Now and again I run into blog posts that tends to make me want to get started on bloggin myself. Fact check: Is there much truth to the new Masterminds movie? In the coming years, a movie was made about the Loomis Fargo heist, called the Masterminds. They already knew who he was-David Ghantt, a Loomis Fargo employee. They also found several stacks of money with Loomis bands still attached throughout all the homes searched. Loomis Fargo heist: 25 years later David Scott Ghantt. Ghantt had worked with the branch since 1994, and had been promoted from a driver to the vault supervisor. Ghantt was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. 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. The receptionist told DePriest that she could see the pain on Ghantts face, though she didnt know what caused it. So I guess I have no regrets. He is an uncomplicated man stuck in a monotonous life. Even when Ghantt left, they continued to maintain contact. They both made jokes about their work and how they would rather rob the place than continue with their underpaid job. However, they didnt heed their own advice. Since he was the only employee unaccounted for the following day, they checked the tapes for clues. Also charged with money laundering were innocent relatives and friends who had co-signed safe deposit boxes. 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. 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. Steve Chambers would keep the rest . ``There are many people with those factors who don't resort to crime,' he said. LRM had an exclusive phone . Ghantt was working as a Loomis Fargo security when he committed the robbery, and Campbell had . Im married, I got one girl, shes 15 going on 30. Besides her prison sentence, Campbell must undergo mental health and drug treatment and spend two years in a supervised release program. Ghantt was the vault manager and was surrounded daily by millions of dollars-worth of temptation. More calls between the two men, and also between Steve and Kelly Campbell, made it clear that the group was starting to turn on David Ghantt. She is a self-proclaimed "super-self-aware person" and this is her first guest post on the blog. 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. David Ghantt: Oh, God! Loomis Fargo heist: 25 years later David Ghantt took $50,000 for himself and fled to Cozumel, Mexico. In the end, he carried as much as he could and just tossed it into the van. Additionally, all the stolen cash was recovered or accounted for, except for $2 million. That movie, Masterminds was filmed in 2014. Subsequently, he was to take out as much cash as he could and load it up in a van. Chambers promised to wire him money in Mexico until the investigation blew over and Ghantt could return to . You have to remember that it's Hollywood and they'll take what was a minor event and they'll blow it up and make it as funny as they can.". } SPORTS. Authorities were notified of the robbery in the morning, when employees couldnt open the vault. There was a book published in 2002 as well, by author Jeff Diamant called,Heist! $17.3 million in cash was robbed from the Charlotte, North Carolina, regional office vault of Loomis, Fargo & Co. on the evening of October 4, 1997. To connect Chambers to them was more difficult. The bank was robbed on Oct. 4, 1997, by one of their security guards, David Ghantt, and his girlfriend, Kelly Campbell, a former employee at the time. He had said, then reflecting on the events: "I wouldn't have thought about it before, but one day life kind of hit me in the face. Driving away, he said he felt a mix of fear, confidence and excitement that he outsmarted the FBI. I hope everyone has moved on. My knee-jerk reaction was to be angry, and then the sarcastic ass side of me started laughing about it, Ghantt said. The FBI began to question past and current employees of Loomis Fargo. And that's OK with Ghantt, who's just a few weeks shy of his 47th birthday, out of federal prison for more than a decade, married with a 9-year-old daughter . David Ghantt was the Treasury Supervisor for Loomis Armored Cars, Fargo & Co. Its attracted workers like David Ghantt. 