America's Worst Heist (True Crime Documentary) | Real Stories

One October afternoon in 1997, a Loomis Fargo employee was tired of waiting for the good life. He launched his own get-rich-quick scheme. He disappeared with more than $17 million in Lumas cash. The robbery unleashed an international Manhattan that the FBI fought to recover. the money and bring the thief and his gang to justice at 7:15 a.m. On Sunday morning, October 5, 1997, police in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, received a call from a woman named Tammy Kent, who told police that her husband David had not returned home. home. Her job on the Loomis farm was a warehouse the night before and she was concerned, the Charlotte Police Department sent an officer to investigate.

Upon arriving at Loomis Fargo, troopers inspected the scene. David Gan's truck was parked outside the warehouse door, the chain link fence was open, as was the warehouse door, something seemed terribly wrong, officer contacted dispatch, Charlotte police notified Loomis Fargo and a supervisor arrived to try to clarify what had happened. David Gant was nowhere to be found, the vault was locked but all the keys were missing along with a company van there were no signs of forced entry the supervisor told the police that Gantt worked the night before and was scheduled To close the vault together with a trainee he took the police officer to the security center there he found the video tapes two of the security cameras had taken video recorders in a second cabinet.

He found a video recorder with the tape of him still recording. There on this tape was the vault supervisor, David Gant, emptying the vault. Loomis had been robbed because the money stolen from Loomis Fargo belonged to banks insured by the federal government. The

crime

was a federal

crime

, they called the FBI the moment agents arrived, they only knew that the vault supervisor, David Gant, a Loomis Fargo armored van, and an unknown amount of money from the vault were all missing. Crime scene technicians processed the setup. It was a puzzling crime scene according to Charlotte FBI agent Mark Rossi, what you noticed is the lack of anything notable.

It's not a crime scene where there are bodies, blood and things scattered everywhere. It's just a big empty warehouse that you don't know. how much money is left to get into the vault and then you collect your thoughts and gather the agents who say what do we know and where do we go from here because all the keys were missing. Loomis officials were excluded from their own vault to learn. What happened? They would have to go in, obviously, their immediate concern is the missing body of David Gant. It was kidnapped? Did they hurt you? Was he forced to do something against his will?

Are you still on the premise? Gant was not in the vault, in fact, there was nothing in the vault. Gant had taken everything. FBI agent John, more broadly, was talking about 2,800 pounds in currency, mostly $20 bills. They used the 20's to stack the ATMs, so most of it was in 20 dollar bills, almost 11. There were millions of dollars missing in 20 dollar bills, there was a total of 17 million dollars, seventeen point three million dollars that were missing, this money would be untraceable, none of the cash was marked, it came from general circulation and the serial numbers on the bills.

They were not sequential with nothing to look at and no clues inside the warehouse investigators hope the thieves left some clues outside the agent started by looking at David Gan's truck they found something interesting in the ashtray a wedding ring when we found David's wedding ring In his truck, the question arose: Is David sending us a signal? Is he trying to tell us that he has cut ties with his loved ones? Together, what little they knew about the crime after a weekend of investigation, all they discovered was that David Gant, a van, and a little more than $17 million in untraceable bills disappeared during or after the shift.

Gant's work the day before, was not a good way to start. an investigation with a 24-hour head start David Gant could be anywhere now if the FBI ever hoped to find the missing money they needed to find Gant, the agents quickly began by talking to his wife Tammy and one of David's sisters, They hoped some detail of his personal life would give them insight into why he carried out the

heist

, who could have helped him and, most importantly, where he was. David's wife, Tammy, gave the FBI a lot of information about her husband and she told them that she had not noticed anything strange about David's behavior.

Before the robbery, she explained that money was tight and the couple lived simply, but they had racked up some credit card debt. Tammy told agents that she kept a close eye on the bottom line and kept David on a strict budget. David had been working for a long time. hours to try to get ahead of his bills Tammy couldn't believe he was involved in this and was sure someone must have forced him to do it, she feared he had been kidnapped or maybe worse, you go through David Scott's cancer routine and what you find. The thing is that there is no visible dot on the screen.

He was acting in a way that would be expected of any normal person who should return home the next day to perform. He went out to dinner with his wife. He helped put away the groceries. She did the dentist for him. At his date he had been living life as he had lived it every other day before this crime, so nothing immediate jumped out that said here's the indicator, this will tell us why he did it, who he did it with and where he is. . She simply wasn't there to find David Gant, authorities needed to circulate his photograph and register it in the National Crime Information Center's computer system, but to do so they needed to charge him.

The United States Attorney, Mark Calloway, prosecuted the case because they had David Gant on tape taking the money from Loomis. We had a grand jury that met on Monday and we were able to indict him for the robbery the next day, so two days less than 48 hours after the robbery, David Gant was charged with The Monday following the robbery, the media learned the story, the FBI launched a nationwide manhunt as part of the investigation they were now calling Operations Charlotte. The office now had a catchy name for the investigation, but they still had no idea where David Gant and The $17 Million Missing Agent secured airports and bus stations, circulated photos of David Gant, and asked anyone to He was told to contact the authorities immediately because David Gant had seized a ton of cash and the FBI knew they would need a considerable amount.

Of space to transport and store all the money they checked the car and truck rental agencies in the city to see if anyone fitting Gant's description could have rented a truck. They arrived empty to agents at the FBI office in Charlotte. This investigation began to look very familiar in 1997 in Jacksonville, Florida, another Loomis Fargo employee emptied a vault of more than $18 million in cash. Special Agent in Charge William Perry worked on the previous investigation, there was a previous robbery at a facility in Jacksonville that the Charlotte division of the FBI had been In fact, those involved in the recovery of the money were recovered in the Asheville area, so we were very concerned that something similar would happen and it would be important for us to quickly discover the location where the money had been transported. where and where the van was in that particular case in Jacksonville, if they had used the storage facility, so it was an idea: we would be looking for a storage facility similar to the one in the Jacksonville, Florida

heist

, the robber hid the money in the north.

