was acting like he wanted to linger. The government does not run debtors prisons, says U.S. Three weeks after the theft, Steve and Michele moved from their Lincoln County mobile home to a $635,000 house in a gated Cramerton, N.C., neighborhood. Chambers, who still lives in Gaston County and operates a gym, declined to comment. In the meantime, the FBI was closing in looking to bust a total of 21 suspected accomplices. No regrets. I learned something that was valuable at the time: Most criminals never leave a 250, maybe 300-mile circle from their home base. But Ghantt, who served as an unpaid consultant to the movie and attended the big Los Angeles premiere earlier in the week, has no such reservations. Theres no management around. If you want to go ahead and go, I got it. Thatd be the time to do it, Ghantt recalls. . It wouldn't work, Kelly told him. Back then, it was one of the hotspots for hiding money. Ghantt planned to live off the interest for the rest of his life. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Called Masterminds, the 2016 film stars Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig and Owen Wilson. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. Steve now needed a hit man. 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 worked fueling airplanes, driving a forklift, and in 1994 he got a job as a vault superintendent at Loomis. . I just want people to go to the movies and have a good laugh, even if it's at my expense. 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.. Im on the phone with Kelly [Campbell], and Im like, Hey, I really was expecting a package to arrive. Now two NC men face prison. He partied, met women, drank, skied and hung out at the beach. They involve Loomis armored car driver David Scott Ghantt. They also purchased tanning beds, a pool table, a Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle and all kinds of expensive furniture. But I thought this is me being hard-headed Im going to ride this thing to the ground. And so thats what I did.. 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. A report by the General Accounting Office found that as of budget year 2016, $110 billion in restitution ordered by the federal courts was outstanding and that more than 90% of the amount had been classified as uncollectible.. They heard Michele brag about her $43,000 ring. Hes very articulate. Ive never taken offense to anything like that, he tells me. Chambers never held Campbell hostage by locking her in a shed on his property. 2500 City West Blvd., Suite 2300 Houston, TX 77042. . He then began loading $17 million in unmarked bills inside a company van before driving away. . So I was glad it was over. . As with many recent historic events, this one had been caught on videotape, a fact that a few dozen Charlotte FBI agents would learn in a hastily organized Sunday morning meeting. Exhibit A was that Steve had no steady job but plenty of cash. He had stolen $17 million from Loomis Fargo. You see, there's a reason Loomis Fargo used armored cars to move large amounts of cash. (The conversation was depicted as 100 percent private on screen). For reasons that remain obscure, Robert spilled the beans to David. He had an endearing smile, a beautiful wife and two children. He had a favorite restaurant, Zandunga, which had a mariachi band each night and a view of the Caribbean. To say nothing of their art purchases like the aforementioned velvet Elvis portrait and a painting of a bulldog dressed as General George S. Patton. On Nov. 12, a confidential informant told the FBI about Steve Chambers's move from mobile home to mansion. David, now 30, says he's sorry he abandoned his wife--who he says still loves him--and his family. ". Now he offered to pay him to carry cash to David--Steve said he was a friend hiding out after a bad drug deal, McKinney recalled. Things went from bad to worse when, in November, Michelle strolled into a bank with a briefcase filled with 200 grand and asked the manager, How much can I deposit without the bank reporting the transaction? When she showed the bank manager that she really had the money to invest, the cash was still bound in Loomis Fargo wrappers. ". We need to set up some way for me to get my money. She said, We got it all worked out. "It wasn't me, it was Steve," she says she told him. Youre supposed to get less time for cooperating, a lesser penalty, and instead, you see what she got hit with. Gronquist said. I hit the local library the thing that we used to do before Google, Ghantt says with a small laugh. Scary. There was a little voice in my head that said, 'Don't do it. Back in North Carolina, Ghantts former accomplices were living high on the hog. As he and Kelly met in a field behind a shooting range to refine the plan, she allowed him to believe she was falling for him. I mean, it was dark, Ghantt explains. Meanwhile, Steve was keeping a close eye on Kelly. One thing about teammates, in David's view: You could always trust them. "I" has one letter. Scott Grant and Steve pulled up next to her in a Mazda. Some received probation for money laundering, many others did hard time. The others, though, went no farther than Cramer Mountain. 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 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. Scott didn't want to, but then he remembered the hundred-grand payday. . Kelly had no problem fanning the flames of their old flirtation. Ghantt says he operates a bulldozer for a small company. The bash had a Cinderella theme, with a three-tiered cake that looked like a castle. Fourteen defendants were ordered to make restitution payments to Loomis Fargo totaling almost $19 million. Anybody who gets caught up in the system is getting chewed up by it, the now-retired Gronquist told the Observer. The FBI was also surveilling Kelly Campbell and followed her to a pay phone that she used to place calls to Mexico. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. He didn't want to abandon his parents. It was one of those things everyone (at Loomis Fargo) joked about, but in time, it became serious. Come for the Chumbawamba, and stay for the return of the Mack. His assignment was to deliver the cash to David and keep him happy until they could find a way to kill him, McKinney said. On his second trip, Steve gave McKinney David's hotel address. The FBI's final challenge is finding the remaining $2 million. Mexican police, Interpol officers and an FBI agent were watching him. This time, David told McKinney the truth. Chambers and Campbell were waiting for him in the Loomis Fargo parking lot, both in separate vehicles. The best states in the U.S. come from coast to coast. 