The UnPerfect Crime | The FBI Files | FD Crime

on an october evening in 1997 a loomis fargo employee was tired of waiting for the good life [Music] he put in motion his own get rich quick scheme disappearing with over 17 million dollars in loomis cash the robbery sparked an international manhunt as the fbi struggled to recover the money and bring the thief and his gang to justice so [Applause] [Music] [Music] at 7 15 a.m on sunday morning october 5th 1997 the charlotte mecklenburg north carolina police received a call from a woman named tammy gant she told police her husband david hadn't returned home from his job at the loomis fargo warehouse the night before and she was concerned the charlotte police department dispatched an officer to investigate upon arriving at loomis fargo the patrolman surveyed the scene david gant's pickup truck was parked outside the warehouse gate the chain-link fence was open so was the warehouse door something appeared to be terribly wrong the officer contacted dispatch the charlotte police notified loomis fargo and a supervisor arrived to try and sort out what had happened the vault was locked but all the keys were missing [Music] along with a company van there were no signs of forced entry the supervisor told police that gantt worked the night before and was scheduled to close up the vault along with a trainee he took the police officer to the security center there he found the videotapes from two of the security cameras vcrs had been taken in a second cabinet he found a vcr with its tape still recording there on this tape was vault supervisor david gantt emptying the vault i can't believe it stayed again loomis had been robbed because the money stolen from loomis fargo belonged to federally insured banks the crime was a federal offense the fbi was called in at the time the agents arrived they knew only that vault supervisor david gantt a loomis fargo armored van and an unknown amount of money from the vault were all missing crime scene technicians processed the facility it was a puzzling crime scene according to charlotte fbi agent mark rozzi what you notice is a lack of anything noticeable it's not a crime scene in which there are bodies and blood and things strewn all about it's just a big empty looking warehouse you don't know how much money is missing to get in the vault and then you sort of gather your thoughts and get the agents to say what do we know and where do we go from here because all the keys were missing loomis officials were locked out of their own vault to learn what happened they would have to break in well obviously your concern immediately is with the missing body with david gantt was he abducted was he harmed was he forced to do something against his will is he still on the premise is he locked inside the vault [Music] [Applause] but david gantt wasn't in the vault in fact nothing was in the vault had taken everything fbi agent john wydra talking about 2 800 pounds in currency uh mostly 20 dollar bills they use the 20s to stack the atm machines so most of it was in 20 bills almost 11 million dollars and 20 bills was missing it was a total of 17 million dollars 17.3 million dollars that turned up missing this money would be impossible to trace none of the cash was marked it had come from general circulation and the serial numbers on the bills were non-sequential with nothing to look at and no clues inside the warehouse the investigators hoped the robbers left some clue outside [Music] the agent started by looking at david gantt's truck [Music] he found something interesting in the ashtray a wedding ring when we found david's wedding band 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 that he's moving on that he's starting a new life the next day at the charlotte offices of the fbi agents began to piece together what little they knew about the crime [Music] after a weekend of investigating all they learned was that david gant a van and a little over 17 million dollars in untraceable bills disappeared during or after gantt's work shift the day before it was not a great way to start an investigation with a 24-hour head start david gantt could be anywhere by now [Music] if the fbi ever hoped to find the missing cache they needed to find gantt fast agents started by talking with his wife tammy and one of david's sisters they hoped some detail of his personal life would give them some idea why he pulled the heist who might have helped him and most importantly where he was any relatives david's wife tammy gave the fbi a lot of background information on her husband she told them she hadn't noticed anything odd about david's behavior before the robbery she explained that money was tight and the couple lived simply but had run up some credit card debt tammy told the agent she kept a close eye on the bottom line and kept david on a strict budget [Music] david had been working a lot of long hours to try and get ahead of their bills tammy couldn't believe he was involved in this and was certain someone must have forced him to do it she feared he had been kidnapped or maybe worse you go through david scott gant's routine and what you find out is there is no noticeable blip on the screen he was acting the way that you would expect any normal person who should return home the following day to act he went out to dinner with his wife he helped put the groceries away he had made his dental appointment he had been living life just as he had lived it every other day prior to this crime so there was nothing immediate that jumped out that said here's the indicator this is going to tell us why he did it who he did it with and where he's gone to it just wasn't there to find david gantt the authorities needed to circulate his photograph and register him with the national crime information center computer system but to do that they needed to indict him united states attorney mark callaway prosecuted the case because they had david gant on tape taking the money out of loomis we had a grand jury that happened to be sitting on monday and we were able to indict him for the larceny the next day so two days less than 48 hours after the theft david gantt was indicted for it on the monday following the theft the media learned of the story fbi launched a nationwide manhunt as part of the investigation they were now calling operation charlotte