Get the latest articles and test prep tips! Parishioners filled the pews for a memorial mass held for Bishop David O'Connell Wednesday night at the St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Hacienda Heights. Sign up forOxygen Insiderfor all the best true crime content. Then Michele made a trip to the bank. 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. You take a movie like Oceans Eleven, the whole concept of that movie is so farfetched, its not even funny. Wanneer u onze sites en apps gebruikt, gebruiken we, gebruikers authenticeren, veiligheidsmaatregelen toepassen en spam en misbruik voorkomen, en, gepersonaliseerde advertenties en content weergeven op basis van interesseprofielen, de effectiviteit meten van gepersonaliseerde advertenties en content, en, onze producten en services ontwikkelen en verbeteren. Harper Beckham and her dad David Beckham dressed in matching black outfits as they headed to a Paris Fashion Week event being thrown by Harper's mom and David's wife Victoria . But last Oct. 4, when he still hadn't gotten home by 2:30 a.m., she called his parents in. 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'. Ghantt reported to Chambers that his supply of money was running low, but Chambers sent Ghantt just $8,000. They kept several furnishings from the previous owners, including a painting of Elvis Presley on black velvet. From Oct. 6 through Feb. 20, the couple made 47 deposits totaling $271,500 at a Belmont bank, and at. David Scott Ghantt was the vault supervisor at the regional branch of Loomis, Fargo & Co. in Charlotte, North Carolina. Of course, I went on a spending spree. You have permission to edit this article. No rift here! In 97 me and my wife were just barely scraping by, Ghantt recalled in Mondays episode. They would then load as much cash as they could carry into a van. The details of the heist itself, coupled with the missteps the crew made after stealing the money, attracted the attention of writers and movie producers. Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here: PrepScholar 2013-2018. Her reaction seems so far away now, all these years and a Hall of Fame career later. An elderly American couple who went missing in Greece in late January this year were discovered dead in Taygetos mountain range. 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. While Ghantt spent more than 6 1/2 years in federal prison, he said he usedthat time to"re-invent" himself. his wife-to-be. The odds of you actually getting away with something these days is pretty damn slim. David Ghantt worked as a vault supervisor for the armoured cash vehicles at the Charlotte, North Carolina branch of Loomis, Fargo & Co. Ironically even though he worked for a company that moved millions of dollars every day, he was relatively underpaid. As he later recalled about his life before the 1997 heist that changed his life forever: Prior to, I would have never even considered it but one day life kinda slapped me in the face. How? The next day, the Chambers, Campbell, and some other notable parties were arrested in Charlotte. What ACT target score should you be aiming for? 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. As it turns out, the heist did in fact go as well as you might expect. Q: Do you appreciate your normal life now more than you would if you hadn't spent years in prison? Ghantt has never explained where that money went. 29 David Ghantt Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images. 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 see, theres a reason Loomis Fargo used armored cars to move large amounts of cash. From there, the money was moved from the company vehicle to private vehicles. Dont worry, its not drug money.. 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. Ghantt was. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. 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. The plan went off with few problems, but after Ghantt was safely in Mexico, his partners were left storing large amounts of cash. While listening in, they uncovered another more sinister alleged plan to kill Ghantt. As a vault supervisor for Loomis Fargo, David had access to the vaults and all the cash within. ``None of these defendants , in this court's opinion, are capable of making substantial restitution, no matter what they do, or no matter what they try,' Mullen said. Kelly Campbell is scheduled to be sentenced in October. For the New York State assemblyman, see. She wondered how much she could deposit without attracting the attention of the FBI, so she decided to just ask the teller: How much can I deposit before you have to report it to the feds? she asked. David Ghantt was portrayed by Zackary Hatfield. Will Mcintyre/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesMichele Chambers 1998 BMW for sale following the prosecutions of the Loomis Fargo heist conspirators. 