Carolina thought Gant may have copied his co-workers. FBI agents searched the public storage facility and found nothing. The FBI reached a dead end. It seemed like David Gant had simply disappeared and taken with him a ton of cash. The FBI looked back to try to uncover any suspicious activity. in and out of town during the weekend of the heist, this was difficult because Charlotte hosted the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race at Charlotte Motor Speedway the weekend the heist occurred. Now all of a sudden you have hundreds of thousands of people. people from out of town, not all of them use their

real

ID when renting cars or staying in hotels, and you have to go through this list and decide who is legitimate and has a reason to be there and who might be David Scott Ganz. alias or one of his associates David Ganz's accomplices, if any, could have been any of the thousands of people who choked the interstates in and around Charlotte on race weekend when they did not think of David Gant as a perpetrator who the FBI feared for his safety.

I have a missing body and with any missing body you have to weigh the possibility that this person is in danger or has been murdered and then feel again that most likely they would have had accomplices to move that amount of money, so the question is that he is known, the accomplices are unknown, what prevents them from taking him down. The FBI knew they had to find David Gant before his accomplice, but they didn't even know where to look on Monday afternoon, two days later. Gant's missing authorities finally got a reprieve. A man cutting grass discovered the unmarked Loomis truck.

It was in the woods less than ten miles from Loomis' warehouse. The truck was closed. Loomis still hadn't found the stolen keys, so the FBI had to tow her away. The agents counted the small denomination bills that Gant had left behind and they amounted to a significant $3.3 million. Also in the van were the two missing surveillance tapes from Loomis' security office. Gantz Loomis handed over a gun and both sets of keys to the vault. The FBI could only guess why more than three million dollars had been abandoned, perhaps the thieves got scared or perhaps ran out of time or physical space to put the money or energy to move it.

As for the video tape, the FBI attempted to read the evidence. You find the video tapes in the van, you say to yourself, okay, we left one at the Loomis facility and that could have been a mistake, but this. Obviously it wasn't a mistake, so who is trying to tell us what David Gant is telling us? Here are the video tapes. I did it. Good luck trying to catch me, or is that his partner saying David Gant did it? You have to go find him to get us away. Whoever these unknown associates were, the FBI had found the missing van and some of Loomis's money missing, but they were no closer to finding David Gant or his alleged accomplices and fourteen million dollars was still lying around somewhere in Charlotte. , North Carolina, is one of the eastern countries.

The coast's fastest growing banking centers on any given day hundreds of millions of dollars passed through the Charlotte area in October 1997, Loomis Fargo employee David Gantt pocketed some of those millions and walked out of the Charlotte Loomis Fargo office with seventeen million dollars. The FBI suspected that Gant had not acted alone, but they could not be sure that Gant simply disappeared and that his accomplices, if he had them, were completely unknown. The FBI hoped that some clue would emerge as to his whereabouts as they investigated his background. Charlotte agents compiled lists of Loomis employees to be interviewed and, past and present, began by speaking with Gantt's supervisor and the trainee who worked with them the night of the heist.

The apprentice told him that David sent him home at the end of his shift and locked him up. The vault's own supervisor, Gant, told the FBI. Gant worked at Loomis for several years and was an average employee. He had been working a lot of overtime and had recently been promoted to vault supervisor. It was a job he didn't do very well. David left. some cash unattended and he had been severely reprimanded almost fired in an effort to find out if Gantt had any accomplices. The FBI expanded its search and interviewed anyone who had been in contact with David Gantt before the heist.

Special Agent in Charge William Perry we were. We weren't

real

ly looking for what kind of person had done the high schools, we knew that the person who committed the robbery was mr. Gant, who were complicit, was the challenge for us normally and something like that is a matter of eliminating people that we can identify and who know him from his past, who were co-workers, friends, social acquaintances, relatives or otherwise. with whom the FBI spoke. more than a hundred people in two days looking for anything that could lead them toGanz's accomplices or give them some clue as to why he carried out this robbery, agent Dick Womble kept in contact with the Ganz family thinking he could contact them, they have not heard from them.

We are still leaning towards the theory that David was forced to do this. The picture we got of the family doesn't seem to fit the profile of someone who is going to take on $217 million alone and has a game plan on a destination to go to. while his family still thought it was impossible that David Gant could have orchestrated a scheme to steal seventeen million dollars Agent John Wide Rubican investigating Gant's background this is a man who has never been in trouble with the law he was honorably discharged from the army worked overtime on a regular basis, by all appearances he would not be a willing participant in this type of crime, however, we had videos from several different security cameras that showed him spending over an hour loading this van, so we The first thing we thought about was whether he had asked for it.

You know, there was someone out there, what were his motivations for doing this. Agents began tracking David Gant's activities leading up to the heist. They made a timeline of every minute of every day, hoping that when the chalk dust cleared, they would discover the name of an accomplice or some clue, but they found nothing. The FBI began to investigate David Gan further. They spoke with their former army colleagues. No one offered any real clues after hundreds of interviews. The FBI was left abandoned.With conflicting information about David Gant, what we discovered about David Scott Gant is that he had two very different people, two very different lifestyles, on the one hand, he would be described as a hard worker, a conscientious and proud worker. from his job, on the other hand, being described as a disgruntled worker who felt he was better than his job and who was ready to move on in his personal life, on the one hand, we had a description of a family man very church, on the other hand, we heard about a Person who was not happy with the fact that his wife controlled the money in his wallet, that he was not allowed to smoke inside his own house and that there were some things that were accumulating inside of him, both personally and professionally, in terms of pressure.

Most of Gant's friends were surprised that he pulled it off, it seemed like no one, from his former army buddies to his wife, gave him enough credit to have planned and executed such a big heist, yet So the FBI had it recorded. Upon emptying the vault, many of the people who knew David Gant characterized him as a loner. Some mentioned that the only person he seemed close to was a co-worker named Kelly Campbell. Kelly worked with David at Loomis for several years, but she quit about a year earlier. The robbery while he was at Loomis, his co-workers reported that the two spent a lot of time together.

The FBI also learned that they met occasionally after labor agents visited Kelly Campbell. She told them that she knew nothing about the robbery and denied it. was once close to David Gant, the interesting thing with Kelly Campbell is that there were outside people who said that they were close, that they were good friends, that they would have lunch together and that even after she left Loomis Fargo, they stayed in touch, but that It's not what Kelly Campbell told us, she painted a different picture, that they weren't particularly close and hadn't really kept much contact since she left, we had an obvious discrepancy here and we had some doubts about the veracity. of Kelly Campbell Despite their doubts about Kelly Campbell the FBI had no information on which they could act Agents turned their attention to Ganz's phone records in the hope of offering a concrete lead and discovered that several phone calls had been made the night of the robbery from inside Loomis - David Gant's cell phone since Gant was seen inside taking the money.

