They Had 17 Million Dollars and No Sense at All - AMW Magazine
kkramer
by Stacey Hawkins
The $17 million Loomis Fargo heist in Charlotte, North Carolina, was the
second largest armored car robbery in U.S. history. It's still the hot topic
on the lips of many Charlotte residents, and the media can't seem to get
enough of the story. It happened approximately eight months after Philip
Johnson, a Loomis Fargo employee in Jacksonville, Florida, pulled a gun on
two of his co-workers and made off with $18 million.
The unlikely suspect in the Charlotte heist was 27-year-old David Scott
Ghantt, a quiet, unassuming vault supervisor who earned $360 a week. Even
after the tapes showing Ghantt stealing the money were released to the
media, his family refused to believe that Ghantt actually did what the FBI
was accusing him of. Had Ghantt acted alone, the case might have disappeared
into obscurity, but six months after the theft, when 21 others were
arrested, a fascinating tale of lust, greed and murder-for-hire was exposed.
According to the FBI, the plan that's been called "half-baked,
half-brilliant" came together in mid-September 1997 shortly after Ghantt was
promoted from driver to vault supervisor. He and co-worker Kelly Campbell,
27, had developed a close relationship and were spending time together
outside of work. Campbell, a mother of two, was in the process of divorcing
her husband.
Agents speculate that after the Loomis robbery in Jacksonville, many Loomis
employees including Ghantt and Campbell, sat around discussing the incident.
The local media portrayed Campbell as a temptress who seduced Ghantt into
believing that they could get away with stealing the money. Although
Campbell denies the affair, FBI phone taps reveal conversations where the
two professed their love for each other.
What authorities can say for certain is that Campbell introduced Ghantt to
her childhood friend, 29-year-old Steve Chambers, and together the three
came up with a plan. Chambers is described by the FBI as a small-time drug
dealer and fence for stolen goods who was facing charges of writing $30,000
worth of bad checks. Chambers had a reputation for bragging and exaggerating
in order to make himself appear important. He enjoyed being in charge, and
investigators say Chambers considered himself smarter than everyone else. As
the self-proclaimed leader, Chambers recruited several friends and waited
for the right opportunity to put his gutsy plan in motion.
He got his chance a few weeks later when Ghantt was given the vault keys and
asked to work over the weekend. On Saturday, October 4, 1997, Ghantt worked
late with three co-workers at Loomis Fargo's Charlotte depository. At 6:40
p.m. Ghantt and the last employee left at the same time. Before he hopped
into his car, Ghantt propped the door to the depository open with a stick.
Five minutes later, Ghantt returned to the depository and loaded carts with
heavy bags of money, then took them to an unmarked Loomis van. An hour
later, Ghantt had packed more than 2,700 lbs. of cash belonging to
NationsBank and First Union National Bank into the van. Before leaving the
scene, Ghantt went to his manager's office, jimmied a cabinet door and
removed tapes from two security cameras. He didn't realize that 16 other
closed-circuit cameras had been recording his every move.
In the parking lot, Ghantt met his accomplices, Kelly Campbell, Steve
Chambers, and Eric Scott Grant, who were in two other vehicles. They
followed Ghantt out of the parking lot to a Reynolds & Reynolds industrial
warehouse eight miles away. A fourth accomplice, warehouse employee Eric
Hailey Payne, was waiting there with a Budget rental van. Ghantt pocketed
$50,000, and left the rest of the money with Chambers' gang. He and Kelly
Campbell drove 90 miles to Columbia, South Carolina, where Ghantt expected
to leave quickly on a flight to Mexico, but no one had bothered to call
ahead. The two soon discovered that there are no international flights out
of Columbia's airport. Agents say a frantic Kelly Campbell called Chambers
and asked what they should do. Chambers told Ghantt to take a bus to Atlanta
and catch a flight to Mexico from there. This was the first of many blunders
in the events that were about to unfold.
By the time that Campbell arrived back in Charlotte, Chambers and his
accomplices had stuffed the money into blue Reynolds & Reynolds barrels and
loaded the barrels into the rental van. They abandoned the Loomis Fargo van
a few miles away in a wooded area and left behind $3.3 million, mostly in
dollar bills (probably because they did not have enough room in the rental
van.) Unbelievably, they also left behind the two video tapes of Ghantt
stealing the money. Chambers, Payne and Grant drove to Vale, North Carolina,
and dragged the barrels into Chambers' mobile home, where his wife,
Michelle, joined them in counting the money.