the bureau now had a catchy name for the investigation but they still had no idea where david gant and the missing 17 million dollars had gone [Music] agents secured the airports and bus stations they circulated photos of david gantt and asked anyone who saw him to contact the authorities immediately because david gant had taken over a ton of cash the fbi knew he would need a considerable amount of space to transport and store all the money they checked the rental car and truck agencies in town to see if anyone fitting gantt's description might have rented a truck they came up empty [Music] to the agents in the charlotte office of the fbi this investigation began to seem very familiar in 1997 in jacksonville florida another loomis fargo employee emptied a vault of over 18 million dollars in cash special agent in charge william perry worked the previous investigation was an earlier uh theft from a facility in jacksonville that the charlotte division of the fbi had been involved in as a matter of fact recovered the money up in the asheville area so we were we were very concerned about the fact that something similar had happened and it would be important for us to find out the location quickly of where the money had been transported to and where the van was in that particular case in jacksonville they had used a storage facility so it was an idea too that we would be looking for a storage facility similar to that in the jacksonville florida heist the thief stashed the money in north carolina [Music] thinking gant may have copied his fellow employee fbi agents check public storage facilities they found nothing the fbi hit a dead end it appeared david gandit simply vanished and taken a ton of cash with him the fbi looked back to try and uncover any suspicious activity in and out of the city on the weekend of the heist [Music] this was difficult because charlotte hosted the coca-cola 600 nascar race at the charlotte motor speedway on the weekend the heist occurred well now all of a sudden you've got hundreds of thousands of out of town people not all of whom use their actual identification when they're renting cars or staying at hotels you have to go through this list and decide who's legitimate and has a reason to be there and who might be david scott gantz alias or one of his partners david gantz accomplices if there were any could have been any one of the thousands of people who choked the interstates in and around charlotte on race weekend when not thinking of david gantt as a perpetrator the fbi feared for his safety you've got a missing body and with any missing body you've got to weigh up the possibility that this person is either in danger or may have been killed and then again feeling that more likely than not he would have had accomplices to move that amount of money then the question is he's a known the accomplices aren't unknown what's to stop them from knocking him off the fbi knew they had to find david gant before his accomplices did but they didn't even know where to look late monday afternoon two days after gantt disappeared authorities finally got a break [Applause] a man cutting grass discovered the unmarked loomis van it was in the woods less than 10 miles from the loomis warehouse the van was locked inside here loomis still hadn't found the stolen keys so the fbi had to tow it to their processing center and wait for a locksmith to break it open inside they were shocked to find the van held a considerable amount of cash agents counted the small denomination bills ganted left behind it totaled a not insignificant 3.3 million dollars also in the van where the two missing surveillance tapes from the loomis security office gantt's loomis-issued pistol and both sets of vault keys [Music] the fbi could only guess as to why over three million dollars had been abandoned perhaps the thieves got scared or maybe they ran out of time or physical space to put the money or the energy to move it [Music] as for the videotapes the fbi tried to read the evidence you find the videotapes in the vein you say to yourself okay we left one behind at the loomis facility and that could have been a mistake but this obviously was not a mistake so who's trying to tell us what is david gantt telling us here's the videotapes i did it good luck trying to catch me or is it his partner saying david gantt did it you need to go find him to steer us away from whoever these unknown partners were the fbi had indeed found the missing van and some of the missing loomis money but they were no closer to finding david gant or his suspected accomplices and 14 million dollars was still out there somewhere charlotte north carolina is one of the east coast's fastest growing centers of banking on any given day hundreds of millions of dollars passed through the charlotte area in october of 1997 loomis fargo employee david gantt took some of those millions for himself he walked out of the charlotte loomis fargo office with 17 million dollars and disappeared [Music] the fbi suspected that gantt hadn't acted alone but they couldn't be sure [Applause] gant simply vanished and his accomplices if he had any were completely unknown the fbi hoped that some clue of his whereabouts would surface as they looked into his background the charlotte agents compiled lists of loomis employees to be interviewed past and present they started by talking with gantt's supervisor and the trainee who worked with him the night of the heist the trainee told him david sent him home at the end of his shift and locked up the vault himself gantt supervisor told the fbi gant worked at loomis for several years and was an average employee he'd been working a lot of overtime and had recently been promoted to vault supervisor it was a job he didn't perform very well david left some cash unattended and had been reprimanded severely he was nearly fired [Music] in an effort to learn if gant had any accomplices the fbi broadened their search and interviewed anyone who had come in contact with david gantt before the heist special agent in charge william perry we weren't really looking for what type of person had done the heist because we knew the person that did the heist it was mr gant who his accomplices were was was the challenge for us typically in something like that it's a matter of elimination of people that we can that we can identify