He was calling someone abroad to whom he lent his cell phone. Gant's pager records showed that he received a series of numerical pages from his cell phone on the night of robbery three. Digits were added repeatedly in the search for him. One of the three agents had no idea what it meant, but it seemed to confirm that Gant did not act alone. The agent assumed that whoever was on the other end of those phone calls must have been involved on a Saturday night. Exactly one week after the robbery, a room full of FBI agents gathered and were prepared to receive numerous interesting tips after the image aired on America's Most Wanted.

We were counting on that show to extend beyond our immediate viewing area in case the partners or Gant or in another part of the country and what had happened was that the initial broadcast of the show was replaced by a playoff game of baseball, so we were all on hold waiting for this massive influx of telephone information that was going to put us in the right direction. Egypt and the calm after a week fourteen million dollars were missing and the FBI had few leads, they had no idea where David Gant had gone and as time went on it seemed less likely that they would ever find him to recover the money.

Charlotte FBI continued to keep the Loomis Fargo heist on the news radio this morning, Eggman machine on oldies radio magic 96.1 here in charlotte, more news coming out, they found that truck, how about they catch the guy? Now they're looking for the driver and Littmus Fargo has posted a reward, right? Liz, a couple of days ago, the stolen Loomis truck that was used in the robbery was found abandoned. David Gant is still at large, still eluding the police. Loomis Fargo offered a reward of five hundred thousand dollars for any information. Tips began to arrive at the FBI offices.

Agents established a special database to store and classify the growing number of tips. Anyone who suspected someone had money or was spending money should not have contacted us and then we would have to leave again. and verify all these calls. Calls came into FBI offices day and night. This is the FBI's Charlotte field office. When you hear the tone, leave a message. Yes, the FBI confronted him. It would help you find the address that was reported by an informant shortly after. In the heist, a man named Eric Payne was spending a lot of money and at first the FBI thought Payne might be a ghin alias that they couldn't find a connection with, but they learned that he paid off a credit card, bought a Harley, a Chevy Tahoe and first class plane tickets and took an expensive vacation, this was a tip that seemed worth checking out when he arrived Eric Payne was on vacation the FBI visited his workplace and interviewed his coworkers Los Payne's coworkers confirmed his lavish spending, the FBI learned.

He had been enjoying the good life lately and partied a lot. He even bought breast augmentations for his two sisters. His wife not only got new breasts but also had new soreness. Nose told everyone that he had inherited the cash. The key information about Eric Payne was that he worked at the Reynolds and Reynolds graphics company, which interestingly enough was right across the street from where the Loomis truck was found. Normally what you find with crimes is that people go where they feel comfortable, so when they find out that the van is being recovered and they find The name Eric, pain, you repeat it to yourself again, it's a coincidence You have someone who's spending money whose alibi is kind of shaky, and yet we also have this truck found in an open field behind the workplace, the FBI followed Eric's purchases. and discovered that he financed the Chevy Tahoe, but made his down payment at $20, not wanting to alert him to their suspicions, the FBI decided to wait until he returned from vacation to talk to him, as the Charlotte FBI was collecting leads.

Suspicious activity was also occurring. In nearby Gaston County, just a few miles from Charlotte, Gaston County police were working a narcotics investigation when a reliable informant told them that a man had just purchased a six-hundred-thousand-dollar house and had paid in cash. Gaston County Police Sergeant Rome identified the man as Steve Chambers and began an extensive background check on Steve and his wife Michelle. Sergeant Rome learned that Steve Chambers was shopping around town in recent weeks. He had paid cash for a BMW truck and roadster, so he started putting them all together. a large amount of cash purchases, large cash transactions and everything, there has to be a source of funds and from the information I was able to obtain about the House finances and everything, and that was not joined by the county police Gaston, It seemed very likely that this was illegal drug money and not Loomis cash.

Still, police began keeping a close eye on the cameras in the weeks after the robbery. Information about the House's irregular spending habits began to reach the local investigation into the House's activities which had begun to require. More attention than most of Sergeant Rome's ongoing cases for the Gaston County Police, it was really dumb of them the way they actually handed out the money and bragged about it because in just a short period of time eight different informants got me contacted about their participation. As far as the transactions they had attempted to make, she had actually carried out the house that Steven purchased.

Michelle Chambers was in the small town of Cramerton, just a 15-minute drive from downtown Charlotte, with just over 2,500 residents. , this bedroom community covers three square miles. The city is in the Guinness Book of World Records for shortest main street, which measures just 75 feet long. The town is also home to an exclusive gated community called Kramer Mountain. As soon as the cameras moved, the police in Cramerton started getting a little strange. information about his new residence Chief David Young heads Cramerton's nine-man police force. The comments were that these people were living in a manufactured home six weeks ago and now they're hoping to have all this new wealth and apparently none of them had really had a stable life. job in two years, so they go from being unemployed living in a mobile home to having more money than they can spend.

The Chamber moved into its exclusive home a few weeks after the Lumis Fargo heist. Steve's wife, Michelle, told anyone who would listen that her husband was a retired professional football player who made big money playing in Atlantic City. She also added that he was selling some laundromats in Texas. None of this made much sense, but people were willing to listen and take the House's money. Michele paid for everything with bundles of cash mainly. In the 1920s, one person to whom the House

stories

didn't ring

true

was Chromatin Mayor Kathy Biles, who lived a few doors down from her new home.

Everyone was under the impression that she was a retired Dallas Cowboys football player, though none of the men in our neighborhood. They had never heard of her name and just stayed silent, they were very different from the other people in the neighborhood. Mayor BIOS wasn't the only one who thought the House

stories

were a little fishy. Cramerton Police Chief David Young decided to call Mark Rossi. At the Charlotte FBI, Razi told Chief Young that the FBI was beginning to suspect the cameras in the Loomis heist. Chief Jung's tip is one of hundreds flooding the FBI. Agents had to sort through hundreds of tips and determine which were important and which were not.

