Williamson County Tn Accessory Dwelling Unit, The Sweet Spot Bakery Naperville, Lake Joondalup Baptist College Principal, Articles L

Change). However, Chambers had no intention of following those rules, believing the FBI would never connect him to Ghantt. Tuesday marked 25 years since a group of buddies pulled off the third-largest money grab in U.S. history -- the Loomis Fargo heist. The gang made numerous mistakes. According to Butcher, Campbells last official payment came in June 2021 when the government appears to have seized a tax refund of $81.24. Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps. The supervisor liked him and gave him the job. People dont seem to understand human nature. The Charlotte area's economy was booming all around him, and he felt passed over. Restitution is a familiar part of sentencing in federal court. So we were able to figure out with all the denominations, it would require about 20 safe deposit boxes to store it all.. Chambers had broached the possibility of a robbery to Campbell earlier in the summer. You should definitely start your own blog, I highly recommend it. Booklist "Librariesshould consider purchasing this entertaining and lightly edited version, which reads like a fast-paced novel." By using this website, you accept the terms of our Visitor Agreement and Privacy Policy, and understand your options regarding Ad Choices. In one case, the restitution for a Loomis defendant may be a moving target. The FBI says Chambers hired a hitman to tie up the ultimate loose end -- Ghantt. From there, the money was moved from the armored car to private vehicles. That sounds like a lot of money until its compared to the $18,930,201.26 the group was ordered to pay. 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 . He had stayed in a luxury hotel and paid for expensive food and activities such asscuba divingandparasailing. Many of the lesser players in the conspiracy have been the most effective in paying their debts. : The $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft. But they'd stayed in touch, and now they were poised to attempt a crime like almost no other. Even with several vehicles, they underestimated how much space they would need and they had to leave $3 million behind. She sounded incredulous. The walk-in vault was a fortified gray room, more wide than long, with shelves, cabinets, desks, and multiple pushcarts stocked with shrink-wrapped cash. I was relieved emotionally because I knew there was a good chance my luck might run out, Ghantt said. Heist!: The $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft - amazon.com But after one visit, she asked a teller How much can I deposit before you have to report it to the feds? followed by Dont worry, it is notdrug money, the bank filled out asuspicious activity report, which ultimately reached the FBI. The robbery was committed by David Scott Ghantt who was the vault supervisor and accomplices Kelly Campbell, Steve Chambers, Michelle Chambers, Michael Gobies, and other four members. Former Loomis employee David Scott Ghantt is accused of stealing the money. Ghantt didnt know the full extent of what was happening back home -- how that lay low plan turned into a flurry of extravagant spending. He put on his best pair of jeans, a button-down shirt, and his nicest cowboy boots. Campbell was released from federal custody in 2004 after serving five years, meaning her collection case will age out in December 2024. Learn about careers at Cox Media Group. The real story behind the second largest bank heist in history, which The only other employee with him on this day was a trainee. Ms. Campbell worked at Loomis for 11 months, leaving in November 1996, according to court papers. He'd already done enough, he realized, to get himself fired and arrested, even if the gate prevented him from moving the money outside the building. He hired a hitman to take Ghantt out, tying up the ultimate loose end. Each cart, holding about $2 million, was taking David seven or eight minutes to stack, push, and empty into the van, and there were about eight cartloads' worth in the vault. 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. JACKSONVILLE, Fla. This month marked 25 years since one of the biggest armored car heists in U.S. history. He was on a budget for clothes, even for work boots; he had recently needed to check seven stores before finding a pair in his price range. He couldn't understand the gap, why he wasn't more successful, why he couldn't at least match the financial stability of his father, who earned a comfortable salary driving a truck. He had joined the army and earned an honorable discharge, but because of defense-industry cutbacks he hadn't been able to find a good job for himself. As an adult, he preferred Shakespeare, Tom Clancy, and any book he could find about the Federal Bureau of Investigation. All but one of the 24 defendants pleaded guilty, and the one who didnt take the deal was convicted. 