that know him from his past that were fellow employees friends social acquaintances relatives or otherwise the fbi spoke with over a hundred people in two days looking for anything that might lead them to gant's accomplices or give them some clue as to why he pulled this heist agent dick wumble kept in touch with gantt's family thinking he might contact them they have not heard from him they're still leaning towards the theory that david was forced to do this the picture we were getting from the family it does not seem to fit the profile of somebody that's going to take 17 million dollars by himself and have a plan and of action and a destination to go to [Music] while his family still thought it was impossible that david gant could have orchestrated a plan to steal 17 million dollars agent john wydra began looking into gantt's background this is a man who'd never been in trouble with the law was honorably discharged from the military worked overtime on a regular basis from all outward appearances would not be a willing participant in this type of crime yet we had video from several different security cameras showing him spending over an hour loading this van so you know our first thoughts were was he put up to it you know was somebody out there was what was his motivations for doing this [Music] agents started to track david gantt'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 uncover the name of an accomplice or some lead [Music] but they came up empty [Music] the fbi started digging deeper into david gantt's past they talked with his old army buddies no one offered any real leads after hundreds of interviews the fbi was left with conflicting information about david gantt what we uncovered about david scott gantt is that he had two very different personas two very different lifestyles on one hand he would be described as a hard worker a conscientious worker proud of his job on the other hand he would be described as a disgruntled worker who felt that he was better than the job and that he was ready to move on in his personal life on one hand we got a description of a very church going family man on the other hand we heard of a person who wasn't happy with the fact that the purse strings were controlled by his wife that he was not allowed to smoke within his own house and that there were some things that were building inside of him both personally and professionally as far as the pressure goes in that he was ready to bust mostly gantt's friends were shocked he pulled it off it seemed no one from his old army buddies to his wife gave him enough credit to have planned and executed such a big heist still the fbi did have him on tape emptying the vault many of the people who knew david cant characterized him as a loner some did mention that the one person he seemed close to was a fellow worker named kelly campbell kelly worked with david at loomis for several years but she quit about a year before the heist while at loomis her fellow employees reported the two of them spent a lot of time together the fbi also learned they met occasionally after work [Music] agents paid a visit to kelly campbell she told them she didn't know anything about the heist and denied she was ever close to david gant the interesting thing with kelly campbell is that you had these external people saying that they were close that they were good friends that they would have lunch together and that even after she had left loomis fargo they stayed in contact but that's not what kelly campbell told us she painted a different picture that they weren't all that particularly close and that they really hadn't maintained much of any contact since she had left we had an obvious discrepancy here and we had some doubts about the truthfulness of kelly campbell [Applause] despite their doubts about kelly campbell the fbi had no information they could act on the agents turned their attention to gantt's phone records hoping they might offer a concrete lead they found that several phone calls had been made the night of the heist from inside loomis to david gantt's cell phone [Music] since gantt was seen inside taking the money he was calling someone on the outside to whom he loaned his cell phone gant's pager records showed he received a series of numeric pages from his cell phone on the night of the heist three digits were repeatedly entered into his pager one four three agents had no idea what it meant but it seemed to confirm that gantt did not act alone the agent surmised that whoever was on the other end of those phone calls must have been involved on a saturday evening exactly one week after the robbery a room full of fbi agents gathered they were prepared to receive numerous hot tips after gantt's picture aired on america's most wanted we were counting on that show to spread beyond our immediate viewing area in case the partners or organt were in another part of the country due to extended coverage of tonight's baseball game america's most wanted will not be seen on the east coast and what had happened was in the initial airing of the show it got preempted by a baseball playoff game so we were all on standby waiting for this massive influx of telephone information that was going to set us in the right direction and it just did not come after one week 14 million dollars was unaccounted for and the fbi had few leads they had no idea where david gant had gone and as time went by the less likely it seemed they would ever find him for the money as time went on the charlotte fbi continued to keep the loomis fargo heist in the news on the radio this morning with schaefer and the eggman at oldies radio magic 96.1 here in charlotte more news coming out they found that van how about that they got the van now they're looking for the driver and loomis fargo has posted a reward right liz a couple of days ago the stolen loomis man that was used in the robbery was found abandoned david gant is still on the run he still eludes police loomis fargo offered a 500 000 reward for any information the leads began to pour into the fbi offices agents set up a special database for storing and sorting the growing number of tips anyone who suspected anyone of having money or spending money that they shouldn't have contacted us and then we would have to go back out and check on all these calls calls came into the fbi offices day and