25 years later David Ghantt took $50,000 for himself . Before the robber left Loomis Fargo, he made a trip to the managers office to remove two surveillance tapes in order to conceal his identity. Nathan, Steves cousin, was found in a mobile home the Chambers had abandoned. But last Oct. 4, when he still hadn't gotten home by 2:30 a.m., she called his parents in Hendersonville. He left for the border, winding up at the popular Yucatan Peninsula resort island. Kelly Campbell: Oh, my gosh. Steve and Michelle Chambers moved from a mobile home into the $635,000 house. From the start, David Ghatt was considered to be a prime suspect. Le seul rayon de soleil dans son existence banale, c'est sa jolie collgue, Kelly Campbell. The next morning, Loomis Fargo employees were unable to open the vault. This technically made it a bank robbery and a federal offense. The man at the center of that heist was David Scott Ghantt. Kelly Campbell: [looks at his buttocks] I think that bullet just went straight between your cheeks. Looking back at the Loomis heist. Before long, the tales of high living by Chambers and his now former wife, Michelle, led the thieves to be labeled either the "Cramer Mountain Hillbillies" or "The gang that couldn't steal straight." Chambers, who still lives in Gaston County and operates a gym, declined to comment. ", GREENSBORO Jurors found TikTok star Jessica Middlebrook, known as towtruckjess on social media, not guilty of involuntary manslaughter Thu. On Oct. 4, 1997, former Kings Mountain resident David Scott Ghantt finished his shift as a vault supervisor for Loomis Fargo in Charlotte. Besides wearing the ring, driving the BMW, and living in the new house, prosecutors say Michele Chambers helped others deposit millions of dollars in safe-deposit boxes in the area, and that she took $200,000 in cash into a Salisbury bank in November 1997 and came out with a $200,000 check. 0:00. 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. On March 29 of last year, in the largest armored car heist in U.S. history, $18.8 million was taken from Loomis, Fargo in Jacksonville, Fla. An employee, Philip Noel Johnson , was arrested Aug.30 in connection with that theft, All but $186,000 was recovered. David Ghantt may have walked out of the Loomis Fargo heist with the money in hand but then the problems started piling up. DePriest talked to employees at the hotel where Ghantt had stayed under the name James T. Kelley and claiming to be an oilrigger on vacation. Word trickled in to the FBI that Ghantt had a romantic interest in a former coworker, Kelly Campbell, who one day visited a Toyota dealership to purchase a minivan with twenty-dollar bills. where he earned $360 a week and befriended Kelly Campbell (Wiig), who got Ghantt . Its available to stream on Netflix, and the description on the site starts with the phrase Four dim-witted Southerners, which should tip you off that this retelling deserves a few grains of salt. What to know about Shigella bacteria as drug-resistant strain spreads The plan went off with few problems, but after Ghantt was safely in Mexico, his partners were left storing large amounts of cash. "I've moved on with my life," he said Tuesday. FBI video shows agents searching the Cramer Mountain home and finding stacks of cash. 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. 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. David Ghantt was living an equally luxurious life in Mexico. David Ghantt is now 47 and living with his wife and daughter in Jacksonville, Florida. Their plan was fairly straightforward: Ghantt was to remain in the vault after his shift on the night of the heist, October 4, 1997. Still facing possible unknowns of other people involved, the FBI needed to gather more information without the suspects getting suspicious of them. Within the next two days, investigators found an abandoned van with the security tapes and a staggering $3.3 million! The feds say these six were involved with David Scott Ghantt, and were sharing the loot from Ghantt's $17 million armored-car-company heist in . Probably very egotistical of me, I though yeah, sure, I can beat them, theyre college smart and thats about it, Ghantt said. The next day, before Mike was able to leave the country, the FBI arrested him in his hotel room. As Campbell would later explain, If David got killed, there couldnt be any finger pointing. He was doing what the rest of us were doing making bad decisions. The office in Charlotte would be the victim of Ghantt in the year of the opening. 5 min read. This former Kings Mountain resident finished his shift as a vault supervisor for the branch in Charlotte. I made a joke once that was the hardest Id ever worked for Wells Fargo -- yeah, its a lot of work, Ghantt said. Authorities had the receipt and had known it was missing. There, lessons of , "The Wall Street Journal just so happened to have a supportive op-ed ready to publish within hours of the meeting. The FBI believed that David Ghatt was in danger because Chambers wanted to kill him using a hitman named Michael McKinney. But his partners soon began to get greedy and were spending large amountswith Chambers and his wife, Michelle, even buying an exclusive mansion in cash. David wrote her first book "Self-Awareness for Beginners" and now teaches courses and retreats on self-awareness. More