In this podcast, we cover a lot of dark topics around missing people and other true crime. For this week, I wanted to do something a little more lighthearted. It still centers around a disappearance in the Carolinas, but in this case it was the disappearance of money, and a lot of it. In 2016, a movie called “Masterminds,” which was based on the famous Loomis Fargo Robbery in Charlotte, was released. The movie is a comedy, starring several big names like Zack Galifinakis, Kristen Wiig, Owen Wilson, and Jason Sudeikis. When I first saw the trailer, I was confused by the absurdity of the storyline. “Why would you make a movie like that a comedy?” I thought. I was still in college when the original heist took place so I couldn’t remember all of the details. Then I began researching the actual heist, and the decision to approach it from a comedic angle very quickly made sense. This robbery features a colorful cast of characters, and the ringleader of the caper will even admit to you that it was not a very well thought out plan. It’s no wonder Hollywood would eventually come calling.
The First Signs of Trouble
A woman named Tammy Ghantt first realized something was wrong on October 5, 1997, when she woke up in her Kings Mountain home and realized her husband David was nowhere to be found. She reported his disappearance to the police, having no idea that her husband has just committed one of the nation’s largest bank heists.
The story of this heist begins in October of 1997 with David Ghantt. David was a decorated Gulf War veteran, living in a double-wide trailer with his wife, Tammy, and working at Loomis Fargo, Inc., an armored transportation, cash services, and ATM maintenance company since 1994. He started out at the company as an armored truck driver, and had been promoted to a vault supervisor by the time the heist took place. He was only making $8.15 an hour, and was struggling to provide for his family. Tammy would later say to the authorities that they had run up some credit card debt, and were living on a tight budget. Before the heist, David had calculated that it would take him 30 years to zero out his family’s credit card debt. David had worked with a woman named Kelly Campbell, but she eventually left the job. It’s difficult to know exactly what their relationship was–they denied being romantically involved, but investigators weren’t so sure about that.
Although Kelly had left her job alongside David in 1996, she ended up reaching back out to David again. The two met up, and she asked him “How do you feel about robbing Loomis Fargo?” Drowning in debt, and unhappy with the state of his life, David was open to the plan.
Kelly brought in Steve Chambers, who planned the aftermath of the heist. Steve had a criminal history, and claimed to have ties to “the Mafia.” The group decided that David and Kelly would flee to Mexico with $50,000, which was as much money as they would be allowed to take through customs. Meanwhile Steve would “clean up” the money and would wire David his cut. A foolproof plan, right?
The Money Disappears, Along with David Ghantt
Around 6 p.m. on Saturday, October 4, David and a new coworker at Loomis Fargo were doing their usual jobs. David sent the coworker home from the warehouse, and proceeded with the heist. David had specifically picked a weekend because he knew that was when there was the least amount of security.
Once he was alone, David began to load up one of the armoured vehicles with as much cash as he could. He spent almost an hour piling the money, totaling $17 million dollars, into the van. The money was in small bills, so it took up a lot of space. He took the keys to the vault with him, and set the vault’s timer so it couldn’t be opened for a few days. Steve and Kelly were anxious while they waited, as David was already running late. He drove the van to a secluded parking lot near a Reynolds and Reynolds print store. There, he met up with Kelly, as well as print shop owner Eric Payne. David handed off the van and the keys, and left.
Eric Payne quickly found himself with a problem. David had handed him his entire 8-inch ring of keys without indicating which one opened the van. So Eric had to try all the keys on the comically-large keyring until he found the correct one. He and a few men helping him eventually got frustrated, and attempted to break through the bulletproof glass on the armored van. They were not successful.
Unfortunately for David, his exodus to Mexico was not easy. The original plan was for David and Kelly to fly to Mexico out of the Columbia Airport in South Carolina, but the two learned upon arrival that the airport did not have any flights to Mexico. This was when the two split, and David decided to take a bus to Atlanta to try and catch a flight there. The two established that they would communicate via the phone. Kelly promised that she would follow him soon, but she never did. In fact, she never intended to in the first place.
The morning after the heist, David’s coworkers arrived at the vault to learn that they were unable to get inside. They immediately called the police. Since the money that was in the vaults belonged to various insured banks, the heist became a federal offense. The FBI was called in to investigate. They had to use a drill to force their way into the vault because David had taken the keys with him. The cash that was stolen wasn’t marked, which would make it hard to trace the bills as long as the thieves didn’t forget to remove the Loomis Fargo bands.