Chambers was clearly starting to generate a lot of heat, the FBI focused much of its attention away from him being the next pro football player. Steve Chambers was a small-time criminal, bookie, and sometimes drug dealer who claimed to have ties to the mafia. He had been arrested. for passing bad checks, the police received a report that Chambers had caused a disturbance at a local bar and had been kicked out in a huff. He offered to buy the club for $400,000 in cash. Chambers' visible expenses were certainly raising suspicions, but the FBI had no way of finding out. proving that he was spending Loomis' money several weeks had passed since David Gant loaded $17 million in unmarked bills into a company van, walked out of a Charlotte Loomis Fargo warehouse and disappeared.

The FBI was looking for David Gant and his accomplices monitoring the hundreds. Of reports of suspicious spending in and around Charlotte, agents were also reviewing bank records to try to trace any cash transactionssuspicious. According to FBI agent John Windra, this was a time-consuming task in terms of cash transaction reports that companies file immediately, but it goes to Washington and the cuts are funneled to us along with everyone else's reports. that are not relevant to this case and we have to sift through literally thousands of those documents to determine which ones are relevant. Sorting through the thousands of reports took weeks. painstaking work, especially when agents weren't sure what they were looking for, but all the hard work paid off when the FBI discovered two suspicious activity reports that had been previously filed by bank tellers who reported certain unusual cash transactions being made. by none other than Michelle.

The Monday after the robbery, Michelle walked into a national bank branch, showed a briefcase full of cash and asked how much she could deposit before having to sign any paperwork. She made sure to assure the teller that it wasn't drug money. About the paperwork she Michelle got exactly what she didn't want. Her conversation was that a teller generated a suspicious activity report, while this was useful information and certainly cast more suspicion on the cameras. She did not link them to the Loomis money that the FBI began taking. A Much Closer Look at Stephen Michelle Chambers One of the things that surveillance led us to was that Steve and Michelle Chambers broke into banks, made quite substantial cash deposits, acquired safe deposit boxes.

Officers began 24-hour surveillance, but in a small town It was difficult to keep surveillance secret, Cramerton Police Chief David Young, in a small town, any vehicle not normally seen in the neighborhood becomes suspicious for you. I think that was probably one of the biggest problems we had in understanding what was going on and trying to explain to residents who were calling about suspicious vehicles and trying to tell them what was going on without actually telling them what was going on, the chief Young not only had to cover FBI activities from the neighbors on camera but also from the mayor. driveway to head to City Hall for the day and I would see a car parked there with two men in it and first of all the car didn't belong there and second of all two men sitting in a car in the morning wouldn't be It doesn't make sense and I would say today that our police chief there is a car at the base of my driveway and he would say, you know, yeah, he knew about that and they had it under control and the cars would be there, you know, in the dawn. morning and night hours very peculiar times the FBI did not limit their surveillance to the ground they also went into the air using small planes to make sure they did not lose the cameras when they were on the move Alain attracted a lot of attention Chief Young's attention continued to receive because he did not We're just dealing with reports of suspicious vehicles, now we have to find some reason for a plane to be flying low in the area, since all the surveillance raised suspicions from the residence of Coach Tony, the FBI lead.

The concern was that Steve and Michelle Chambers would find out that they were the suspects. The FBI's fears were unfounded. It seems that Steve and Michelle were the only people in town who hadn't realized that someone was watching them two months after the heist, as Christmas approached. The House, oblivious to all police activity, continued to spend heavily. The FBI learned that the couple bought a truck from their stepfather Steve Chambers. presented his wife with an early Christmas gift: a three-and-a-half-carat diamond ring purchased for forty-three thousand dollars in cash while the chamber's spending reached bizarre levels, the FBI still couldn't prove they were spending the money in stolen Loomis cash nor agents could turn on David Gant's cameras as the vacation progressed, neither Gant's wife nor his family heard from him as investigators struggle to find his accomplices.

David Ganz's family began to fear the

worst

as more than two months had passed since his last contact with David. The FBI kept in contact with him, but it seemed that David Gant had actually disappeared after the House holiday and all the FBI could do was watch, they feared that if they got too close the House would become suspicious. Steve Chambers was a particularly difficult target. He maintained a very close circle. about friends he didn't talk outside of his friends or family he never went out drinking with anyone or went out to dinner or went out with someone he hadn't known for years so it was a matter of literally getting your books and trying to figure out where they might have been.

If these two crossed paths in the past or where they were going together now one of the people the FBI found in Steve Chambers' yearbooks was David Gan's friend Kelly Campbell, the FBI paid Kelly another visit of all the people originally Interviewed After the robbery, only Kelly Campbell refused to take a polygraph test. They wanted her to take the test in the hopes that she could help them establish the link between Campbell and the cameras or lead them to David Gant. Kelly Campbell did not want to participate in a wampa special agent or I myself sat down with her and tried to address her in such a way that a concerned friend would like to help the FBI try to locate a friend of hers, David Gant, she had no interest in helping us locate David Scott Gant, in fact. she cut the interview off very briefly she was very nervous during this interview her pager rang her cell phone rang and it just wasn't a typical interview Calli Campbell's second interview was so strange that it only served to further heighten the agents' suspicions she continued She denies that she was close to David, but the officers were not convinced.

All the agents had was their suspicions of her. What you have is the thousands of calls and the thousands of clues in the thousands of names that you start with and a couple of names that rise to the top. I have Kelly Campbell again, whose version of a relationship with David Gant doesn't match anyone else's. You have the headaches of those who have made some acquisitions that we cannot explain and also the fact that he works in a crucial place. One piece of evidence has been found and there are the cameras that have recently spent a lot of money that we can't exactly explain and the question is how are they all connected?

How is everyone connected to David Scott? Agents had several suspects, but no evidence that conclusively linked the money to Loomis Fargo or the suspects to each other. Their biggest problem was that after investigating the robbery for three months, the only man they knew was involved in the robbery and was still eluding with no idea where. David Gant was gone, the FBI continued to watch the cameras with a new house, new cars, new tanning beds and more home furnishings than they knew what to do with things that just kept getting better for Steve and Michelle's cameras in 1998 if the cameras themselves had thought of doing it.

Looking up, they would have seen the FBI looking back, but they never did in front of the Gastonia courthouse. Steve and Michelle bought the furniture discount center. Neither Steve nor Michelle had held down a steady job for the past two years, but they bought their way into the furniture business. renamed their new M&S Furniture Gallery store after him, three months after the heist, the House's out-of-control spending gave the FBI a big break. They observed Michelle Chambers and Kelly Campbell together in the furniture store. Campbell was driving a new minivan by Tracing the van's license plate number, agents identified the registered owner as a known alias of Steve Chambers.