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) 'Can I Keep the Velvet Elvis?': The Great Hillbilly Heist of 1997 Ghantt went to Mexico leaving the money with his cohorts, thinking that he could get his share back when he needed it. Many of the lesser players in the conspiracy have been the most effective in paying their debts. Growing up, David's family went to Disney World, sent him to religious school, and shopped at places he couldn't afford as a self-supporting adult. Restitution is a familiar part of sentencing in federal court. It has a certain feel, a smell and weight to it. It was released in 2016 and Wydra was invited to the premiere. They located Steve and Shelley Chambers in their newly-purchased home at the top of a hill. Its attracted workers like Ghantt. Since Ghantt was the supervisor, he sent his co-worker home first. Guller was the attorney for Steven Chambers, who came up with the original idea for the Loomis theft. Living with his wife, Tammy, in a mobile home, he had longed for the middle-class lifestyle of his childhood that had come to seem luxurious, a pipe dream for him now. Im married, I got one girl, shes 15 going on 30. Federal law stops government collection efforts 20 years after a defendant leaves prison. One number is working in Campbells favor. Only a nickel on every dollar have been collected so far. In fact, he had recently finished a book about the FBI and felt it provided insight into the agency's investigative techniques, insight he thought could help the little gang succeed. Notifications from this discussion will be disabled. While Ghantt trusted Chambers enough to leave his cut behind, Chambers had other plans. NASCAR. Except for the kiss in the pickup truck a few weeks before the heist, Kelly had kept things platonic. Masterminds (2016 film) - Wikipedia More than half of the amount came from the seizure of a luxury home purchased by husband-and-wife defendants during their post-heist spending spree. The investigation ultimately resulted in the conviction of eight people directly involved, as well as sixteen others who had indirectly helped them. He added that money can be a motivator for anyone. You can seize property. Of course, this would all be a radical departure for him, and thoughts of his wife and parents did give him pause. 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. Spunk. There are multiples of thousands of these things coming every year. Loomis, Fargo offered a $500,000 reward for his arrest and conviction. Not all of them, but some of them are going to forgive you, theyre going to overlook it., he said. EDITORIAL: Computer Science misses the need for digital literacy, N. Carolina legislators announce Medicaid expansion deal, EDITORIAL: Fighting political forces that sever family ties, Special-use to get overhaul: Commissioners, planners take a look, Cape Carteret seeking new police chief one month after hiring New Bern resident for post, How many in North Carolina are awaiting student loan debt relief? >> PHOTOS: The Loomis Fargo heist, 25 years later. Inside $3.3 million was located along with the two stolen surveillance tapes, apparently left due to the robber and his accomplices being sloppy, or in a hurry. Getting restitution, its like pulling teeth.. What it does is put a ball and chain on that person for the rest of their lives, they are walking around and they are basically an indentured servant, Gronquist said. The Loomis Fargo Heist Over the next months, Ghantt, Campbell, and Chambers developed a plan. Soon thereafter, he met Kelly Campbell, a co-worker at Loomis Fargo. He says the Loomis case shows how the criminal justice system and the courts treat lower-income people differently. CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Kelly Campbell, the woman who helped plan the $17 million robbery of armored-car company Loomis, Fargo was sentenced yesterday to nearly six years in prison and ordered to. He hired a hitman to take Ghantt out, tying up the ultimate loose end. Steve Chambers would keep the rest. I gotta go.". So the original gang was all totally shocked, Wydra said. Ghantt, in order to conserve this money, curtailed his spending. Unexplained Mysteries and Strange Things,Cool Interesting stuff has been online since early 2011. Michelle Chambers paid off only $27,000. And they could barely afford the minimum payments, given the power bills, phone bills, car insurance bills, and home payments they had to meet. So they went to Mexico and arrested Ghantt in order to protect him. - Jeffrey Guller, who at 81 is by far the oldest of the Loomis defendants, still owes almost $1.1 million on his original court debt of $1.14 million and will remain on the governments books for another four years. He and his wife, Michele, moved from theirmobile homeinLincoln Countyto a luxury house in the wealthy Cramer Mountain section ofCramerton. Hed never really been in trouble, he wasnt a career criminal, said retired FBI agent John Wydra. And they hit the jackpot -- FBI video shows agents recovering most of the stolen cash. Butcher says the federal courts in the Western District of North Carolina have never handled a case quite like Loomis. Their most important conversation occurred one afternoon in August 1997 after Kelly paged him at work. Inside the truck, they found Ghantts ring and surmised this as a sign of Ghantts intention to end his relationship with his wife. Money. Now, at 7:45 p.m., with all the money finally inside the van, his aching muscles could take a breather. Thats pretty standard in restitution matters. Then, keeping with the plan, Ghantt took $50,000 (the maximum that could be taken across the border by law without further authorization) with him and left for Mexico, winding up at the popularYucatan Peninsularesort ofCozumel. WOMAN GETS TIME IN LOOMIS HEIST - Greensboro News and Record I appreciate your kind words! More than half of the amount came from the seizure of a luxury home purchased by husband-and-wife defendants during their post-heist spending spree. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.. Clear skies. Kelly had approached David with the idea in the summer, knowing he had a crush on her and winning him over with the promise that a shady friend of hers with Mafia ties would help them. Figure in Loomis Heist Gets Prison | AP News Outside of the building, Ghantt met up with Campbell, Chambers, and others who were involved in the plot, and drove off to a printing business called Reynolds & Reynolds in northwest Charlotte. The $17 million was stolen last Oct. 4 from the armored-car company's vault in Charlotte. Growing up, David had been a nice kid, a decent student who was at worst a minor troublemaker and prankster. That way, outsiders couldn't see money being loaded. 'When you have money, you just have different problems': The Loomis The trainee didn't know to check to make sure it was closed. If the American Dream involved being better off as adults than your parents were, David was experiencing a version of the American Nightmare. From my standpoint, it was just a business deal, Ghantt said. Meanwhile, Ghantt's gang spent wildly and paid their family members and friends to hide money. After hanging up on her, David returned to work. To visit friends.". David was supposed to be showing him the ropes of the job, which included cash pickups and deliveries. - Husband and wife Steven and Michelle Chambers, whose conspicuous consumption of a luxury home, a BMW convertible, breast implants and a $600 wooden Indian, among other purchases, helped the FBI solve the crime, were assessed $3.81 million and $4.8 million, respectively. The property has changed hands several times since then. He is a graduate of Yale and has worked for the Connecticut Post, the Associated Press, and the Palm Beach Post. And if that gives people out there a little bit of hope, then Ive served my purpose on this earth.. Campbell used to work for Loomis and continued the friendship with Ghantt, eventually hooking him up with Chambers. 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. You cannot fine low-income people millions of dollars. That sounds like a lot of money until its compared to the $18,930,201.26 the group was ordered to pay. Their only intimate physical contact had been kissing on a mid-September night when they had driven her pickup truck to a field behind a shooting range in Gaston County to discuss their plans and the theft's chance of success. She will never get beyond the debt. "its a great readsuspenseful, often funny, just the thing for those wondering what it might feel like to have, as these hapless, small-town criminals did, literally too darn much cash lying around. " To the community, the Loomis Fargo heist was a big joke -- the largest hillbilly caper of all time. The world is full of unexplained events, strange mysteries, and mysterious legends. Thank you so much. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. A third surveillance tape was carelessly left behind, and the company was able to identify the man who robbed the vault as David Ghantt. Copyright The Nashua Telegraph | https://www.nashuatelegraph.com | 110 Main St, Ste 1, Nashua, NH 03060 | 603-882-2741, Loomis Fargo defendants owe as much as they stole in 1997, Thats pretty standard in restitution matters. By then, the FBI had become greatly concerned for Ghantts personal safety; they had learned of Chambersmurder for hirescheme. Now and again I run into blog posts that tends to make me want to get started on bloggin myself. The plan was to exit through the building's electronic back gate, which consisted of horizontal metal plates that opened at the touch of a button. Records show the government has garnished his Social Security checks. You can garnish wages. Ghantt was working as a vault supervisor for Loomis Fargo in Charlotte in 1997, earning about $8 an hour and tired of his humdrum life. His collection case closes in two years. David Ghantt And The Ridiculous Loomis Fargo Heist Channel 9 speaks with the man at the center of Loomis Fargo heist 25 In this outrageously entertaining book, Jeff Diamant, the Charlotte Observer's lead reporter on the case, offers the definitive inside account of this astonishing. As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to edit or Besides her prison sentence, Campbell must undergo mental health and drug treatment and spend two years in a supervised release program. When they hung up, she called his pager and left the code 1-4-3, beeper-speak for "I love you," based on the number of letters in each word. In Reservoir Dogs, released just five years earlier, the pawns in a robbery knew each other only by assigned colors: Mr. These cookies do not store any personal information. But things didnt quite work out that way. '. A former FBI agent who helped crack the case sat down with Channel 9 Reporter Glenn Counts to talk about the clues that led to solving the crime, and how the group got caught. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. He angrily hung up the phone at Loomis, Fargo & Co., his soon-to-be former employer in Charlotte, North Carolina. (LogOut/ contact us to submit an unexplained mystery article, or to join the team on the email address below. Afterward, everything became comical. The True Story of David Ghantt and the Loomis Fargo Heist - PrepScholar This station is part of Cox Media Group Television. He was a hard worker, smart enough, and had graduated from high school. In one case, the restitution for a Loomis defendant may be a moving target. 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. For example, Steve Chambers and his wife were living in a. David and Steve had never met, but Steve had already secured somebody else's birth certificate and social security card for him and given it to Kelly to pass along. Thirty years! In addition to their extravagant spending, Michelle Chambers made the mistake of loudly asking a bank teller how much cash she could deposit in her account without it being reported to the feds, and then said, its not drug money.. 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. "Just think about it," she said. When you have money, you just have different problems: The Loomis Fargo heist, 25 years later. First, they tapped the Chambers phone, and began listening in on February 11th, 1998. A connection between each suspect began to emerge slowly, and as the intensity of spending grew, suspicion did as well. You Save 23%. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. Winds light and variable. So we were able to figure out with all the denominations, it would require about 20 safe deposit boxes to store it all.. Javascript is not enabled in your browser. In the first couple of weeks, they had heard both Steve and Shelley bragging about their new-found fortune, and spending remarkable amounts of money. Authorities were notified of the robbery in the morning, when employees couldnt open the vault. Loomis Fargo heist: 25 years later Steve Chambers and his wife were living in a trailer and upgraded to what would today be a multi-million-dollar mansion at Cramer Mountain. Then, he proceeded to load 2,800 pounds of cash into a van. Ghantt, who by then was long out of prison, served as a consultant. The next day, before Mike was able to leave the country, the FBI arrested him in his hotel room. When Ghantt called Campbell asking for more money, a plan was set in motion to take him out. For example, Steve Chambers and his wife were living in a trailer and upgraded to what would today be a multi-million-dollar mansion at Cramer Mountain. To be brutally honest, it was that morning, Ghantt replied. These (Loomis) guys, not so much.. Afterward, she and David would talk just occasionally on the phone. But he wasn't finished. Steve was a serious guy? In 2017, for example, Paul Burks of Lexington was ordered to pay $244 million to the victims of his worldwide Ponzi scheme, Zeek Rewards. And with Loomis, were looking at only one case. That was taking the long view. The plan was to maintain a low profile and wait for things to cool off, allowing Ghantt to return to the states and collect his cut. It all went down in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the man at the center of that heist, David Scott Ghantt, now lives in Jacksonville. He added that he would be able to send the trainee home at about 6:00 p.m. and would then need about an hour to load the money from carts, shelves, and the floor into a Loomis company van. (LogOut/ Paying the money back has taken a lot longer, and time is running out for the U.S. government to collect. He says the Loomis case shows how the criminal justice system and the courts treat lower-income people differently. Kelly Campbell, 29, a former company employee, entered guilty pleas earlier to bank larceny, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder charges. Michelle Chambers paid off only $27,000. Its like, me and you sat down, I have access to pie, you like pie, all I want is my share of the pie. Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. He decided at that moment that if Kelly called again, he would go for it. The unsolved mystery of the Van Meter Visitor a winged creature! Ghantt studied how to rob his employer and advised the others not to spend the money lavishly. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Still facing possible unknowns of other people involved, the FBI needed to gather more information without the suspects getting suspicious of them. The Loomis defendants face no additional legal jeopardy for not paying off their debts. They Had 17 Million Dollars and No Sense at All - AMW Magazine At 2:20 p.m., the phone rang; it was Kelly again. They succeeded in removing $17 million from the safe. Fourteen defendants were ordered to make restitution payments to Loomis Fargo totaling almost $19 million. All of the defendants are out of prison -- the longest sentence was 11 years.