While David had been smart enough to take the security camera tapes with him, he only got the tapes from the cameras he knew about. He didn’t realize that a hidden camera had caught him in the act. Thanks to this, as well as the multiple police reports, David immediately became a suspect. He probably would have become a suspect even if he took the last security tape, since he was the only employee absent that morning and his wife had also alerted the authorities that he was gone. Because of how out-of-character a heist like this was for David, the cops and FBI initially assumed that he had been threatened or forced into committing it.
David’s truck was searched. He’d left his wedding ring inside.
The FBI Steps In
The FBI searched through storage facilities to see if they could find where David had stashed the money. Another Loomis Fargo heist had taken place not long before the Charlotte one, but that one was in Jacksonville, Florida. Investigators eventually found the stolen money in a warehouse in Asheville, North Carolina. The federal agents wanted to see if David had copied the previous robbery.
Two days after the heist, they found the armoured van used in the heist less than 10 miles from the Loomis Fargo warehouse. It contained the vault keys, the missing security tapes, David’s work-issued pistol, and about $3.3 million dollars, mostly in 20-dollar bills. (It appeared the thieves had stolen more money than they could possibly transport.)
Meanwhile, Steve Chambers wasn’t sending David the money he had promised. There wasn’t any real way that David could force Steve to pay him his cut. From Mexico, David would call Kelly to tell her that he was in need of money, and they would promise that they would send it to him. Steve became worried that David would turn himself, as well as the rest of them, over to the authorities. So, he decided to hire a few hitmen to take care of his problem.
Mike McKinney and Spike Grant were the men that Steve hired to travel to Mexico to meet with David, and to possibly kill him if needed.
The FBI learned from David’s old coworkers that he was close with exactly one person at work: Kelly Campbell. They interviewed her, but she denied any contact with Ghantt since she had left her job at Loomis a year prior. The FBI had some doubts about this, but they didn’t have any way to disprove her. Kelly refused a polygraph test when asked.
The t.v. show America’s Most Wanted produced a segment on Ghantt, but it didn’t end up airing on the East Coast during the episode’s first run due to a baseball game. The FBI also offered a $500,000 reward for information on Ghantt’s whereabouts.
The FBI received a tip on a man named Eric Payne. Payne owned the Reynolds and Reynolds print shop right across from where the van was found. He had taken a three-week vacation right after the heist, and had been spending a lot of cash on things like a Harley, a Chevy Tahoe, first class plane tickets, and plastic surgery for the women in his family. He had claimed that the sudden influx of money was from an inheritance.
A Spending Spree Points to Others Involved
Soon after, investigators found that there were a lot of signs pointing to Steve and and his wife Michele Chambers being involved in the heist. While everyone may have initially agreed to lay low and limit their spending, the temptation that comes with money overtook them. The couple moved out of their mobile home and into a $600,000 mansion on Cramer Mountain. They were allowed to move in quickly thanks to their down payment of $437,000. This was just the beginning of the elaborate spending for the couple. They hired an interior designer, Sally Stowe Abernathy, to decorate their new mansion. They paid her between $40,000 and $70,000. Normally spending that much cash would warrant a letter to the IRS, but Sally chose to look the other way. Eight different informants submitted tips about the Chambers spending habits to the FBI. The Cramerton local police also received tips from neighbors who were suspicious of the Chambers.
The couple bought several expensive goods, such as a $43,000 diamond ring, a $10,000 pool table, a brand-new BMW, and Michele got breast implants. Allegedly, they bought and ruined $20,000 worth of cigars by not putting water in the humidor. The Chambers also bought a furniture store. The furniture store ended up helping the FBI connect Kelly Campbell to the Chambers, as she showed up to visit in a brand-new minivan.
The couple was making deposits at several banks. At one point, Michele Chambers decided to ask the teller how much one could deposit before the authorities had to be notified. She was informed that the amount was $10,000, and so she proceeded to deposit just under that amount while assuring the teller that it wasn’t drug money. Despite her assurance, the teller became suspicious and alerted the FBI. What didn’t help things was the fact that Michele had deposited cash that still had the Loomis Fargo bands on them.
The FBI requested warrants to tap the Kelly and Michele Chambers, and they began listening in on all of their business transactions. They overheard the two discussing hiring a bodyguard named Michael Mckinney.
With everything the Chambers were doing, the Charlotte Observer pointed out that they had basically painted “FBI LOOK HERE” on their fancy cars.
Meanwhile, David Ghantt had done some research prior to the heist, and learned that most major bank robbery criminals remain in a certain radius to the crime.
David Ghantt’s Time in Mexico
This is what led him to plan to flee to Mexico as soon as he could. Steve Chambers had helped David get a fake ID so that he could leave without being detected. David did manage to catch a plane from Atlanta to New Orleans, and then onward to Mexico. The $50,000 he took was stuffed in some pantyhose. Customs were stricter for going South to North, so he made it through with little issue. He did have a close call at the Atlanta airport, though, when a woman approached him and asked if he was the German tennis player Boris Becker.