The FBI finally connected Kelly Campbell to Steve Chambers. Her investigation was beginning to take shape as the FBI continued to monitor the camera spending throughout the Charlotte area. Michelle Chambers was becoming well known in all the banks around the Charlotte suburbs and to FBI agent John and Drew she was the person who made the money, she was the one who made the deposits in the bank, she was the house . decorator, she was trying to put together this new life that they had built for themselves and present themselves as legitimate businessmen, as people who could fit in with people who legitimately had that kind of money.

In late January 1998, she made an $8,000 deposit that gave her the FBI to acquire the evidence they had been looking for all along. FBI agents were staking out a bank when Michelle Chambers walked in to make a deposit. Officers watched as she handed the teller bundles of cash wrapped in money bands. One of them was from Loomis. This was. the first evidence linking the House's wealth directly to Loomis Fargo, better yet, the money bands still bore the handwritten initials of a Loomis employee. That wrapper was taken almost to Loomis Fargo, where we received samples of all the initials of the people who with the initial bands of the Bank in Loomis.

Fargo facility and there were only five that were there at the time the robbery occurred and it turned out to be an employee who had not worked in the vault since the robbery and that was by pure coincidence and that conclusively linked that money to Loomis Fargo . Before the robbery, Michel's previous banking mistake had been fruitful for authorities, but he eventually linked the cameras to the stolen money. The FBI felt it was still too early to make arrests. The thief, the accomplices and the money had yet to be discovered. The agents had to decide what to do with their new information, do we go ahead, make the arrest, arrest them for what we had, money laundering charges, etc., and hope they take us to the remaining money and David Scott Gant, or we stand firm and the decision was made, let's wait a little longer and hope that we can get that information that leads to David Scott.

The FBI would wait until the arrests were made and hopes that the gang would tip off Mr. Gansler, now that they could link the gang to Loomis' money, the FBI had enough evidence to obtain warrants to search all of the players' homes, but the FBI couldn't be sure they would find the evidence they needed and feared if They were summoned before a grand jury. suspects could lie or invoke the Fifth Amendment and then go out to cover their tracks a judge agreed with the FBI's concerns On February 10 he authorized a wiretap on the House phone the FBI obtained permission to place wiretaps anywhere They thought Steven Michelle might be talking started listening to all the business transactions from the cameras in his furniture store with wiretaps in place the FBI set up to start monitoring the gangs phone conversations the FBI listened to anything and everything What if he didn't?

The gang was talking about business and their plans to spend money but they weren't talking about the robbery. My office made phone calls to open a $2.5 million bank account in the Cayman Islands. He talked about hiring a man named Mike McKinney as a bodyguard for $400 a week plus an apartment, yeah. Campbell talked about gaining some weight and wanting liposuction for the FBI, most of the talk was useless, we were getting to the critical stage of wiretapping where you can only do that for so long, which shows you're trying to gather a certain amount of evidence. and then you have to interrupt it and we were about to make the decision to put together who we know and what we know about them and hope they lead us to David Scott, right? point that we get the opportunity or Kelly Campbell tells Steve Chambers.

Guess who I just heard from the FBI. I heard Kelly Campbell tell Steve Chambers that she had received a page from David Gant. This was the first evidence the FBI had. Gant was still alive and working. with Campbell on cameras what are you telling her the FBI wanted to capture her voice on tape kelly and david set up a system where david would send a coded numerical page to Kelly telling her where and when he would call her Campbell told the cameras when he was supposed to two would speak next as David Gant moved to speak with Kelly Campbell.

The FBI was on the scene ready and waiting, but Kelly was not there. Surveillance leads us to a pay phone where Kelly is supposed to be receiving an incoming call from David Gannett. we are all waiting, we have obtained the legal authority to intercept that phone call and Kelly Campbell simply does not appear after months of watching and waiting, it seemed that the FBI's most pressing question would be left unanswered after months of monitoring Kelly Campbell and Steve Chambers . The FBI was waiting to hear David Gant's voice and confirmed that he was still alive as agents waited to listen to a prearranged phone call between Gant and Campbell.

The serious complication arose when she rang and she did notwas nowhere to be found and who was it. I went ahead and picked up a phone just to see who was on the other end and we were able to capture that voice on the other end and we knew we had David Scott's key on the other end of that phone, the FBI finally had a voice. he recorded and confirmed that it was David Gans. Now they knew he was alive but they didn't know where he was. He hung up before the call he traced by hearing his voice gave agents enough information to extend the wiretap.

They would just have to wait and see if the gang would lead them to David Guetta. The next time David Gant called Kelly's campus, she immediately called Steve Chambers, the FBI was listening to her conversation. Kelly told Steve that she was afraid Gant would ask for more money. The agents were shocked to learn that Gant had apparently run out of cash and desperately needed Kelly to send him something. The listening agents couldn't imagine how a man who stole seventeen million dollars could have run out of cash unless the money was still in the Charlotte area. Steve Chambers told Kelly that he couldn't wait any longer, it was time to get rid of Gant once and for all.

He told her to stop by the furniture store to discuss how to proceed. When Kelly arrived at the store, the FBI had an agent inside it. Steve told Kelly that Gant's requests for money had to stop, he waited for you, they called him a problem, now he told him it was time to put his plan to kill Gant into action, we can tell them to send him or Gant was the only one who could tie them. to the money, if he left, they would be free and clear, he called a problem. Humber said Mike McKinney had been on site for months ready to take care of Gant, but they had a problem, although Kelly was talking to David on the phone, no one knew.

Chambers pressed Kelly when Gant called again to find out where he was staying. Look, I have to have some more money when David called Kelli. She knew what she had to do. David told Kelly that he loved her and that he couldn't wait for her to do it. join him he told her he was in Cozumel Mexico the FBI finally had the information they were looking for David Gant had been hiding south of the border since the heist now as the FBI Kelly also knew where he was she told him someone would give him more money and he should stay where he was and wait with that, she seemed to seal David Gant's fate from the moment the FBI heard Steve Chambers talk about hiring Mike McKinney.

