Heist Gone Wrong
The Gang that Couldn’t Think Straight
Misadventures in Money Laundering
Picture it like the movie Ocean’s Eleven went country: A down-to-earth, Southern-style heist. Instead of Danny Ocean and his crew of con men, explosive and electronics specialists, and an acrobat, we have David Ghantt, his married girlfriend, her petty criminal friend from high school, that guy’s cousin, one of his high school buddies, and a would-be hitman. And, of course, various accomplices and one of the world’s worst would-be money launderers.
On the night of October 4, 1997, David Ghantt, a vault supervisor at the Loomis Fargo Armored Car facility in Charlotte, NC, loaded a company van with $17,044,200 in cash, which weighed 2,800 lbs (1,270 kg). Frustrated with his $8.15 per hour job and drowning in credit card debt, Ghantt had decided to empty the vault and take a permanent vacation. At the time, this was the second-largest cash robbery in US history.
Kelly Campbell, Ghantt’s girlfriend, her friend Steve Chambers, and his friend Scott Grant were waiting outside the facility. Campbell had worked with Ghantt at Loomis Fargo. Steve Chambers was a petty criminal recruited to help move the money and obtain a false passport for Ghantt’s travel to Mexico. Ghantt had never met Chambers and only knew his first name. Grant had been promised $100,000 to help move the money.
He had agreed to split the money equally with Chambers and Campbell. Ghantt would take $30,000 and flee to Mexico. If you’re asking yourself if you would leave $17.3 million with a friend of a friend with a reputation for criminal acts, congratulations; you’re a better bank robber than David Ghantt.
The plan was that Chambers would send money to him in Mexico as needed, and when things “cooled down,” he would return, and they would split the money. Ghantt hoped that Campbell would join him in Mexico and they would live happily ever after.
The Night in Question
What happened next was a farce that would have made even Shakespeare say, “Pump the brakes.”
Loading the van took an hour longer than planned. His three accomplices grew increasingly nervous. Campbell kept repeatedly sending the text message 143 to his pager.
The FBI was convinced it was some sort of code. The message is an abbreviation of “I Love You” based on the number of letters in each word. Later, Campbell would get Ghantt to tell her where he was staying in Mexico so Chambers could send a “hitman” to kill him. She seems like a less-than-ideal romantic partner.
After he cleaned out the vault, Ghantt removed the tapes from two video cassette recorders (VCRs) connected to cameras that monitored the vault. He was unaware that a third VCR was in a different cabinet.
He drove the van to a printing business called Reynolds & Reynolds in northwest Charlotte, with Campbell, Chambers, and Grant following him in two vehicles. Eric Payne waited in a rented van in the print shop’s parking lot. He, too, had been promised $100,000 to help move and hide the money.
Once there, Ghantt got out of the van and handed off the key to it, on an 8-inch ring with about 200 others, to Payne. He then took $30,000 and a change of clothes got in Kelly’s truck, and headed for the Columbia, SC, airport to catch a flight to Mexico.
In the excitement, Payne lost track of the van key, leaving the three men frantically trying key after key with no success. They attempted to break the windows and windshields with rocks, but this was fruitless because they were made of bullet-resistant glass. Finally, Payne found the correct key, and they could begin transferring the money.
Campbell and Ghantt discovered their own problem when they arrived at the Columbia Airport, which did not have international flights. Ghantt then boarded a bus to Atlanta and flew to Mexico from there.
Monday morning, Ghantt’s wife, Tammy, called the Charlotte Police, worried because he had not come home. They dispatched an officer to the warehouse. He found the gate and the warehouse door open.
Since the money stolen belonged to federally insured banks, the FBI was called in. Because Ghantt took the vault keys, the company had to have it drilled open. They immediately checked the remaining VCR and had video evidence of the crime.
Late Monday afternoon, two days after Ghantt disappeared, authorities got their first break. A man mowing grass discovered the unmarked Loomis van in the woods, less than 10 miles from the Loomis warehouse. There was $3.3 million inside.
The thieves had underestimated the sheer bulk of the $17.3 million, of which over $11 million was in $20 bills. They transported the money in 55-gallon (208-liter) drums. The FBI also found the two VCR tapes that Ghantt had removed from the facility in the van, along with his revolver.
By Tuesday morning, David Ghantt was a wanted man, with his photo on the front page of newspapers nationwide.
Unwise Spending
Payne was the first of the gang to come under FBI scrutiny. They got a tip that he had been spending a lot of money. When they checked, they discovered he had paid off a credit card and bought a Harley and a Chevy Tahoe.
Payne also paid for his wife and his two sisters to get breast implants. Further, he worked at the print shop across the street from where they had discovered the abandoned van.
On the Monday after the robbery, Chambers’ wife, Michelle, walked into a bank with a briefcase full of money and asked the teller how much she could deposit without filling out any paperwork. The teller immediately filed a suspicious activity report.
A few weeks after the robbery, Steve and Michelle Chambers moved from a double-wide trailer (mobile home) on a gravel road to a $635,000 house in a gated community with a country club called Cramer Mountain.
The couple went on a spending spree, leasing a truck and buying a new BMW Z3 roadster. The Gaston County Sheriff’s Department received at least eight tips about the Chambers’ expensive purchases.
The couple purchased a small furniture store across from the Gastonia Courthouse called the Furniture Discount Center and renamed it the M&S Furniture Gallery after themselves.
Two months after the robbery, Kelly Campbell bought a $30,000 Toyota minivan with cash and registered it to one of Steve Chambers’s aliases.
