It's been 20 years since the Loomis Fargo heist. - Charlotte Observer David Ghantt : [voice-over] Steve was a petty thief, mostly known for stealing tiny wheelchairs from pediatric hospitals. What Happened to Steve Chambers After Prison Fitness Center? Sign up forOxygen Insiderfor all the best true crime content. The chief running joke in Masterminds is the Prince Valiant 'do gamely sported by Galifianakis as David Ghantt, . 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. I got to eat my meal perfectly, but every 5 minutes, someone wanted to shoot a selfie with Zach or an autograph from Zach. As Predators' David Poile braces for retirement, his wife reveals their love story. I felt cornered and one day the joking in the break room about robbing the place suddenly didnt seem so far-fetched.. But even though he worked for a company that regularly moved millions of dollars, David Ghantt himself was underpaid. You may email him here, follow him on Twitter, or listen to his weekly TV podcast, Podjiba. 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. Until it's gone, you don't appreciate it. Chambers was a small-time crook who suggested to Campbell that they rob Loomis Fargo. I wanted to make a drastic change and I went for it, Ghantt remembered later to the Gaston Gazette. The defense has finished its closing argument in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh. Hes way smarter than youd think he would be because he tends to play Bozos. David Ghantt : I had a hard time liftin' it up. Masterminds is an atrociously bad comedy, and absolutely everyone is to blame. His wife, they said, got breast implants and used cash to purchase a 1998 BMW Z3 sports car. He was also married. I knew that if we could stay off the radar for about a year, we could basically live a vacation life, Ghantt said. Ghantt was joking in the breakroom with fellow Loomis Fargo employee Kelly Campbell. Robbing the 7-Eleven and getting $40 bucks and a pack of Marlboros was not for me. Wij, Yahoo, maken deel uit van de Yahoo-merkenfamilie. You've decided to give up on a part of your life. 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. The next day, the Chambers, Campbell, and some other notable parties were arrested in Charlotte. Kelly Campbell is scheduled to be sentenced in October. I got no real complaints, not at this point., The heist became the premise for the movie,Masterminds, released in September 2016. While making only eight dollars an hour in his role as supervisor, Ghantt decided it was time to do something: I was unhappy with my life. 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. Michele Chambers declined to make a statement at the hearing. More than 2 million dollars is still missing to this day. You take a movie like Oceans Eleven, the whole concept of that movie is so farfetched, its not even funny. Holding her hands behind her back, Michele Chambers was sentenced Tuesday to seven years and eight months in prison for her role in the $17 million heist from Loomis, Fargo & Co. She was also ordered to pay $4.8 million in restitution.It was the fourth-most severe sentence given in the case, which has 21 defendants. The morning after the height, employees of Loomis Fargo realized they couldnt open the vault. In fact, David Ghantt was about to commit the heist of a lifetime. In 2020, the television show Super Heists portrayed the heist in Episode 3, "Van Full of Dollars". A: Zach and I have a runningtext conversation going, but he's very busy. So he hatched a plan to rob his employers. Ghantt was the vault manager. His partners, who planned to stay behind, agreed to send him his full cut of the money after the heat from investigators had died down. 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. SAT is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination BoardTM. 2023 www.gastongazette.com. As it turns out, the heist did in fact go as well as you might expect. Will Mcintyre/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesMichele Chambers 1998 BMW for sale following the prosecutions of the Loomis Fargo heist conspirators. David Ghantt | World Record Holder and Mastermind 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. Ghantt added, I really enjoyed the movie. Authorities had the receipt and had known it was missing. I was working sometimes 75-80 hrs a week for $8.15 an hour, I didnt even have a real home life because I was never there I was working all the time and unhappy which is understandable considering how old I was at the time. On Oct. 4, Ghantt sent home the employee he was training and disabled two security cameras near the vault in preparation for the heist. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. 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. 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. Unfortunately, he failed to disable the third camera. If you're trying to make yourself better today, that's all most people care about. Having only brought $50,000 in cash, however, Ghantt soon found himself short on funds. ', He explained the glorification and glamour often associated with bank heists and bank robberies in Hollywood films is far from reality. I really don't miss that guy. The pair began to daydream about whether they could really pull off the heist. Ghantt sent home a new employee and quickly loaded the money into the back of a bank van. And so this third camera caught everything that happened next. Ghantt, a U.S. Army veteran, was living a relatively "boring" life working as the vault superintendent at a Loomis Fargo armored car warehouse just outside Charlotte, North Carolina making a relatively meager paycheck, when he crossed paths with Kelly Campbell. Ghantt was. 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. Its about the 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery also known as the hillbillly heist the second largest cash robbery in the history of the United States. Back then all I really wanted to do was just, I wanted to change my life. 