night this is the fbi charlotte field office at the sound of the tone leave a message uh hello yeah um i know this guy eric payne and you might want to check him out he's been spending a lot of cash lately he's been having these really big yeah the fbi got the first tip they could use an informant reported that shortly after the heist a man named eric payne was spending a lot of money at first the fbi thought payne might be an alias for gant they couldn't find a connection to gant but did learn he paid off a credit card bought a harley a chevy tahoe and first class airline tickets and took an expensive vacation this was a tip that seemed worth checking out when it came in eric payne was on vacation [Music] the fbi paid a visit to his workplace and interviewed his co-worker payne's co-workers confirmed his lavish spending the fbi learned he had been enjoying the high life lately and partying a lot he even bought breast enlargements for his two sisters his wife not only got new breasts she also got a new nose pain told everyone he'd inherited the cash the key information surrounding eric payne was that he worked at reynolds and reynolds graphics company which was interestingly just across the street from where the loomis van was found typically what you find with crimes are that people go to where they're comfortable so when you find the van being recovered and you find the name eric payne you say to yourself again is this coincidental that you've got someone who's spending money whose alibi is somewhat shaky and yet we've also got this van found in an open field behind the workplace the fbi followed up on eric's purchases and found he financed the chevy tahoe but made his down payment in 20s not wanting to alert him of their suspicions the fbi decided to wait until he returned from his vacation to speak with him as the charlotte fbi was gathering leads some suspicious activity was also going on in nearby gaston county just a few miles from charlotte the gaston county police were working on a narcotics investigation when a reliable informant told them a man had just purchased a six hundred thousand dollar home and paid cash sergeant rome of the gaston county police identified the man as steve chambers and began an extensive background check on steve and his wife michelle sergeant rome learned steve chambers was making purchases all over town in the last few weeks he had paid cash for a truck and a bmw roadster so when you start putting them all together a large number of cash purchases large cash transactions and everything there's got to be a source of the funds and based on the information that i was able to obtain on the chambers finances and everything two and two didn't add up to the gaston county police it seemed highly probable this was illegal drug money rather than loomis cash still the police started keeping a close eye on the chambers in the weeks following the heist information about the chamber's irregular spending habits started pouring in the local investigation into the chamber's activities had begun to require more attention than most of sergeant rome's ongoing cases for the gaston county police it was real foolish on their part on the way they actually went about spreading the cash around and flaunting the cash because within just a short period eight different informants contacted me about their involvement as far as transactions that they had tried to accomplish or actually had carried out the home steve and michelle chambers bought was in the small town of kramerton just a 15-minute drive from downtown charlotte with a little over 2500 residents this bedroom community covers three square miles the town is in the guinness book of world records for the shortest main street which is only 75 feet long [Music] the town also is home to an exclusive gated community called kramer mountain as soon as the chambers moved in the police in kramerton started to get some strange information about their newest residents chief david young heads the nine-man cramerton police force the comments were these people were living in a manufactured home six weeks ago and now they they have all this newfound wealth and apparently neither of them had really had a steady job in two years so they they go from unemployed living in a mobile home to having more money than they can spend [Music] the chambers moved into their exclusive home a few weeks after the loomis fargo heist steve's wife michelle told anyone who would listen that her husband was a retired pro football player who scored big while gambling in atlantic city she also added that he was selling some laundromats in texas [Music] none of this made much sense but people were willing to listen and accept the chamber's money [Music] michelle paid for everything with packets of cash mostly 20s [Music] one person to whom the chamber stories didn't ring true was kramerton's mayor cassie biles who lived a few doors down from their new home everyone was under the impression that he was a retired dallas cowboys football player though none of the men in our neighborhood had ever heard of his name and they just stayed to themselves they were very different than the other folks in the neighborhood mayor biles wasn't the only one who thought the chamber's stories were a bit suspicious cramerton police chief david young decided to call mark rossi at the charlotte fbi rozzi told chief young the fbi was beginning to suspect the chambers in the loomis heist [Music] chief young's tip was one of hundreds that were flooding the fbi the agents had to sort through hundreds of tips and determine which were important and which were not steve chambers clearly was beginning to generate a lot of heat the fbi focused much of their attention apart from being an ex-professional football player steve chambers was a small-time crook a bookie fence and sometimes drug dealer who claimed to have mafia ties he had been arrested for passing bad checks a report came back to the police that chambers had caused a disturbance at a local bar and been thrown out furious he offered to buy the club for 400 000 in cash chambers conspicuous spending was certainly raising suspicions but the fbi had no way of proving he was spending loomis money it had been several weeks since david gantt loaded 17 million dollars in unmarked bills into a company van and drove out