so make sure youre taking the right ones for you. 33. Q: Do you appreciate your normal life now more than you would if you hadn't spent years in prison? 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. [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. Masterminds is an atrociously bad comedy, and absolutely everyone is to blame. Custom Content. There is nothing of value in this movie. Philosophically, now looking back I wouldnt be who I am now if I hadnt gone through all that, said David Scott Ghantt in an interview with the Observer. Loomis Fargo employee David Ghantt and his partners nearly pulled off the perfect crime, but it would be their lavish spending, and an alleged murder plot, that would be their undoing. Defense lawyer Andy Culler sought a seven-year, three-month sentence. Dont come to me for a treasure map, Ill put it to you that way., Michael Sainatos writing has appeared in the Guardian, Miami Herald, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, Buffalo News, the Hill, Alternet, and several other publications . And, with the help of several others David made off with $17.3 million dollars, 11 million of which was in 20's. When Ghantt called Chambers to have the latter wire him more money, Chambers sent just a few thousand dollars. ", The much-faster-than-expected economic recovery thats followed the easing of the coronavirus pandemic has produced several encouraging develo. Thats the big thing. 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. After finding himself in prison he made a concious choice to do things differently. Chambers served 11 years before being released. Authorities began to hone in on the group and put a wire tap on Campbell's phones. But there was just one thing the group hadnt been counting on: the massive weight of that amount of cash. Of course, I went on a spending spree. An additional tip reached the FBI when Michelle Chambers made a large deposit at a bank. CREATIVE. 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. 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. Chambers also promised to join Ghantt in Mexico as soon as she could, but she admitted to Super Heists she never had any intention of actually making the trip. 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. Ghantts accomplices soon showed up but now they had another problem. He was angry a lot. 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. Ghantt @ChristyGhantt Dec 7, 2022 I just entered the @clxgaming Ra PC Giveaway! Chambers, it turned out, became the biggest source of evidence for the FBI. Here, he amps up the most obnoxious excesses of his entire cast and lets their grating bad-improv skills run amok. According to Campbell, Chambers could help Ghantt execute a massive cash robbery of the vault at Loomis Fargo in one night. What ACT target score should you be aiming for? He is an uncomplicated man stuck in a monotonous life. Jandice : In any case, we got to talkin' afterwards, and I thought, well, that one's dead, this one's alive. The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points, How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer. Everybody thinks being famous and being an actor is stupendous, and the money is fantastic, but they kind of live in afish bowl. A former co-worker told me, "Everybody has screwed up. Because Ghantt was the only employee who wasnt there that morning, he became the obvious suspect. Also charged were several innocent relatives that the robbers had enlisted to help get safety deposit boxes in various banks. So he hatched a plan to rob his employers. A lot of people ask me, Oh, do you have any regrets? No, not really. They would then load as much cash as they could carry into a van. Dustin is the founder and co-owner of Pajiba. Its a farce that never farces; a comedy without jokes. Answer: The painful one is getting caught. Ghantt added, I really enjoyed the movie. #CLXGaming#CLXRa#evokethegods 1 2 Kevin McCarthy is No Edward Snowden, But He Should Find the Comparison Flattering, Assessing Nicaraguas Long Haul toward Liberation and Economic Democracy, A National Divorce? Two of them, Mike and Kim Goodman, are scheduled to be sentenced today. As it turns out, the heist did in fact go as well as you might expect. What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For? You have permission to edit this article. But last Oct. 4, when he still hadn't gotten home by 2:30 a.m., she called his parents in. 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. Ghantt was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, though he was released on parole after five. Q: How do you tell prospective employers you once stole $17 million? But in addition to a wife,. I really don't miss that guy. Do you still have contact with him? Chambers had no intention of following those rules, believing the FBI would never connect him to Ghantt. As Campbell would later explain, If David got killed, there couldnt be any finger pointing. The problem with the movie, however, is that the talented cast had no idea what the hell they were trying to do. For the New York State assemblyman, see. I figured it had to be me. The FBI quickly connected Ghantt to Campbell, who was a former Loomis Fargo employee. 