The FBI has been watching him closely. They had a break when they heard Chambers ask. McKinney met him in a hotel room outside when the two men met, the FBI was waiting, they heard the cameras arranged for McKinney to take some guys with him to Mexico to take down David Gant. The FBI had to act quickly within days. Someone was coming to kill Gant. He remains our prime suspect. He's the one who took the money and we want it back now. We are armed with the information that there is a plot to take his life and with that information it is our job first. primarily to protect him and intercept those people before they can kill him on the morning of Sunday, March 1, 1998, five months after the Loomis Fargo robbery, three agents checked into a Mexican hotel where they had come to look for David Gant five Months after the Lumis Fargo robbery, the FBI finally identified the key players and had located David Gant.

Now they were in a deadly race against Ganz's accomplices to find him before they did. Just days after Steve Chambers ordered Gant's murder, three men approached him and one asked to see his identification. David Ghent knew who he was. He comes up to me and says please tell me you're an FBI agent and I told him I am and the next thing he said to me was we really need to talk and I said yes and then he told me I'm very happy. to see you and I told him I was glad to see him too and that was it.

He was quietly arrested twenty-four hours after the arrest, the day David Gant's accomplices planned to kill him. He was on a flight back to Charlotte North. Carolina, now that Gant was in custody, the FBI was able to piece together how the gang pulled off the heist. David Gant worked at Lewis Fargo for several years. It was here that he met Kelly Kemp to hit it off. Gant was from the same job. The class stopped its captain, but working with all that money was not a job that David Gant liked, in reality money smells, it stinks, it smells like ink and when you spend 12 or 14 hours a day with it and you are in all Charlotte banks, it's boring.

David's wife Tammy kept him on a strict budget each week, they barely had enough money to eat much less. Meanwhile, the little luxuries of life Kelly and David would occasionally get together outside of work at one of these get-togethers. Kelly had a question for David. She asked him what he would think if Loomis was robbed. She told him that he would be the perfect person to carry out the heist and could he finally live the way he always wanted? She told him that she had a friend who could help him hide the money and help Gant escape.

The three could split the money three ways, as former employee Kelly guessed they could keep four. million dollars each, she hinted that with all that money she and David could live together however they wanted. I was a little surprised, I thought he was just playing with me and then that kind of thing that was kind of serious and then one day in September, GAD. He became very serious when he realized that it would take 30 years of monthly payments to zero out his credit card. Gant called Kelly Campbell to tell her of his decision. My wife and I have racked up some bills and were a little tight financially and the idea just appealed to me.

Over the next few weeks, Gant finally began to pay close attention to how Loomis operated. We began to dismantle his security system and target the weakest links, mainly his lack of ownership. His physical security was really good. They just didn't have enough people. to cover all the places and that left me with all the keys, you know, 17 million dollars that really wouldn't go. It seemed again that if he chose a weekend when he himself was closing the vault, he could probably take almost 17 million dollars take the money it would be easy to escape it would be difficult he started studying and discussed everything with Kelly he read about the FBI and learned that most of the investigation focused on the crime area and then spread outwards, they come in every crime is more or less the same way and especially the robberies, look at their ports at train and bus stations and They can make a little bubble around the crime and if they don't really find you right there, they're at zero, so it gives you some time, so my plan was to get out of that bubble.

Gant realized that after the heist he would have to get as far away from Charlotte as possible, which meant he would need a fake passport and a way to get out of there. the country while Cat did his homework Steve Chambers became the real mastermind behind the plan Gant never met her spoke to Chambers he didn't even know her name that way they couldn't implicate each other if they got caught Chambers passed on information to get Through Kelly Campbell, made all the arrangements after the robbery, including getting the gang together. He recruited his cousin Scott Grant and his high school friend, Eric Payne, for $100,000 each to help hide the money.

The cameras were also responsible for getting Gant out of the country. Man Paid $50,000 for Birth Certificate to Create Fake ID for Gant with Simple Plan Implemented David Gant found out on Saturday, October 4, 1997 that he was scheduled to close the Loomis facility by himself this was the early day in the Tomorrow David Gant kissed his sleeping wife goodbye, took one last look at his mobile home and left for work knowing he wouldn't be back tonight or anytime soon. Cutting ties with your family and your wife, that's probably the hardest thing to do, but I don't know how to explain it.

If you realize, maybe in four or five years you can contact them, but you know you're just lying to yourself about it, you know you can't go back. David Gant took care of his affairs at Loomis as he did every other day. he had worked there Later that afternoon, the gang gathered to wait for David Gant. Campbell used David Gant's cell phone to call Loomis and arrange a meeting. The plan required. He can't be alone in Lomas after the last truck arrived. I was going to go. Load the cash into a company van and then leave Loomis around 5 p.m.

When Kent answered Kelly's call, he told him there were two obstacles in his way. One of them couldn't be ready with the cash until 6:30 or 7:00 that afternoon, after the last truck that returned to Gantt discovered that it was going into a The new trainee today, the group would have I had to spend a few anxious hours waiting for David to try to take over the warehouse after the last truck arrived almost 30 minutes later than expected. Gantt on the new apprentice were the only two people in Loomis' warehouse. Gant took advantage of the trainees' inexperience. I simply went through the motions of closing the ball.

He thought he had blocked the ball and was tired. Then when I told him to leave, he got into his car and left after the trainee left. David Gant had to face his own moment of truth, I'm not sure I have the guts to do it because I know as soon as I put that first dollar in that truck I can't go back, I steal a dollar, I have to do it. steal them all David Gant decided to steal them all he took a moment to pause and contemplate his future before him and the deceptively arranged green piles then he got to work Eric Pain, Steve Chandler's friend, drove a rented van to the Reynolds parking lot and Reynolds, the printing plant where the plant will be located, was closed at night and the lot was not visible from the street.

He would wait for Ghent and the others to arrive with the cash. Steve Chambers Scott Grant Micheli Kappa parked across the street. -story of the British Lumas warehouse where they would wait until Gant showed up in a heavy Loomis van hidden inside. Gantt lifted pallets of plastic-wrapped cash bundles in Loomis wrappers and carried them to a white company van 15 feet away. His every move was recorded on tape outside Lomas. Across the street, Chambers was getting nervous because Gant was already late. Kelly kept calling every few minutes and calling him if a quarter coat meant "I love you", each number represented the number of letters in each word, it wasn't a fancy code.