of a charlotte loomis fargo warehouse and vanished the fbi was searching for david gantt and his accomplices by monitoring the hundreds of reports of suspicious spending in and around charlotte agents were also checking bank records to try and track any suspicious cash transactions this was a time-consuming task according to fbi agent john wydrow [Music] in terms of cash transaction reports those get filed by businesses immediately but it goes up to washington then it's funnel back down to us along with everybody else's reports that have no pertinence to this case and we have to filter through literally thousands of those documents to determine which ones are pertinent sorting through the thousands of reports took weeks it was painstaking work especially when the agents weren't certain what they were looking for but all the hard work paid off when the fbi discovered two suspicious activities reports these have been filed earlier by bank tellers who reported certain unusual cash transactions made by none other than michelle chambers on the monday after the robbery michelle walked into a nation's bank branch flashed a briefcase full of cash and asked how much she could deposit before she had to sign any paperwork she made a point to assure the teller it wasn't drug money by asking about paperwork michelle got the very thing she didn't want her conversation with the teller generated a suspicious activity report while this was helpful information and certainly cast further suspicion on the chambers it didn't tie them to the loomis money the fbi began to take a much closer look at steve and michelle chambers one of the things that the surveillance led us to was both steve and michelle chambers going into banks making fairly substantial cash deposits acquiring safe deposit boxes agents started round the clock surveillance but in a small town it was difficult to keep surveillance a secret kramerton police chief david young in a small town any vehicle that's not normally seen in a neighborhood becomes a suspicious vehicle i think that was probably one of the biggest problems we had 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 chief young not only had to cover the fbi's activities to chambers neighbors but also to the mayor i would come down my driveway to head in to town hall for the day and i would see a car sitting there with two men in it and first of all the car didn't belong there and secondly for two men to be sitting in a car in the morning wouldn't make sense and i would say to david our police chief there's there's a car at the base of my driveway and he would say you know yes he knew about that and they had it under control and the cars would be there you know in the wee hours of the morning and at night just very peculiar times the fbi did not limit their surveillance to the land they also took to the air employing small planes to ensure they didn't lose the chambers when they were on the move [Music] the planes drew a lot of attention chief young continued to get calls not only are we dealing with reports of suspicious vehicles now we got to come up with some reason for a a plane flying low in the area [Music] as all this surveillance raised the suspicions of the residents of kramerton the fbi's main concern was that steve and michelle chambers might learn they were the ones under suspicion [Music] the fbi's fears were unfounded it seems steve and michelle were the only people in town who hadn't noticed someone was watching them two months after the heist as christmas approached the chambers oblivious to all the police activity continued their spending spree the fbi learned the couple bought a truck for michelle's stepfather steve chambers presented his wife with an early christmas present a three and a half carat diamond ring purchased for 43 000 in cash [Music] while the chamber spending was reaching bizarre levels the fbi still couldn't prove they were spending the stolen loomis cash [Music] nor could agents connect chambers to david gantt [Music] as the holidays progressed neither gantt's wife or his family heard from him as investigators struggled to find his accomplices david gantt's family began to fear the worst it had been over two months since their last contact with david the fbi kept in touch with him but it seemed david gant truly had disappeared [Music] after the holidays the chambers continued to spend and all the fbi could do was watch they feared if they got too close the chambers would become suspicious steve chambers made a particularly difficult target he kept a very close circle of friends he didn't talk outside his friends or family he never uh he'd never go out drinking with anybody or out to dinner or hang out with somebody he hadn't known for years so it was a matter of literally getting uh yearbooks and uh trying to figure out where these two could have crossed paths in the past or um where they were going together now one of the people the fbi found in steve chambers yearbooks was david gantt's friend kelly campbell the fbi paid another visit to kelly of all the people originally interviewed after the heist only kelly campbell refused to take a polygraph test [Music] they wanted her to take the test hoping that she could help them make the link between campbell and the chambers hello or lead them to david gantt kelly campbell wanted no part of special agent wandel or myself we sat down with her and we tried to address her in such a way that a concerned friend would want to assist the fbi in trying to locate a friend of theirs david gant she had no interest in assisting us in locating david scott gantt in fact she cut the interview very short she was very nervous during this interview her pager went off her cell phone went off and it just was not a typical interview kelly campbell's second interview was so odd that it only served to further raise the agent's suspicion she continued to deny she was close to david but the agents were not convinced all the agents had were their suspicions what you have is out of the thousands of calls and the thousands of leads and the thousands of names you start having a couple of names rise to the top you've got again kelly campbell who her version of a relationship with david gantt does not match with anyone else's you've got the pains who've made some acquisitions that we can't account for and