The FBI put the Chamberses under surveillance, and while some of their neighbors spotted and reported strange cars in the neighborhood to town police, the couple never noticed that they were being followed. Sometimes, a small plane was used to track them.
Eventually, Michelle made a cash deposit that included a packet of cash wrapped in a Loomis Fargo money band. The band had been initialed by a Loomis Fargo worker who had only worked at the Charlotte vault and had quit before the robbery. The FBI had their first direct link between the couple and the theft.
On February 10, four months after the robbery, the FBI got permission to tap the couple’s phone. They overheard Kelly Campbell call Steve Chambers and say that she had heard from Ghantt in Mexico, who had run through all his cash and needed them to send him $50,000. They sent him $8,000. Chambers and Campbell decided it would be better to kill Ghantt than continue sending him money. They attempted to recruit Mike McKinney to make the hit.
The FBI, having learned of Ghantt’s location and his accomplices’ plans to kill him, got to Cozumel first, took him into custody, and extradited him from Mexico five months after the heist. On March 1, five Interpol officers, along with FBI agent Mark Rozzi, walked up to David Ghantt on a street near the Hotel La Tortuga and placed him under arrest. According to Rozzi, he was glad to see them and said, “Please tell me that you’re an FBI agent.”
On Monday, March 2, almost exactly five months after the robbery, the authorities rolled up the rest of the gang. The Charlotte Observer headline read, “8 Jailed in Huge Heist.” One of the subheads stated: “Is this the gang that couldn’t think straight.”
So, while Danny Ocean and his team would gather at the Fountains of Bellagio and then go their separate ways, presumably on a tour of the world’s finest beaches and resorts, Ghantt, Chambers, Campbell, and company would gather at a federal courthouse to be led by U.S. marshals to their cells. Both are classic scenes in their own way.
The Aftermath
In the end, in 20 of the 21 Loomis Fargo robbery cases, the defendants pled guilty. The defendant who went to trial, Jeff Guller, Steve Chambers’ lawyer, was sentenced to eight years for six counts of money laundering. He had advised Chambers on how to pay for the $635,000 house just after the heist.
Yes, the number of accomplices had grown from three people to five people to 21 people. Let’s just look at the major players.
Steve Chambers was sentenced to 11 years and three months and ordered to pay $3.8 million in restitution for bank larceny, conspiracy to commit murder for hire, and 13 counts of money laundering.
David Ghantt was sentenced to 7.5 years and ordered to pay $3.8 million in restitution for bank larceny and money laundering.
Kelly Campbell was sentenced to five years and ten months and ordered to pay $4.7 million in restitution for bank larceny, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit murder for hire.
Michelle Chambers was sentenced to seven years and eight months and ordered to pay $4.8 million in restitution for bank larceny, bank fraud, and seven counts of money laundering. Prior to sentencing, her bond was revoked because she was holding onto a $43,000 diamond ring, a diamond tennis bracelet, and a Rolex watch.
Mike McKinney was sentenced to 11 years and three months for conspiracy to commit murder for hire and money laundering.
Eric Payne was sentenced to 6.5 years for bank larceny and money laundering and ordered to pay $292,000 in restitution.
Scott Grant was sentenced to four years and eight months for bank larceny and money laundering and ordered to pay $26,000 restitution.
Settling Up
According to the FBI, more than 88% of the cash was found or accounted for, leaving more than $2 million missing. The extravagant purchases made by the gang were sold at auction, with the money going to Lloyds of London, Loomis Fargo’s insurer.
More than 1,000 items were sold, including Michelle’s BMW convertible, pickup trucks, minivans, boats and motorcycles, furniture, wide-screen TVs, and tanning beds. Items of particular interest include a black velvet painting of Elvis that brought $1,600, a $600 wooden Indian, a bulldog dressed as General George S. Patton, and a $10,000 pool table. Steve Chambers had bought $20,000 worth of Cuban cigars, but they were ruined because he didn’t realize he needed to add water to the humidor.
Pop Culture
The Unperfect Crime, an episode of The FBI Files TV show, aired on October 14, 2000, and is available on YouTube.
The 2016 movie Masterminds, based on the robbery, stars Zach Galifianakis as David Ghantt, Owen Wilson as Steve Chambers, and Kristen Wiig as Kelly Campbell.
Mark DeCastrique wrote Art for a Steal, a musical comedy play satirizing the Loomis Fargo robbery.
Charlotte Observer reporter Jeff Diaman wrote the book Heist!: The $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft that was published in September 2002.
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Sources
Diamant, Jeff. Heist. Sourcebooks, Inc., 4 Aug. 2015.
The FBI Files, The Unperfect Crime, Episode, Oct 14, 2000, available on YouTube.
Wikipedia: October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery
Charlotte Observer, NC, Tuesday, March 03, 1998, Page 1, “8 Jailed in Huge Heist”
Charlotte Observer, NC, Sunday, March 08, 1998, Page 1, “Regular Folks, Big Dreams and a Ton of Money” and “How the Case Ties Together”
Washington Post, Thursday, February 18, 1999, “The Thieves Who Couldn’t Cope with $17 Million”
Charlotte Observer, NC, Wednesday, September 08, 1999, Pages 1 and 8, “Capture Brought Trio’s Dreams of Instant Wealth to Bitter End” and “Easy Money Hard Time”
Charlotte Observer, NC, Thursday, September 07, 2000, Page 7 “Key Players”