As the FBI suspected on the inside, David was beginning to feel the pressure and Kelly's repeated pages only served to make him nervous. I have to go and around 7:45, almost an hour later than originally planned, Gantt failed to place another brick of money. Inside the vehicle, he hit Ford's largest pickup truck with literally a ton of cash. Gant removed the tapes from two video orders locked in a cabinet in the security room. He didn't know about the third album after months of planning and several nervous hours emptying the vault. David Gant was ready to embark on his journey to freedom, but he couldn't get out the door.

Gant didn't know who this good Samaritan was, he feared he had been caught until he looked across the street, saw Campbell's truck and realized this. He must have been an accomplice. David had thought that only he and his anonymous friend were in on the plan. This was an unpleasant surprise, but he would have to worry about that later, after many frustrating delays. David Ghent was finally, albeit momentarily, a rich man driving a ton of money in that particular van, it was a great feeling. I mean, the ride wasn't great, but it was a great feeling. It was probably one of the best trips I have ever taken in my life.

I'm driving around thinking I've done it. I'm going to be famous, you know, these people will be scared to walk, but in just a few minutes there's euphoria and I'm sitting in front of a light and I look across and I see this, Charlotte, it makes the police, oh God, they already know , so I. I had just smoked a cigarette, calm down, I'm shaking really bad, light a cigarette sitting there thinking, Dave, you need to be calm after months of planning. David Gant. The simple plan seemed as if it had a simple ending. Loomis Fargo Vault Supervisor David Gant.

He had just left his company's warehouse in a van full of millions of dollars. It seemed that he was about to start his life as a millionaire. Fortune was not on his side. So his luck changed and he continued on his way. The police did not. . They didn't follow him, it seemed like they hadn't heard about the robbery. Gant was free, then pulled into Reynolds and Reynolds' parking lot with the gang following right behind when he got out of the truck and another stranger approachedwith you, okay, let's go. Eric Pain assured him that she was fine, she was with the gang.

Gant gave him the key to the Loomis van that Ganton took, but what they left behind was a major problem: the key to the van was in an eight-inch ring with about 200 other people. In all the excitement, someone lost track of exactly what key opened the Loomis van preparing for the trip to Columbia Airport in South Carolina and not realizing the chaos they left behind. David and Kelly were excited that they actually got her out of the millions David had taken. Loomis Fargo only took $30,000 to start their new life but despite all their meticulous planning they didn't think about how they would get them on board the plane Kelly had a quick solution: they walked into a convenience store and bought a pair of pantyhose which he cut up and stuffed with money, it was a quick thought on her part, but thinking it wasn't that quick, back at the van, after fruitless efforts to find the right key, the trio moved on to more desperate methods of trying to open the door. apparently it didn't occur to them that armored vans have bulletproof glass, while Chambers and company were fighting for the money, David Gant had his back to the van, the gang had the key to their future in their hands, but still They didn't.

She knew that Chambers and his accomplice froze when they saw so much money, although they still didn't know how much they had gotten. Let's go find the barrel. Come on Chambers brought three blue barrels to carry the cash, but were the barrels full to the brim? To the brink, the trio had to leave behind bundles of one each five-dollar bills, headed to ditch the van and hide the money at the Columbia airport. Kelly and David ran into their own problem because their plan didn't include making plane reservations in Canton. Campbell found out only upon arriving at the Columbia airport that there were no flights to Mexico, okay, he killed Kelly, called Steve Chambers and told him to send Gant to Atlanta, about 200 miles away while the bus was leaving the Columbia bus station.

David began his life as a fugitive with the hope that Keller would soon join him in Mexico but David's trip to Mexico would not be without incident on a stopover in New Orleans a woman approached him as if she recognized him I Think I Know You I don't think so You're that German tennis player Boris Becker I'm Mike from Atlanta I'm selling computers I'm having a slight panic attack I'm not sure if the news is out yet because I'm not sure what time it is nothing, no man, I'm not Boris Becker, from the moment Gant arrived in Cancun, Mexico, began living the life dining at the best restaurants, and the stranger in the tropical paradise met his chilly reception during the carefree months of October 1997.

Gant's wallet To get cinnamon, he continued to spend, but since he couldn't take his share of the loot to Mexico, he had to rely on his accomplices to send him the cash he needed at the end of October, just a few weeks after the heist. They were already drying up I called the camera and said hey I'm just rent money and he just sent me some and I asked him for like fifty thousand dollars oh that's not such a bad request I mean they have a lot of money why What shouldn't they do? Don't you send me something to deliver Gan's money?

Steve Chambers sent Mike McKinney, who traveled under the name Bruna McKinney. Bruna McKinney's orders would have given Gant the cash and kept an eye on him until the gang found the perfect time to kill. Bruno finally appears. In the morning I had been partying and I opened the door and she asked me: uh, you are looking for help from Charlotte, now she sees, yes, she invited me in. Bruno gave Gant a small packet of money when Gant protested and told him that's all they gave him, it's like $8,000 is almost nothing, you know, I called Campbell, where's my money?

Now I'm suspicious or something because I asked for one thing and got another. For the first time, it occurred to David Gant that he might never see the millions of dollars. He thought it would be his, but David Gant soon ran into a bigger problem. He was having dinner at a restaurant in Cancun when a stranger approached him and said, "You know, you look like I'm thinking of Boris Becker because you look like that kind of stole like 20." million dollars North Carolina really gave him a little spiel about how I'm living in Mexico for years it couldn't be me and inside I'm panicking Gant shuddered if people recognized him, the story of the heist must not be dying, I knew I would have to make some changes.

Gant kept a low profile and continued to keep to himself. He spent his time reading comics and listening to Eagles CDs while he kept a low profile. Gantt received unexpected help. A stranger knocked on his door. The man identified himself as Robert and told Gant that he was a friend of Bruno's when Gant let him in. He had a question for David. He thinks I'm some kind of drug dealer. Yeah, no, man. I think I'm going to do with those things. He says well these people want to kill you, what's the effect and instantly I knew that I would never see my money and that these people were trying to kill me and now I would have to change the way I lived.