also the fact that he works where a crucial piece of evidence has been found and you've got the chambers who have recently spent a vast amount of money that we can't exactly account for and the question becomes how are they all connected how are they all connected to david scott gant the agents had several suspects but they had no evidence to conclusively link the money to loomis fargo or the suspects to one another their biggest problem was that after investigating the heist for three months the only man they knew was involved in the heist still eluded with no idea where david gant had gone the fbi continued to watch the chambers with a new home new cars new tanning beds and more home furnishings than they knew what to do with things continued to look up for steve and michelle chambers going into 1998 had the chambers themselves thought to look up they would have seen the fbi looking back but they never did [Music] across from the gastonia steve courthouse michelle bought the furniture discount center neither steve or michelle had held a steady job for the past two years but they bought their way into the furniture business they re-christened their new store m s furniture gallery after themselves [Music] three months after the heist the chamber's out of control spending gave the fbi a huge break the observed michelle chambers and kelly campbell at the furniture store together campbell was driving a brand new minivan by tracing the license plate number on the van agents identified the registered owner as a known alias of steve chambers the fbi finally connected kelly campbell to steve chambers [Music] their investigation was beginning to take shape as the fbi continued to watch all over the charlotte area the chamber's spending continued at a dizzying pace i'm sorry and so did the deposits michelle chambers was becoming well known at all the banks around suburban charlotte and to the fbi agent john wydra she was the money person she was the one making the deposits at the bank she was the home decorator she was trying to put this new life that they had built for themselves together and hold themselves out as legitimate business people as people that could fit in with individuals who had that type of money legitimately in late january 1998 she made an 8 000 deposit that gave the fbi the evidence they had been seeking from the beginning fbi agents were surveilling a bank when michelle chambers walked in to make a deposit [Music] the agents watched as she handed the teller packets of cash wrapped in moneybands one of them was from loomis this was the first evidence that tied the chamber's wealth directly to loomis fargo even better the money ban still bore the handwritten initials of a loomis employee [Music] that wrapper was taken immediately to loomis fargo where we received samples of all initials people who with initial bank bans at the loomis fargo facility and there were only five that were there at the time that the robbery had happened and 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 tied that money to loomis fargo prior to the robbery michelle's previous banking gaffe had been fruitful for the authorities but this one finally linked the chambers with the stolen cash the fbi felt it was still too early to make arrests the robber the accomplices and the cash still had to be discovered agents had to decide what to do with his newfound information do we go ahead make the arrest take them down for what we had the money laundering charges etc and hope that they would lead us to the remaining money in david scott gant or do we hold tight and the decision was made let's hold on just a little longer and hope that we get that one piece of information that'll lead us to david scott camp the fbi would wait on the arrests and the hopes the gang would tip them off as to gans whereabouts now that they could tie the gang to the luma's money the fbi had enough evidence to get warrants to search all the players houses [Music] but the fbi couldn't be certain they would find the evidence they needed they feared if subpoenaed before a grand jury the suspects might lie or invoke the fifth amendment and then go out to cover their tracks a judge agreed with the fbi's concerns on february 10th he authorized a tap on the chamber's phone [Music] the fbi got permission to place taps anywhere they thought steve and michelle might be talking he began to listen in on all the chambers business transactions at their furniture store [Music] with the wiretaps in place the fbi settled in to begin monitoring the gang's phone conversation take it easy we've got to lie the fbi heard anything and everything what does he want the gang was speaking of business and their plans to spend money but they weren't speaking about the heist chambers made phone calls about setting up a 2.5 million dollar bank account in the cayman islands he discussed hiring a man named mike mckinney as a bodyguard for 400 a week plus an apartment yeah yeah that's him campbell talked about putting on some weight and wanting liposuction [Music] for the fbi most of the talk was useless we were getting at the critical stage in the wiretap where you can only do that for so long showing you're trying to gather a certain amount of evidence and then you have to break it off and we were just about at that point to make the decision to let's round up who we know and what we know about them and hope that they'll lead us to david scott can't it's at that point that we get the break or kelly campbell tells steve chambers guess who i just heard from the fbi heard kelly campbell tell steve chambers that she had received a page from david gantt [Music] this was the first evidence the fbi had gant was still alive and was working with campbell in the chambers the fbi wanted to capture his voice on tape kelly and david set up a system where david would send a coded numeric page to kelly telling her where and when he would call her [Music] campbell told chambers when the two were supposed to speak next at the time when david gent arranged to speak with kelly campbell the fbi was in place ready and waiting but kelly wasn't surveillance leads us to a pay phone where kelly is supposed to be receiving an incoming call from david gant [Music] we're all standing by we've gotten the legal authority to intercept that phone call and kelly campbell