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. While listening in, they uncovered another more sinister alleged plan to kill Ghantt. ``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. Working by himself, Ghantt would commit the robbery and then flee for Mexico, leaving the bulk of the cash with Chambers. He then proceeded to load about $17.3 million in cash (approximately $11 million of which was in $20 bills) into the back of a company van. I didnt even know about it and overlooked it, he said. Lees ons privacybeleid en cookiebeleid voor meer informatie over hoe we uw persoonsgegevens gebruiken. FBI security footage of David Ghantt in the midst of the Loomis Fargo heist. A: People are very forgiving if you're open and honest right from the start. Chambers promised to wire him money in Mexico until the investigation blew over and Ghantt could return to . March 2, 2023 - Alex Murdaugh found guilty in the murder of his wife Jandice : In any case, we got to talkin' afterwards, and I thought, well, that one's dead, this one's alive. From there, the money was moved from the company vehicle to private vehicles. David Ghantt on stealing 17 million dollars from Loomis Fargo (Crime Bubbling under the surface, however, was a deep frustration at the way he was treated. 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. But in addition to a wife,. ", After successfully tracing Ghantt's phone call, FBI agents coordinated with Mexican police to arrest Ghantt on March 1, 1998, at Playa del Carmen, a city near Cancun. Masterminds (2016) - Zach Galifianakis as David Ghantt - IMDb Three of the 21 defendants in the case haven't been sentenced. Masterminds which opens nationwide today (though youd be hard pressed to know that given the decided lack of promotion) is proof again that all the talent in the world cannot salvage a bad script, and not even a good screenwriter can make up for terrible performances. Ghantt was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, though he was released on parole after five. Campbell used part of her share of the money to buy a Toyota Sienna minivan in two cash installments. But even though he worked for a company that regularly moved millions of dollars, David Ghantt himself was underpaid. Said Ghantt, one day life kinda slapped me in the face. He was insecure. Masterminds (2016) - IMDb People still laugh when they think of the "velvet Elvis" Chambershad in his Cramer Mountain mansion, or how his former wife showed upat a local bankto deposit wads of cash that she assured the teller was not "drug money.". 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. All but one of the indicted pleaded guilty. 'Masterminds' Review - The Hollywood Reporter You have permission to edit this article. Chambers promised to wire him money in Mexico until the investigation blew over and Ghantt could return to North Carolina. #CLXGaming#CLXRa#evokethegods 1 2 He left his wedding ring behind and spent his days spending money on luxury hotels and scuba diving. Where ever it was, it is long gone now. hbspt.cta.load(360031, '4efd5fbd-40d7-4b12-8674-6c4f312edd05', {}); Have any questions about this article or other topics? If you can see the obvious flaw in this plan, namely that Chambers would have no reason whatsoever to actually wire Ghantt any money, then congratulations. Officers responded just after 5 a.m. Wednesday to an area near the intersection of Martin Luther King Drive and Carolyn Coleman Way and found , "The Wall Street Journal just so happened to have a supportive op-ed ready to publish within hours of the meeting. You can reach Kevin Ellis at 704-869-1823 or www.Twitter.com/TheGazetteKevin. He was angry a lot. Chambers served 11 years before being released. After finding himself in prison he made a concious choice to do things differently. An FBI criminal investigation ultimately resulted in the arrest and conviction of eight people directly involved in the heist, as well as sixteen others who had indirectly helped them, and the recovery of approximately 88% of the stolen money. ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score, How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League, Is the ACT easier than the SAT? Ghantts accomplices soon showed up but now they had another problem. 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. Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. Then you end up in a eight by ten cube and youre going to share that cube with two other people. Instead, the bandits just started throwing as much money as they could into the van until they couldnt fit anymore. Just days after agreeing to the plan, the group set a day to carry out the robbery. But as Ghantt admitted, the film took some liberties with specific details and characters to make the film funnier. The College Entrance Examination BoardTM does not endorse, nor is it affiliated in any way with the owner or any content of this site. After years of working hard, the realisation hit . David Ghantt, a Gulf War veteran, had never been in trouble with the law. David Scott Ghantt: Vault Supervisor David Scott Ghantt was the vault supervisor at the regional branch of Loomis, Fargo & Co. in Charlotte, North Carolina. Instead, the two started hanging out on the beach together and became friends. In November 1990, David married Margaret in San Diego, California. For a time, it was nicknamed "the hillbilly heist" because nearly all of the major players in the case came from small towns around Charlotte. David Ghantt was the vault supervisor for Loomis, Fargo & Co. armored cars, which managed the transportation of large sums of cash between banks in North Carolina. Then Michele made a trip to the bank. Both were involved in the second-largest cash heist in U.S. history, in which a group of people stole $17 million from the. Once Ghantt loaded the large haul from the vaultwhich could have been close to $20 millioninto a truck, he planned to drive to a second location, then head straight to the airport and fly to Mexico. And drastic it was. 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). 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 Proposed TikTok Ban Goes Too Far. When she was a teacher, Hayley's students regularly scored in the 99th percentile thanks to her passion for making topics digestible and accessible. I didnt even have a real home life because I was never there. Project #ShowUs. David Bowie 's widow recently took to Instagram to post selfies, while promoting both her makeup brand and fashion line. Eventually, Ghantt would return to the United States and the full sum would be split up between the conspirators.
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