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. But in addition to a wife,. So Chambers decided to solve the problem by putting a hit on Ghantt. Said Ghantt, one day life kinda slapped me in the face. On the evening of October 4, 1997, one man loaded $17.3 million in cash from the vaults of Loomis, Fargo & Co. into the back of a van. Ghantt added, I really enjoyed the movie. Meanwhile, Ghantt would take $50,000, as much as could legally be carried across the border without questions, and flee to Mexico. Even the outtakes during the credits are bad. 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. 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 scary one is stealing the money. Steve Chambers and his wife (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) were a little more difficult to connect to the heist. Chambers, it turned out, became the biggest source of evidence for the FBI. 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. But there was just one thing the group hadnt been counting on: the massive weight of that amount of cash. Chambers had broached the possibility of a robbery to Campbell earlier in the summer. So he hatched a plan to rob his employers. Get all your true crime news from Oxygen. 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. He was like OK, yeah, we can do that, she recalled. 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. 1) David Ghantt is underpaid and unhappy. David Ghantt spent 11 years in the military and now works as a film consultant on the side. He is an uncomplicated man stuck in a monotonous life. Here's whatGhantt says now about the heist that madethe "Cramer Mountain Hillbillies" famous and changed him forever. 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. 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. Together with his wife, Chambers bought a new luxury home (upgrading from his mobile home), a BMW Z3, and some extravagant furnishings. 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. 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. He would eventually be arrested in Mexico in March 1998 after one of his co-conspirators put out a hit on him under the false suspicion he was the only prime suspect authorities were aware of at the time. Robbing the 7-Eleven and getting $40 bucks and a pack of Marlboros was not for me. Based on the October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery. There is nothing of value in this movie. And drastic it was. But Ghantt has been open about what he did and how he believes it changed him for the better. Question: Which do you regret more, stealing the money or getting caught? 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. She had previously been making frequent small deposits to avert suspicion. Nine other relatives and friends were also charged with money laundering, as they had co-signed for safe deposit boxes used to store some of the money; prosecutors opted to charge them on the grounds that they should have known the money was obtained illegally. Custom Content. Back then all I really wanted to do was just, I wanted to change my life. . I got to eat my meal perfectly, but every 5 minutes, someone wanted to shoot a selfie with Zach or an autograph from Zach. David Ghantt (@DavidGhantt) is a man that still holds the record for the second largest bank heist on American Soil. Youre better at planning bank heists than David Ghantt. At the time it was thesecond largest bank heistin U.S. history. Im like, You need to understand that, that money has been missing for 20 years. Guided by federal sentencing rules, prosecutors had requested a sentence of nine years for Michele Chambers. From the beginning, the FBIs prime suspect was David Ghantt. In addition to his phone calls with Ghantt, Chambers began extravagantly spending the money, even though the co-conspirators had agreed to lay low for a year or two. The plan to rob Loomis Fargo was spawned by Campbell and her friend Steve Chambers, during a casual bonfire at Chambers home. Just days after agreeing to the plan, the group set a day to carry out the robbery. 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. CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS FROM MASTERMIND MOVIE. 