simply does not show after months of watching and waiting it seemed the fbi's most pressing question would go unanswered after months of monitoring kelly campbell and steve chambers the fbi was waiting to hear david gantt's voice and confirm that he was still alive as agents waited to listen in on a pre-arranged phone call between gantt and campbell the serious complication arrows when it rang and she was nowhere to be found we went ahead and picked up the phone just to see who was on the other end [Music] and we're able to capture that voice on the other end and we knew we had david scott came at the other end of that phone [Music] the fbi finally had a voice on tape and confirmed it was david gantz they now knew he was alive but didn't know where he was he hung up before the call could be traced hearing his voice gave the agents enough information to extend their phone taps they would simply have to wait and see if the gang would lead them to david gantt [Music] the next time david gant paged kelly campbell she immediately called steve chambers i've heard from them again the fbi was listening to their conversation kelly told steve she was afraid gant would ask for more money agents were surprised to learn that gandet apparently run out of cash and desperately needed kelly to send him some the agents listening in couldn't imagine how a man who stole 17 million dollars could have run out of cash unless the money was still in the charlotte area [Music] steve chambers told kelly they 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 so they could discuss how to proceed when kelly arrived at the store the fbi had an agent inside steve told kelly that gantt's request for money had to stop keep waiting for you guys cause no problem now he told her it was time to put their plan to kill gantt into action we can tell them we're going to send him some more was the only one who could tie them to the money if he was gone they would be free and clear i'm done causing a problem chambers said mike mckinney had been in place for months ready to take care of gant but they had one problem although kelly was talking to david on the phone no one knew where he was chambers pressured kelly when gant called again to find out where he was staying look i gotta have some more money when david called kelly she knew what she had to do david told kelly he loved her and he couldn't wait for her to join him [Music] he told her he was in cozumel mexico the fbi finally had the information they sought david gantt had been hiding south of the border since the heist now like the fbi kelly also knew where he was she told him someone would deliver more money and he should stay where he was and wait for it with that she appeared to seal david gant's fate from the time the fbi overheard steve chambers talking about hiring mike mckinney the fbi had been keeping a close eye on him they got a break when they heard chambers ask mckinney to meet him in a hotel room outside charlotte film a couple bucks when the two men met the fbi was waiting they heard chambers arranged for mckinney to take a few guys with him down to mexico to finish off david gantt the fbi had to move fast in a few days someone would be coming to kill gantt he's still our prime suspect he's the one who's removed the money and we want him back now we're armed with the information that there is a plot to take his life and with that information it's our job first and foremost to protect him and intercept those folks before they can have him killed [Music] on sunday morning march 1 1998 five months after the loomis fargo heist three agents checked into a mexican hotel they had come to get david gant five months after the loomis fargo heist the fbi finally identified the key players and they had located david gantt they were now in a deadly race against gantt's accomplices to find him before they did [Music] just days after steve chambers ordered gantt's murder three men approached him [Music] one asked to see his identification please tell me you're an fbi agent david gantt knew it was over and he says to me please tell me you're an fbi agent and i said i am and the next thing he said to me was we really need to talk and i said yes we do and then he told me i'm really glad to see you and i told him that i was glad to see him also and that was it he was quietly arrested 24 hours after the arrest on the day david gant's accomplice has planned to have him killed he was on a flight back to charlotte north carolina now that gantt was in custody the fbi was able to piece together how the gang pulled off the heist david gantt worked at loomis fargo for several years it was here where he first met kelly campbell the two hit it off gantt was from the same working-class stock but working around all that money was not a job david gant enjoyed actually money smells it sticks it's got the ink smell um and when you spend 12 14 hours a day with it and you're in every bank in charlotte huh it's a boring job david's wife tammy kept him on a strict budget each week they barely had enough money for food let alone life's little luxuries [Music] meanwhile kelly and david met occasionally outside work in one of these meetings kelly had a question for david she asked him what he would think if they robbed loomis she told him he would be the perfect person to pull off the heist and if he did he could finally live the way he always wanted she told him she had a friend who could help hide the money and help gantt get away the three of them could split the money three ways as an ex-employee kelly guessed they could take about four million dollars apiece [Music] she hinted with all that money she and david could live together any way they wanted i was kind of shocked i thought she was just playing with me um and then i started thinking about kind of serious and then one day in september gantt became very serious when he realized it would take 30 years of monthly payments to zero out his credit card gantt called kelly campbell with his decision yeah i'll do it me and my wife would run up some bills and we were kind of tight financially and the idea just appealed to me over the next few weeks ghant finally began paying close attention to how loomis operated he started to pick apart their security system and target the weakest links mainly their lack of manpower their physical