David initially lived lavishly when he arrived in Mexico, staying at a resort in Cancun. This did not last for long, as the $50,000 began to run out within a month and Steve was not sending him money like he promised.
The only money that David received was when one of the hitmen that Steve hired paid him a visit. The man, who called himself Bruno, delivered him about $8,000 in a briefcase before leaving. For whatever reason, he held off on killing David. David, unfortunately, had some other problems. While he was eating dinner in Cancun one night, a tourist approached him to say that he looked a lot like the guy who stole all of the money from Loomis Fargo. David panicked, and tried to lay low. He only became more anxious when a man saying he was a friend of Bruno’s showed up at his room, and told him that his accomplices were planning to kill him. After this, he started switching hotels to avoid being found.
The FBI became fearful the hitmen were going to kill David before they were able to apprehend him. They located David when they finally got a warrant to wiretap Kelly Campbell’s phone. They learned that Kelly was using a pager to keep in contact with David. They were sending coded messages to decide when to call next. Their calls took place over a payphone on Kelly’s end. The FBI monitored the payphone until they managed to capture her speaking with David.
They traced the calls in Cozumel, Mexico and learned he was staying at a hotel in Playa de Carmen. It wasn’t long until the FBI managed to get a warrant to arrest David Ghant in Mexico. When the FBI agents approached him, he said “Please tell me you’re an FBI agent.” At that point, he just wanted everything to be over with. He was arrested, and flown back to Charlotte.
With David in custody, the FBI were able to arrest the rest of his accomplices. When they arrested Steve Chambers, he proceeded to give even more names to the cops. When the federal agents raided their home, they found more than $11 million dollars and even more money stashed away in safe deposit boxes in the area.
A Convicted Cast of Characters
A total of 24 people were convicted with various levels of involvement in the crime. This included David Ghantt, Kelly Campbell, Steve and Michele Chambers, Eric Payne, and several others. One of the people was Sally Stowe Abernathy, the Chambers’ interior designer. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to around 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Everyone involved pleaded guilty, except for the Chambers’ attorney, and he was eventually found guilty of money laundering.
Kelly Campbell got the lightest sentence out of the main crew. She was sentenced to 6 years in prison. David Ghantt spent around 6 and a half years in prison before being released on parole.
Everyone was fined for $19 million dollars in restitution, and they will likely be paying off the fines for the rest of their lives. Not surprisingly, this crime was initially called “The Hillbilly Heist” by the local media.
David Ghantt’s family was relieved when he was finally located and arrested. They had been worried about his life since he had vanished. His father’s reaction was “Thank God he’s alive.”
David Ghantt’s wife Tammy divorced him. After he was released on parole, he relocated to Jacksonville Florida. On the 25th anniversary of the heist, a local news station in Jacksonville interviewed David. He was honest, saying he had worked to turn his life around, had remarried, and is now a father to a teenager. He said, “It took me going to prison to realize I was a bag of worms, and it took me years of work to be somebody worthy to come back into our society.”
David later provided consulting for the movie “Masterminds” that was inspired by the heist. Per the terms of his parole, he was not financially compensated for his help on the film, but he did have a cameo in the movie in one scene set in a diner. Parts of the film were shot in Old Fort, and Arden, North Carolina at a manufacturing plant.
This episode was written by Mia Roberson. Learn more at her website.
Show Sources:
The Loomis Fargo Heist
October 1997
The News-Herald
October 8, 1997
FBI still searching for armored car company driver
https://www.newspapers.com/image/984749669
$15 million heist too big for one man, FBI now says
October 23, 1997
Page 1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/628825795
Page 2
https://www.newspapers.com/image/628823633
The News and Observer
October 24, 1997
Suspect probably got help with huge heist
https://www.newspapers.com/image/657473568
The Asheville Citizen-Times
March 3, 1998
Armored car heist suspect captured
https://www.newspapers.com/image/200432623
The Charlotte Observer
March 3, 1998
The Other Heist Suspects
https://www.newspapers.com/image/628873530
The Charlotte Observer
March 3, 1998
Ghantt’s father reacts: ‘Thank God he’s alive’
https://www.newspapers.com/image/628873508
The Charlotte Observer
March 7, 1988
Searchers find jewelry, lots of cash
Page 1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/628849701
Page 2
The Herald-Sun
August 4, 1998
Cramerton pair pleads guilty in $17 million Loomis heist
https://www.newspapers.com/image/793495924
The Salisbury Post
November 4, 1998
Interior designer pleads guilty to Loomis heist
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1028777864
Documentary:
