Chambers, it turned out, became the biggest source of evidence for the FBI. He was angry a lot. So he hatched a plan to rob his employers. He had never been in trouble with the law. [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. Ghantt, in order to conserve this money, curtailed his spending. Director Jared Hess Writers Chris Bowman (screenplay) Hubbel Palmer (screenplay) Emily Spivey (screenplay) Stars Zach Galifianakis Kristen Wiig Owen Wilson In the meantime, however, Chambers not only refused to wire money to Ghantt in Mexico, but ultimately hired a hitman (Jason Sudeikis) to take him out. After his release, Ghantt took a job as a construction worker and was eventually brought on as a consultant for the 2016 movie Masterminds, based on the Loomis Fargo Heist. He made it across the border just as his deception was discovered. Ghantt was. 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. When she was a teacher, Hayley's students regularly scored in the 99th percentile thanks to her passion for making topics digestible and accessible. 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. Everybody thinks being famous and being an actor is stupendous, and the money is fantastic, but they kind of live in afish bowl. Her husband, Steve Chambers, whom prosecutors have called the main defendant, began serving an 11-year sentence earlier this year. 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But there was just one thing the group hadnt been counting on: the massive weight of that amount of cash. 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. I wanted to make a drastic change and I went for it, Ghantt remembered later to the Gaston Gazette. All but one of the indicted pleaded guilty. 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. Get all your true crime news from Oxygen. Here, he amps up the most obnoxious excesses of his entire cast and lets their grating bad-improv skills run amok. Chambers was a small-time crook who suggested to Campbell that they rob Loomis Fargo. With a cast like this, and Emily Spivey (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Up All Night) as part of the writing team, Masterminds shouldnt be nearly as obnoxious and dull as it is, but nothing ever clicks. What happens at the end of mastermind? I felt cornered and one day the joking in the break room about robbing the place suddenly didnt seem so far-fetched.. The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points, How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer. Finally, in March 1998, the FBI traced a call from Ghantts phone and he was arrested in Mexico. Once the hitman Chambers had hired arrived in Mexico, he found that he couldnt bring himself to kill Ghantt. 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. They would then load as much cash as they could carry into a van. David Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis), an employee of Loomis Fargo, robbed his own vault, left the $17.3 million in cash with his co-conspirators, Kelly Campbell (Kristen Wiig) and Steve Chambers (Owen Wilson) and fled the country to Mexico. Although the history of the predecessor Wells Fargo & Company dates back to 1852, Loomis Fargo & Company was established in 1997 by the consolidation of Wells Fargo Armored Service and Loomis Armored Inc.; the resulting corporation employed 8,500 people and provided armored transportation, cash handling services, and automatic teller machine maintenance. I did get to meet him. A former co-worker told me, "Everybody has screwed up. The additions come as KFC recently removed some menu items, including wings, popcorn chicken and cookies, to make room for new additions. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. Steven Chambers, left, and David Scott Ghantt leave federal court. To its credit, Masterminds does nail down the broad strokes of the real story, although there were a couple of noteworthy details the film left out. Did you know that the SAT offers subject exams, too? I think Zachs a hell of an actor. Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more! ``I wish she'd gotten less. All of the cash from the Loomis Fargo heist was recovered or accounted for, except for $2 million. Michele Chambers 1998 BMW for sale following the prosecutions of the Loomis Fargo heist conspirators. Victoria Beckham's family were on hand as she debuted her latest collection at Paris Fashion Week on March 3, including her and husband David Beckham's oldest child, Brooklyn Beckham . Thats going to be your life for quite some time, typically. Ghantt has never explained where that money went. Her sentence would've been ``substantially' less if she hadn't kept it, officials said. On March 1, 1988, Mexican police arrested Ghantt at Playa del Carmen. I didnt even have a real home life because I was never there. But even though he worked for a company that regularly moved millions of dollars, David Ghantt himself was underpaid. David Ghantt, a Gulf War veteran, had never been in trouble with the law. Chambers served 11 years before being released. The police then called the FBI because most of the money handled at the facility belonged to banks, which technically made it a bank robbery a federal offense.[5]. Two of them, Mike and Kim Goodman, are scheduled to be sentenced today. Because the money in the vault was largely from banks, the crime was technically a bank robbery and thus a federal offense. You have permission to edit this article. Together with his wife, Chambers bought a new luxury home (upgrading from his mobile home), a BMW Z3, and some extravagant furnishings. 