than 20 people ended up in the FBI's dragnet. David Ghantt, el "cerebro" del golpe. Popular Lake Norman pub set to reopen after a major face lift. Not all of them, but some of them are going to forgive you, theyre going to overlook it., he said. Question: Are you happy that Wilkesboro-nativeZach Galifianakis plays you in the movie? Bank heists are ideally supposed to have meticulous planning right? Question: You went to Mexico. Ghantt:I've burned that bridge years ago. This dental device was sold to fix patients' jaws. Authorities say Steve and Michele Chambers moved from a mobile home into a $635,000 house three weeks after the theft. I ride motorcycles and fish -- normal guy, Ghantt told Counts. Actor Owen Wilson plays him in the movie, which includes the real names of all the major players. Later, DePriest would learn through Diamants reporting for his book that Ghantt was terrified of being followed in Mexico, always looking over his shoulder and sitting near the exit in restaurants. But neither of those things would matter after he met Kelly Campbell. However, he was running short of funds. $17.3 million in cash was robbed from the Charlotte, North Carolina, regional office vault of Loomis, Fargo & Co. on the evening of October 4, 1997. No attempted murder charges had been filed. They soon realised that their joke was not a far-fetched idea. He needed more money, consequently, he called up Chambers and asked him to wire him some. Downtown Asheville was cast as a movie set this week, as a major motion picture production filmed in the city center on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Gaston Gazette spoke with Ghantt, who is now in his late 40s and lives in Florida as a free man. Campbell, 29, had pleaded guilty to charges of bank larceny, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder. Ghantt would then take a bulk of the cash, as much as could legally be carried across the border without questions, and flee to Mexico. He was eventually approached to be a consultant for the 2016 movie Masterminds, which is based on the Loomis Fargo heist. The plot revolves around Ghantt who teamed up with his former loomis co-worker Kelly Campbell. Guided by federal sentencing rules, prosecutors had requested a sentence of nine years for Michele Chambers. 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 group's demise. David Ghantt's fame was short-lived as he was a prime suspect from the start. We were two paychecks away from being homeless at any given time.. David Ghantt normally came home between 6 and 8 p.m., and often he was late, his wife said. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. The images of the aftermath the huge house on Cramer Mountain with its leopard-print carpet, the blue barrels full of money, the lonely hotel room in Playa del Carmen where Ghantt ate M&Ms instead of going to the beach endured long after 21 people were convicted for their connections to the heist. Guillermo dos Santos Coelho. 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 pay back more than $4 million. I appreciate your kind words! Its a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and I went down and talked to them, got to meet Zach Galifianakis and the director, Ghantt said. "I was dumb," Ghantt said Wednesday, the eve before the movie hits screens nationwide. 69-year-old suffers stroke in his home; Realtor showing house leaves him there. When Ghantt was found in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, five months after the heist, DePriest and photographer Kent Johnson raced to the airport, according to Observer records. NEWS. Just days after agreeing to the plan, the group set a day to carry out the robbery. jim martin death couples massage class san diego beaver falls football real kelly campbell loomis fargo heist. To be brutally honest, it was that morning, Ghantt replied. David Ghantt was a Gulf War veteran who never had a problem with the law. 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 . Question: Do you ever think you could have been killed? I was relieved emotionally because I knew there was a good chance my luck might run out, Ghantt said. The FBI continues to search for a missing $2 million from the theft. ``This defendant was second to Steve Chambers in (benefiting) from the crime,' he said. The action takes place in 1997 and is centered on a small town in North Carolina, where David Ghantt (Galifianakis), an armored-car driver, falls desperately in love with his colleague Kelly . Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Heres how to catch up on one of the Charlotte areas strangest stories. David Ghantt took $50,000 for himself and fled to Cozumel, Mexico. 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