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. Steve Chambers and his wife (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) were a little more difficult to connect to the heist. 43-year-old Margret and her mother both died in 2012 . They kept several furnishings from the previous owners, including a painting of Elvis Presley on black velvet. ``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. Some people screw up big like you, some people screw up small.". From the beginning, the FBIs prime suspect was David Ghantt. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Even the outtakes during the credits are bad. As Predators' David Poile braces for retirement, his wife reveals their love story. Having only brought $50,000 in cash, however, Ghantt soon found himself short on funds. But neither of those things would matter after he met Kelly Campbell. Lees ons privacybeleid en cookiebeleid voor meer informatie over hoe we uw persoonsgegevens gebruiken. 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. Campbell left her job in the summer of 1997, but she would later use Ghantts feelings for her to her own advantage to get him to agree to carry out the multi-million-dollar heist. 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. 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. With the plan in place, Ghantt sent a newly employed co-worker home early (reportedly at 6 p.m) who had been assigned to train with him. They asked me how I felt about it and I said, Its my story, but its your movie so have at me. Going to prison helped me grow up as a human being. Although the FBI investigation was able to quickly connect Ghantt to Campbell, connecting Ghantt to Chambers was a more difficult task. Her sentence would've been ``substantially' less if she hadn't kept it, officials said. The robbery was committed by Loomis vault supervisor David Scott Ghantt, his married girlfriend Kelly Campbell (a former Loomis co-worker), Steven Eugene Chambers (a one-time FBI informant), his wife Michelle Chambers, Michael Gobbies, and four other co-conspirators. 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.". All of the cash from the Loomis Fargo heist was recovered or accounted for, except for $2 million. 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 wanted to make a drastic change and I went for it, Ghantt remembered later to the Gaston Gazette. Some of the friends and family members received parole, while Ghantt was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Whisler said he didn't think those factors should result in a reduced sentence. C hristopher David Ghantt Phone Numbers (704) 678-8911. David Bragg . He had never been in trouble with the law. Vous pouvez modifier vos choix tout moment en cliquant sur le lien Tableau de bord sur la vie prive prsent sur nos sites et dans nos applications. They received sentences and probation ranging from several years to 11 years and three months in federal prison for Steve Chambers, who was also fined more than $3,500,000. He then began loading $17 million in unmarked bills inside a company van before driving away. At the. On March 1, 1988, Mexican police arrested Ghantt at Playa del Carmen. You've decided to give up on a part of your life. I mean, thats pretty much why I did it. I didnt even know about it and overlooked it, he said. 2023 www.gastongazette.com. Unfortunately, he failed to disable the third camera. 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. Authorities say Steve. Chambers would hold on to most of the remaining cash and wire it to Ghantt as needed. Ghantt, in order to conserve this money, curtailed his spending. In total, 24 people were convicted. If I hadnt of done that, Id probably still be in North Carolina and I would not have got to meet a lot of the interesting people that Ive got to meet. So Chambers decided to solve the problem by putting a hit on 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. A: I hate to think about what I'd be doing if I hadn't gotten caught. The odds of you actually getting away with something these days is pretty damn slim. Project #ShowUs. Michele Chambers 1998 BMW for sale following the prosecutions of the Loomis Fargo heist conspirators. He had stayed in a luxury hotel and paid for expensive food and activities such as scuba diving and parasailing. 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. 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. hbspt.cta.load(360031, '4efd5fbd-40d7-4b12-8674-6c4f312edd05', {}); Have any questions about this article or other topics? 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. During the next few months they bought a BMW-Z3 roadster and tens of thousands of dollars in antiques, furniture and decorations. Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com, allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. Did you know that the SAT offers subject exams, too? Playing upon David's obvious feelings for her, Kelly is the . That suspicion was immediately confirmed by a quick glance at the security camera footage that showed Ghantt doing a little dance after loading all the cash into the van. But even though he worked for a company that regularly moved millions of dollars, David Ghantt himself was underpaid. She had previously been making frequent small deposits to avert suspicion. The FBI investigation was aided by the gang's extravagant spending.