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).. It's the little things like that that gnaw on you. After this look at David Ghantt and the Loomis Fargo heist, read about a more successful robbery, the Antwerp diamond heist. One of the best ways to learn more about U.S. history is to make sure youre taking history classes. Investigators considered Ghantt to be the prime suspect almost from the beginning. Instead, the bandits just started throwing as much money as they could into the van until they couldnt fit anymore. Als u niet wilt dat wij en onze partners cookies en persoonsgegevens voor deze aanvullende doeleinden gebruiken, klik dan op 'Alles weigeren'. Project #ShowUs. Bubbling under the surface, however, was a deep frustration at the way he was treated. Investigators also found Ghantt's pickup truck, abandoned at the warehouse. Ghantt, now 29, was a tall, decorated Persian Gulf War veteran whom early newspaper reports likened to Huckleberry Finn. David Scott Ghantt: Vault Supervisor David Scott Ghantt was the vault supervisor at the regional branch of Loomis, Fargo & Co. in Charlotte, North Carolina. Ghantt, who had been with the bank since 1994, was promoted from driver to vault supervisor in 1997, where he earned $360 a week and befriended Kelly Campbell (Wiig), who got Ghantt mixed up in the plans for the heist after she left Loomis. Ghantt's spending in Mexico was extravagant at first. After finding himself in prison he made a concious choice to do things differently. All but one of the defendants pleaded guilty. By then, the FBI had become greatly concerned for Ghantt's personal safety; they had learned that Chambers had plotted to have Ghantt killed in a murder for hire scheme using a "hit man" named Michael McKinney. 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. Once the hitman Chambers had hired arrived in Mexico, he found that he couldnt bring himself to kill Ghantt. Before he decided to steal $17 million from the bank, Ghantt had worked for years as a relatively taciturn and compliant employee. Q: Your troubles were self-inflicted, but you seem happy. I didnt even know about it and overlooked it, he said. 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. He made his own self miserable. He completed his prison sentence in November 2006. 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.". The thieves had simply abandoned whatever they couldnt carry away. David Ghantt had been a model employee for an armored car company before pulling off the second biggest cash heist in U.S. history, fleeing with more than $17 million in untraceable bills in 1997. Chambers was a small-time crook who suggested to Campbell that they rob Loomis Fargo. Ghantt believed the new employee would make a good replacement for his wife, but the feelings were not necessarily reciprocated. Ask questions; get answers. Q: You came to the North Carolina mountains during Hurricane Irma, but what do you miss about Gastonia? You've decided to give up on a part of your life. On Oct. 4, Ghantt sent home the employee he was training and disabled two security cameras near the vault in preparation for the heist. Chambers would hold on to most of the remaining cash and wire it to Ghantt as needed. Just the ability to come and go as I please and walk barefooted in the backyard means so much. The couple was married for 22 years before her untimely death in 2012. Both were involved in the second-largest cash heist in U.S. history, in which a group of people stole $17 million from the. Chambers and his wife Michele moved out of a trailer and into a luxury mansion in a nice neighborhood. In the end, eight co-conspirators were indicted for the Loomis Fargo heist. [citation needed], The defendants were the targets of many barbed jokes in Charlotte and across the country, in part because of their extravagant spending. 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. Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. And Ghantt hadnt really thought about the physical challenge of moving such a large sum of money. The College Entrance Examination BoardTM does not endorse, nor is it affiliated in any way with the owner or any content of this site. I knew that if we could stay off the radar for about a year, we could basically live a vacation life, Ghantt said. One day, Campbell was speaking to an old friend named Steve Chambers. They asked me how I felt about it and I said, Its my story, but its your movie so have at me. He worked fueling airplanes, driving a forklift, and in 1994 he got a job as a vault superintendent at Loomis. Hes way smarter than youd think he would be because he tends to play Bozos. The FBI investigation was aided by the gang's extravagant spending. Because Ghantt was the only employee who wasnt there that morning, he became the obvious suspect. All rights reserved. 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. He and his wife,. 33. ``I'm glad she didn't get nine years,' said Sandra Floyd, her mother. [7][8], Rocket Science, a 1998 double-disc album by Charlotte-based radio personalities John Boy & Billy, includes a track ("Marvin: The Loomis Caper") mocking the 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. I knew it was over then, Ghantt said. 