The next day Tammy Ghantt reported her husband missing. A few hours later,
the Charlotte police found David Ghantt's pickup in the Loomis Fargo parking
lot. His keys, wedding ring, and other personal items were in the truck. On
October 6, 1997, after agents found the Loomis van with $3.3 million cash,
two surveillance tapes, and Ghantt's gun, Ghantt was indicted on federal
charges for bank larceny. Agents traced Ghantt's cell phone and pager calls
just before the heist and determined that at least one accomplice was
involved. The case became a major investigation in the Charlotte division of
the FBI, but with all the bungling that followed, the case practically
solved itself.
According to FBI affidavits, two days after the theft, Steve and Michelle
Chambers deposited $5,000 in each of their bank accounts, triggering a
federal suspicious activity report. Three weeks later, despite the fact that
their combined wages totaled less than $42,000, the Chambers couple moved
from a double-wide trailer to a $635,000 home 30 miles away. The
7,000-square-foot stone home is located in a gated country club community
near Cramer Mountain in Gaston County, North Carolina. Needless to say, the
move drew lots of attention from the Chambers' old neighbors. One of the
neighbors was disturbed enough to call the FBI. Other attention-grabbing
purchases included breast implants, a $43,000 diamond ring and a convertible
BMW for Michelle. Steve bought a motorboat, a pick-up truck and a Rolex
watch. For their home, the Chambers bought expensive furniture, three
tanning beds, and eight big-screen TVs. Most of those purchases were made
with cash.
In addition to puzzling the old neighbors, Steve and Michelle apparently
raised a few eyebrows in their new neighborhood as well. Chambers told
Cramer Mountain residents that he was an ex-NFL player. Because he is 6'1
and was approximately 220 pounds, the story was somewhat believable.
However, many in the neighborhood found it strange that the couple had so
much cash and no visible means of income. To friends and acquaintances,
investigators say Chambers alluded to gambling and investments to explain
his newfound fortune.
Around the same time, accomplice Eric Payne took a three-week unpaid
vacation and his wife quit her job as a receptionist. In addition to a
Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a Chevy Tahoe, the couple bought a big-screen
TV, a computer and a brand new mobile home. According to Victor O'Korn,
assistant special agent in charge of the Charlotte division of the FBI, the
crooks got more money than they had bargained for. O'Korn says the sheer
volume of the money must have been overwhelming. "I don't think they ever
realized it was going to be 17-plus million dollars," he said. "They
probably thought it was going to be somewhere between $2 million or $3
million, something like that. It's tough to spend $17 million. They just
seemed like they wanted to spend it immediately instead of just laying back
and sitting on it."
Steve and Michelle took trips to New York to buy new clothes and entertained
friends almost every weekend, yet it seemed they couldn't get rid of the
money fast enough. Perhaps that's why Michelle Chambers walked into the
Belmont branch of Wachovia Bank carrying $200,000 in a briefcase and asked,
"How much can I deposit without the bank reporting the transaction?" The
branch manager was bowled over not by the question, but by the Loomis Fargo
straps that were still around the bills.
Steve Chambers was a bit more discreet when it came to hiding the stolen
cash. In addition to paying friends and family to stash the money in safety
deposit boxes all over town, Chambers paid his lawyer, Jeffrey M. Guller,
$10,000 to hold a bag of money in his Gastonia office. Guller helped the
Chambers with the purchase of their Cramer Mountain home and pocketed
$425,543.34 in checks and money orders during the course of the property
closing. Chambers also enlisted the help of Michael and Kimberly Goodman,
who received $10,000 cash to help obtain an official bank check for $200,000
at the First Union National Bank branch in Salisbury, North Carolina, where
Kimberly was a teller.
Planning to funnel the money through a legitimate business, Chambers bought
M&S Furniture Store in February 1998. That might have been a better idea if
the store wasn't located directly across the street from the Gaston County
Courthouse. Another of Chambers' money-laundering schemes was buying a
nightclub called Cricket's Lounge located in the parking lot of Eastridge
Mall in Gastonia. Chambers got the idea when he took his closest friends out
for a night on the town. The group arrived in an expensive stretch
limousine, and they reportedly had too much to drink at the club. Chambers
and his wife caused a scene on the dance floor when they started arguing
about her dirty dancing. When the security staff got involved, the group had
to be physically removed from the building. On his way out, Chambers
reportedly boasted, "I'll show you - I'm going to come back and buy this
place."