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. He's a very likable person. Agents found out where Ghantt was living because Chambers had put out a hit on him, foolishly believing Ghantt was the only person the FBI had fingered for the crime. Eric Payne got out of prison in 2006 for his role in the heist and has since paid $11,357 on his $292,000 debt. David said he realized then, for the first time, he might not see the millions he thought he had coming to him. . It was an ear-biting, Pierce Brosnan-loving, comet-obsessed world, and were here to relive every minute of it. 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. In hindsight, it doesnt surprise me a bit, Ghantt says, a bitter laugh catching in his throat. Agents noticed it two months later when it flowed to them through official channels, along with hundreds of similar reports involving other people. 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. There was a third person with them, too, a man named Eric Grant. I was looking at small sailboats and theyre not cheap, he tells me. You can seize property. This real-life crime is the core of "Untitled Armored Car Project," which stars Zach Galifianakis, Owen Wilson and Kristen Wiig. But you cant get blood from a stone, Johns said. It was his goodbye. Thanksgiving and Christmas were difficult. The last time he called me, he said, Hey Ghantt, I just saw a big Loomis Fargo truck. Mine did. He learned to parachute. David told her he'd need help moving the money, getting a new ID and leaving the country. Sweat soaked David's uniform. Kelly says she underestimated the value of her life before the heist. Kelly Campbell, 29, a former company employee, entered guilty pleas earlier to bank larceny, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder charges. They didn't know it, but they were leaving $3.3 million behind. Loomis Armored Shreveport, LA, 1124 Forum Dr, Shreveport, LA, USA Shreveport, LA, USA Req #1990. Question: What made you, Chambers and the others think you could get away with this? Why fans love it. "I was thinking, 'They aren't paying me enough,' " McKinney recalled. Campbell was another employee at Loomis Fargo and she and Ghantt quickly struck up a relationship, one that Campbell denies was ever romantic though FBI evidence says otherwise, and one that continued after she left the company. . His wife, Tammy, was as shocked as Loomis officials. Meanwhile, Michele Chambers was laughing and saying, repeatedly, "Look at all this money!" Charlotte Magazine even ran a feature story about the Loomis Fargo heist with the title, White Trash Crime. The headlines, however, never bothered Ghantt. So the last third of the movie is almost entirely fiction. . All rights reserved. "I said, 'Yeah, sure.' Given his position at the bank, hed be the one to pull off the robbery, and he intended to be ready. Her marriage--at which she was making another ambivalent effort after multiple separations--and even the jobs she'd been able to get with a diploma couldn't come close to providing the kind of life she dreamed about, the life she felt she deserved: a house in the country, a swimming pool, and enough cash so she didn't need to rely on men. The platform is designed to engage citizens and government leaders in a discussion about what needs improvement across the country. Loomis Fargo Defendants Owe as Much as They Stole in 1997, 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. These (Loomis) guys, not so much.. By the time the month concluded, the couple had purchased a 7,000-square-foot stone mansion in a gated country club community. Hes going to start bringing you money. Alright. Steve led the planning. So it was weird when during the middle of the week, there were these very clean-cut, very Midwestern looking, obviously American guys in the town. You can garnish wages. If you were one of the much-smaller-than-expected group of people who caught Masterminds at the theater this weekend, and are looking for a fact-check of the events depicted on screen, here are some of the highlights of our chat with Diamant. And with Loomis, were looking at only one case. "I wanted to be more like my mom and dad were.". The teller, who hadn't asked, filed a "suspicious activity report." In the two days after the robbery, agents interviewed more than 100 people, most connected with David. In real life: False. Was that really what it was about? For his part, Ghantt was now officially on his way to Mexico, his future stretched out before him. Exciting. At 6-1 and 220 pounds, Steve was stocky and imposing, a fast talker with a brown goatee. The Unexpectedly Sweet Story Behind Those Viral Semi-Truck Pregnancy Photos. One night in a small North Carolina town, a down-on-his-luck guard at Loomis Fargo manages to steal $17 millionliterally more than one ton of cash. All I needed was a change of pace.". In real life: False. An officer rang the doorbell. He was an old friend from East Gaston High School, tough and sure of himself. real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. I studied up on the FBI. 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. Where I was going was right there near the Cayman Islands. Actor Owen Wilson plays him in the movie, which includes the real names of all the major players. 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. Truth was, David wanted more than help leaving, he wanted company. He pocketed the money and told Chambers and Campbell to send him his cut in Mexico. Inside the Mazda, Steve told Scott Grant to get out and help David. 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. Zach always plays that bumbling kind of lunatic, but hes not, Ghantt says. . So he and some friends decided at the end of his Oct. 4 shift he would load a company van with more than 2,000 pounds of cash and just drive away. On his way out, he grabbed the surveillance video, hoping to cover his tracks. He realized that if they met the minimum monthly payments, the bill would take 30 years to pay. I told the lead investigator I was glad to see him.. She was devastated, Diamant said. Industry leading Training and Development. The others sat in their cars across the street and watched him struggle to open the heavy gate. You're an idiot.'". 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.
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