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). . I wanted to make a drastic change and I went for it, Ghantt remembered later to the Gaston Gazette. Meanwhile, David Ghantt was relaxing on a beach in Cozumel, Mexico. Generally, the events of the film are fairly close to reality when they follow the broad details of the case. Though she agreed to cooperate with the government when she pleaded guilty to bank larceny and money laundering in August 1998, Michele Chambers didn't tell the FBI she still had the ring until December, when she turned it in. And, with the help of several others David made off with $17.3 million dollars, 11 million of which was in 20's. I got no real complaints, not at this point., The heist became the premise for the movie,Masterminds, released in September 2016. Across the border in Mexico, Ghantt was also living it up. Chambers promised to wire him money in Mexico until the investigation blew over and Ghantt could return to North Carolina. The plan was for Ghantt to commit the robbery and then quickly leave the country for Mexico but to leave the bulk of the cash with Chambers. This page was last edited on 21 February 2023, at 16:45. The FBI continues to search for a missing $2 million from the theft. Steven Chambers, left, and David Scott Ghantt leave federal court. I felt cornered and one day the joking in the break room about robbing the place suddenly didnt seem so far-fetched.. I mean, thats pretty much why I did it. When Seymour Hersh Strained to Keep Up With CounterPunch, Nichole Stephens, Administrative Assistant. In spite of Chambers assurance that the money was, you know, totally not illegally acquired, the teller remained suspicious, especially because the stacks of cash still had Loomis Fargo wrappers on them. The Loomis Fargo robbery was one of the largest heists in history, with $2 million in stolen funds still unaccounted for. When Ghantt called Chambers to have the latter wire him more money, Chambers sent just a few thousand dollars. All of the defendants except for one pleaded guilty and accepted their sentences. Her sentence would've been ``substantially' less if she hadn't kept it, officials said. Will Mcintyre/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images. After meeting up with Chambers, Campbell, and some other co-conspirators, Ghantt hightailed it to Mexico with $50,000 in cash in his car. 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. All rights reserved. Theyre Doing it in the USA Too, On False Hopes and Broken Promises: Behind the Scenes of the UN Statement on Palestine, A Conversation With Keith Lamar, From Death Row in Ohio, The Nightmare of Great Power Rivalry Over Taiwan, Left to Die: Deterrence, Death, and Rescue in the Borderlands, Japan to Delay Ocean Dumping of Contaminated Waste Water from Fukushima, A Socialist Survival Tactic: Cubas Worker Parliaments, Politics In the Catastrophe, the Elders Calling, The Deafening Silence of Intellectuals in the Face of Growing Global Conflicts, Women Wont Renegotiate Our Place in the Economy, Land for Peace: Borders Arent Sacred, Human Lives Are, Workers, Machines, and Bonus Depreciation, The Abstainers: What Biden Left Out of His Warsaw Speech, When Companies Hire Low-Wage Contractors, They Put My Life at Risk, Humanitys Secret War Against the Environment, Ourselves, and Our Children, Before Norfolk Southern Poisoned Ohio, It Poisoned the Statehouse, Reconciliation Does Not Mean Forgetting in Nicaragua, Its Time to Realize the Farm Bills Transformative Potential, Why News of Population Decline and Economic Slowdown Isnt Necessarily a Bad Thing, Doing Washingtons Bidding: Australias Treatment of Daniel Duggan, Remembering Kuwasi Balagoon and the Forgotten Legacy of Black Anarchism, Prairie Populist, Honest Senator James Abourezk, Fearless Fighter for Justice, Why Biden Snubbed Chinas Ukraine Peace Plan, ILWU Alums Tackle Labor Power and Strategy Questions. The missing couple were identified as David Harrison Robinson and his wife Lucretia Robinson. Instead, the two started hanging out on the beach together and became friends. The morning after the height, employees of Loomis Fargo realized they couldnt open the vault. The FBI knew they needed to make their move. Chambers served 11 years before being released. Check out never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Separating the Red and Blue. But even though he worked for a company that regularly moved millions of dollars, David Ghantt himself was underpaid. 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. 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. Hes a great person. 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.. The defense has finished its closing argument in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh. Within two days, the investigators found the van with $3 million in cash and the security camera tapes inside.
Villa Lario Wedding Cost, Articles D