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. David Ghantt was a nuisance to Steve Chambers and Kelly Campbell, John Wydra, a retired FBI agent who handled the case, told Super Heists.. Instead, the bandits just started throwing as much money as they could into the van until they couldnt fit anymore. ", The much-faster-than-expected economic recovery thats followed the easing of the coronavirus pandemic has produced several encouraging develo. Ghantt and his compatriots, it turns out, had underestimated how bulky money is. After a Gulf War stint in the Army, David got married in 1992. 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. 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 . 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.. his wife-to-be. It was an open-and-shut case and all authorities had to do now was to find the culprit and identify Ghantts accomplices. Now, here we are, two years later. Then check out another bank robber who inspired a movie, John Wojtowicz. followed by "Don't worry, it is not drug money," the bank filled out a suspicious activity report, which ultimately reached the FBI. The jokes between Ghantt and Campbell about their disgruntlement with their jobs took on a more serious note when Campbell introduced Ghantt to an old high school classmate of hers named Steve Chambers. David Bragg . . 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. Not only was Ghantt the only unaccounted for employee the morning after the heist, there was also footage of Ghantt moving the cash into the back of the Loomis Fargo van. Ghantt was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, though he was released on parole after five. Some people screw up big like you, some people screw up small.". Ghantts accomplices soon showed up but now they had another problem. They took a lot of liberty with the story here and there. [citation needed], The defendants were the targets of many barbed jokes in Charlotte and across the country, in part because of their extravagant spending. Eventually, Ghantt would return to the United States and the full sum would be split up between the conspirators. Bubbling under the surface, however, was a deep frustration at the way he was treated. 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.". Ghantt was the vault manager. Within two days, the investigators found the van with $3 million in cash and the security camera tapes inside. A: When you're locked up, you live in an 8-by-10 box and you share that with two other people. He and his wife,. Answer: The painful one is getting caught. While listening in, they uncovered another more sinister alleged plan to kill Ghantt. 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. In August 1997, Campbell informed Ghantt of an old high school friend of hers, Steve Chambers, who could assist Ghantt in executing a massive cash robbery of the Loomis Fargo vault in one night. A: Zach and I have a runningtext conversation going, but he's very busy. Also charged were several innocent relatives that the robbers had enlisted to help get safety deposit boxes in various banks. Si vous ne souhaitez pas que nos partenaires et nousmmes utilisions des cookies et vos donnes personnelles pour ces motifs supplmentaires, cliquez sur Refuser tout. Across the border in Mexico, Ghantt was also living it up. Whisler told the judge that the couple had searched for a new house before the theft, and that Michele Chambers bought rubber bands from Wal-Mart to count the money the night of the crime. But last Oct. 4, when he still hadn't gotten home by 2:30 a.m., she called his parents in. But of course, then they had to decorate that spectacular new space and so they spent tens of thousands of dollars on things like cigar store Indians, paintings of Elvis, and a bulldog dressed up like George Patton. While Ghantt waited for the heat from the robbery to die down, Chambers would send Ghantt small amounts of money. Q: You say your time in federal prison changed you. After years of working hard, the realisation hit . From the beginning, the FBIs prime suspect was David Ghantt. Kate. David Bowie 's widow recently took to Instagram to post selfies, while promoting both her makeup brand and fashion line. David Ghantt normally came home between 6 and 8 p.m., and often he was late, his wife said. [1] Tips had led the FBI to begin monitoring Chambers's (and his wife's) activities, but it was not until the FBI recorded a phone call from Ghantt in Mexico that the final connection was made. Jandice : In any case, we got to talkin' afterwards, and I thought, well, that one's dead, this one's alive. 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. Working by himself, Ghantt would commit the robbery and then flee for Mexico, leaving the bulk of the cash with Chambers. For the New York State assemblyman, see. By now, you probably know the names -- David Ghantt, Steve Chambers and his wife Michelle, and Kelly Campbell. 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 . Hes way smarter than youd think he would be because he tends to play Bozos. Ghantt was joking in the breakroom with fellow Loomis Fargo employee Kelly Campbell. 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. [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]. Ask questions; get answers. A: People are very forgiving if you're open and honest right from the start. Hayley Milliman is a former teacher turned writer who blogs about education, history, and technology. Before he decided to steal $17 million from the bank, Ghantt had worked for years as a relatively taciturn and compliant employee. He is an uncomplicated man stuck in a monotonous life. Both were involved in the second-largest cash heist in U.S. history, in which a group of people stole $17 million from the. Q: You came to the North Carolina mountains during Hurricane Irma, but what do you miss about Gastonia?

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