According to an FBI informant, when Chambers returned to the limo with his
friends, he started talking about his plans for the lounge. He wanted to
change the name from Crickets to "The Big House" and dress the employees in
1930s-era striped prison suits. To advertise his new place, Chambers planned
to post a billboard off the interstate announcing, "Come to the Big House:
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
Chambers did go back the next day to offer Cricket's owner Donna Lyles half
a million dollars for her business. She asked for a $10,000 deposit, but
Chambers suggested $100,000 instead. Lyles was more than a bit surprised.
Describing her reaction to Steve at their first meeting, Lyles explains,
"The very first thought that entered my mind was, 'This is the biggest drug
dealer that has ever crossed my path.' I was told that he had inherited $13
million from his grandfather. I just assumed that he had inherited all this
money and, to use a clich€ from the Titanic movie, he was just 'new money.'"
When Lyles went to the Chambers' home to pick up her deposit, she met
Michelle Chambers. Initially Lyles was impressed with Steve's pretty young
wife. "I thought she was very savvy, the smart one of the couple," says
Lyles. "I thought she'd be the one to run the club, but I've changed my mind
since then." After talking to the couple for a while, and getting a tour of
their home, Lyles says she felt like she was in the twilight zone. For
Lyles, the most peculiar part of the tour was in Michelle's bedroom. "She
said she flew to New York to get this $5,000 suit and she showed me some of
her shoes," Lyles said. "She opened up her closet, which is kind of strange,
that you would open your closet up to a stranger."
Looking back on their meeting, Lyles says she left the Chambers' home
feeling that the two were frauds. Although they tried to pass themselves off
as a well-to-do couple, Lyles says, "Steve and Michelle never fit in that
house. Even with all the money, Michelle never seemed happy. And Steve, I
think he was trying to play some big mafia guy. I could tell it was just an
act." The following week Steve Chambers called Lyles to tell her that the
deal was off. To this day, Lyles has never received a real explanation. Upon
hearing the news she was upset, but in light of all the convictions in the
case, Lyles feels lucky about avoiding the mess that followed.
To many who witnessed the gang's bizarre spending habits, the FBI was
taking too long to act. Loomis had offered a $500,000 reward in the case,
and numerous tips were called in, yet the FBI appeared to be standing by
while the crooks were living it up. According to Victor O'Korn, the number
of people involved in the case made it a difficult one to close. "We wanted
to make sure that we didn't end up with fugitives in the case and that we
recovered all the money and assets," says O'Korn. The case agents wanted to
take down all the suspects simultaneously, but that couldn't happen until
they found David Ghantt.
Fortunately, with the aid of an informant and sophisticated surveillance
techniques, the FBI took Ghantt into custody in Playa Del Carmel, Mexico.
The arrest was a blessing in disguise for Ghantt, who had become expendable
in the eyes of Steve Chambers. According to O'Korn, Chambers thought that
Ghantt might expose him. "Ghantt was calling up. He was complaining. He
wanted more money. He didn't get nearly what he thought his fair share
should have been," explains O'Korn. "There were some trips to Mexico to take
some money down to him, but he was beginning to be a problem to them."
Chambers decided to eliminate the problem by sending his bodyguard, Michael
McKinney, to Mexico to kill Ghantt. Luckily for him, agents intercepted
Ghantt before McKinney could get to him.
Almost six months after the theft, the case finally came to a close. On
March 2, 1998, the FBI executed a warrant on the Cramer Mountain home of
Steve and Michelle Chambers. When the agents arrived, O'Korn said, Chambers
didn't know what hit him. "We go out on arrests and you know, you get all
types of different reactions like, 'I knew you were coming, what took you so
long,' a lot of different comments like that," O'Korn said. "But with Steve,
I mean it was total surprise that morning when the agents were knocking at
the door.." During the weeks that followed many other arrests were made and
the contents of nine safety deposit boxes seized. The Chambers' parents,
friends, family members and business associates went to jail. Of 21
defendants in the case, 20 pleaded guilty. One was convicted in a jury
trial.
On February 20, 1999, the U.S. Marshals Service sponsored an auction
dedicated to the items seized in the Loomis case. The majority of the items
on display had been seized from Chambers' M&S Furniture Store and Cramer
Mountain home. Thousands flocked to the Charlotte exhibition hall to
purchase a piece of history and gawk at merchandise bought with reckless
abandon. The velvet Elvis painting that hung in the Chambers' foyer was sold
for $1,6000. Other items that were auctioned off include Michelle's 1998 BMW
for $32,000, Steve's 17-foot motorboat and trailer for $7,750, and Eric
Payne's Harley-Davidson Road King for $16,5000. The FBI has yet to recover
nearly $2 million worth of stolen cash.
If you can help locate this missing money, call 1-800-crime-tv now.
Remember, you can remain anonymous.