Robert told Gant that Bruno was working. for the people of Charlotte and they were making a plan to kill him, they were just waiting for the perfect opportunity, but he came to warn them that he had 2,000 dollars there. Gant gave Robert $2,000 to keep him quiet and promised himself that he would do so. He wouldn't give them the perfect opportunity if he ever met Bruno again, it wouldn't be just the two of them. David's great plan had not worked as he expected. Now wanted by the FBI for stealing money he would probably never see and targeted for death by his accomplices, he began staying inside most of the day and going out only at night, fearing for his safety since that advice from the mysterious Robert Gant who saved his life started changing hotels and using aliases, it was at that time that the gang lost. playing with him stealing all the money being in the design having someone trying to kill you um makes you plan what kind of person you are you really have guts can you really think quickly while thinking quickly Gant made a mistake?

He did not believe Kelly was part of the plot to kill him and when he called her again to ask for money he told her where she was staying. I'm in Cozumel, the gang and the FBI knew where Gant was shortly after that. He ran into the FBI. He left his hotel one morning and was picked up by Agent Rossi. Now that the FBI had Gant in custody, they needed the rest of the gang, but Agent Rossi had a question. He just he wasn't sure which one he was. about Kelly, that was this force that would allow him to commit a crime of this magnitude, so the question to David Gant was what about Kelly, obviously there is something there and David's response was: if you can believe this, I only kissed her once once and Then he turned and looked at me and said that turns out to be a pretty expensive boy's kiss, right?

And it was obviously an expensive kiss. The FBI knew the rustic west, yes, before they started. The money was captured on Monday, March 2, 1998, five months ago. After the Loomis Fargo robbery, a task force of FBI agents and local police quietly approached Chambers' home in the early hours of the morning, when Steve Chambers came to the door and was told that someone had broken in. your furniture store. Richmond were the top agents arrested Michelle Chambers the night of the robbery Steve Chambers had sworn his colleagues to secrecy in case they were caught on the day of the arrest Steve Chambers named them all to the FBI while the Chambers were being arrested in their Kelly Campbell mansion was also visited by the FBI, you got it, the agents searched her house, confiscated anything that might look suspicious, took credit cards, appliances, jewelry and boxes of cash.

Gang member Mike McKinley was arrested in his hotel room in Gastonia, North Carolina. upstairs, pick it up, you have the right to remain silent on his part helping to unload the money Eric Paine met the same fate the officers confiscated everything the stolen money could buy and anything that could have been used in a crime all the items that workers' suspicions about their wild spending were confiscated, including their Chevy Tahoe, the FBI recovered more than a million dollars in cash from the gangs' private homes, of course, the largest amount of cash, the With the largest amount of jewelry, almost all of it coming from the House Palace, seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars in cash and four hundred and sixty different items, all taken from the house by federal agents, the neighbors, including Cramerton Mayor Cassie Biles, now understood the suspicious looking cars and strangers in the neighborhood over the past few months.

I was surprised when I found out that it was one of those very surreal moments where you start to piece together everything that had happened since the Luminess Fargo story first came out and then you start to think about all the times you've seen the Chamber and how they were and how the money had been revealed. her neighbors noted that they could see the FBI using money counting machines for two full days inside the house the agents found cash in the desk drawers a shoe box in Michelle's closet a blue barrel from the night of the robbery in basement rooms he once borrowed a shovel from a neighbor, leading the FBI to believe that perhaps there was money buried in the backyard.

Ironically, none of the six defendants had enough money to hire their own attorney. The court appointed them attorneys and held them without bail until their hearing in In the courthouse as Kelly Campbell and David Kent waited for their hearing, they had a moment to talk thinking about everything that had happened. Kelly began to regret betraying her friend. She apologized to David, but it was too late. David Gant at that time believed that he was Kelly Campbell, in love, at that time he wanted, he wanted the money and that was pretty consistent throughout the investigation. David Gant believed that he was going to live with her for the rest of her days on a beach somewhere with one-third of her money and one-third of her money.

Kelly Campbell I don't think she ever had any intention of leaving this country. She recovered a total of nearly ten million dollars from 24 different safe deposit boxes that the House paid her friends and family to set up in her name. In total there were 21 accused. 20 pleaded guilty only one pleaded not guilty house attorney Jeffrey governor who was convicted by a jury of money laundering United States tax for the Western District of North Carolina Marc counter gives credit where credit is due in the end we charge 21 people 20 of them people pleaded guilty, the one who went to trial was convicted and I think that shows that the FBI did an excellent job investigating the case.

Eric Payne, who helped hide the money, was sentenced to six and a half years for disposing of the Van Scott grant. was sentenced to four years and seven months Michele chambers received seven years and eight months her husband Steve received 11 years and three months for the planned hit on David Gant Mike McKinney received 11 years and 6 months for charges that included conspiracy to commit murder because he cooperated with authorities Kelly Campbell received five years and ten months, the lightest sentence of all the main defendants. She is currently serving time at the federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia.

Well, I thought that with all the money life would be a lot easier and all my problems would disappear. and I wouldn't have to worry about anything, but it actually more or less caused more problems because of the way it was obtained. David Gant received seven years and six months in prison. He is now serving his sentence in the Federal Correctional Institution. in Butner, North Carolina: my family, you know, I call them greens a lot, there are still touchy moments with me and my family and it was too much for my wife, she divorced me about a month ago, this robbery cost David.

Gant everything, but he remains undaunted, well, now that I was sentenced, he would do it again. Yes, an opportunity like that comes once in a lifetime and now that I am already in prison and have been tried, I can be more honest. and say gang members were ordered to pay millions of dollars in restitution. This is the money they will likely pay for the rest of their lives to the FBI. It was a relief to know that the Loomis gang had been captured. This was not an easy case. to end up in a nice, neat package and there was a lot of pressure that we put on ourselves, we wanted it all, we wanted David Gant to come back safe and sound, we wanted all the people responsible, all the people who were involved and we wanted the money .

In the end, the FBI turned everything over to Agent John Wide. It seemed like the gang hadn't fully thought about his crime. I don't think they were thinking they could get away with it. They were looking at the final result. you know, being millionaires on the beachlike everyone daydreams and didn't think about the consequences at all. The gang lost everything. Every item purchased with Loomis' cash was confiscated by the FBI in February 1999. More than 5,000 people attended an auction of more than 1,000 items purchased with money from Michels' BMW convertible and Velvet Elvis heist. They were among the souvenirs awarded to the highest bidders.

The proceeds of about three hundred and sixty thousand dollars went to Lloyd's of London, Loomis Fargo's insurance company.