security was actually real good it was just they didn't have enough people to cover all the spots and that left me with all the keys by myself which know 17 million dollars who wouldn't go really it seemed again that if he chose a weekend when he was closing the vault himself he could probably walk away with nearly 17 million dollars taking the money would be easy getting away would be difficult he began to study and he discussed everything with kelly he read up on the fbi and learned that most investigations center around the area of the crime and then spread outwards they come at every crime pretty much the same way and especially robberies they look at the airports and the train stations and the bus stations and they make a little bubble around the crime and if they don't really find you right there they're at zero so that buys you some time so my plan was for for us to just get out of that bubble [Music] gantt realized that after the heist he would have to get as far away from charlotte as he could sure that meant he would need a fake passport and a way out of the country [Music] while gant was doing his homework steve chambers became the real mastermind behind the plan gant never met her spoke to chambers he didn't even know his name that way they couldn't implicate each other should they get caught chambers relayed information to gantt through kelly campbell he made all the arrangements for after the robbery including assembling the gang he recruited his cousin scott grant and high school pal eric payne for one hundred thousand dollars apiece to help hide the money chambers also took care of getting gantt out of the country he paid a man fifty thousand dollars for his birth certificate to create a false id for gantt [Music] with a simple plan in place david gantt learned on saturday october 4th 1997 he was scheduled to close the loomis facility by himself this was the day early that morning david gantt kissed his sleeping wife goodbye took a last look at his mobile home and left for work knowing that he wouldn't be returning to night or anytime soon severing ties with with your family and your wife um that's probably the hardest thing to do but i don't know how to explain it you realize it well maybe in four or five years i can contact them but you know you're only lying to yourself about that you know you can't come back [Music] david gantt went about his business at loomis as he had every other day he had worked there later that afternoon the gang assembled to wait for david gantt campbell used david gantt's cell phone to call him at loomis and set up a meeting time the plan required can't be alone at loomis after the last truck came in he was going to load the cash into a company van and then drive out of loomis around five o'clock p.m when gant responded to kelly's page he told her two obstacles stood in their way one he couldn't be ready with the cash until 6 30 or 7 that evening after the last truck returned two gantt found out he would be breaking in a new trainee today the gang would have to spend a few anxious hours waiting for david to try and get the warehouse to himself [Music] after the last truck rolled in nearly 30 minutes later than expected [Music] gant and the new trainee were the only two people in the loomis warehouse gantt played on the trainee's inexperience [Music] i just went through the motions of closing down the ball he thought i locked the ball and he was tired and when i told him to go he got right in his car and left all right i'm out of here man after the trainee drove off david gent had to face his own moment of truth i'm not sure if i've got the guts to do it because i know as soon as i put that first dollar in that van i can't go back if i steal one dollar i've got to steal them all david gantt decided to steal them all he took a moment to pause and gaze at his future lying before him in deceptively neat green stacks then he got to work steve chamber's friend eric payne drove a rented van to the parking lot at reynolds and reynolds the printing company where he worked the plant was closed for the night and the lot wasn't visible from the street he would wait for gantt and the others to arrive with the cash [Music] steve chambers scott grant and kelly campbell parked across the street from the one-story brick loomis warehouse where they would wait until gantt appeared in a cash-heavy loomis van [Music] back inside gantt lifted pallets of shrink-wrapped cash packeted in loomis wrappers to a white company van 15 feet away his every move was caught on tape [Music] outside loomis across the street chambers was getting nervous because gantt was already running late kelly kept calling every few minutes and paging him with the 143 code it meant i love you each number representing the number of letters in each word it was not a sophisticated code as the fbi had suspected [Music] inside david was beginning to feel the pressure and kelly's repeated pages only served to make him nervous i gotta go you're gonna lay off for a while at about 7 45 nearly an hour later than originally planned gantt couldn't fit another brick of money inside the vehicle he had packed ford's biggest van with literally a ton of cash [Music] gant removed the tapes from two video recorders locked in a cabinet in the security room he didn't know about the third recorder [Music] after months of planning and several nervous hours emptying the vault david gantt was ready to make his drive to freedom but he couldn't get out of the gate gant didn't know who this good samaritan was he was afraid he had been caught until he looked across the street saw campbell's truck and realized this must be an accomplice david had thought only he kelly and her unnamed friend were in on the plan this was an unpleasant surprise but he would have to worry about that later [Music] after many frustrating delays david gent was finally if momentarily a rich man driving a ton of money in that particular van it was a great feeling i mean the ride wasn't very good but it was a great feeling um it's probably one of the best drives i've ever taken in my life i'm driving along thinking i've done it i'm going to be famous you know these people will freak out tomorrow but in just a few minutes his euphoria ended i'm sitting at a light and i look across when i see this uh charlotte neck police god they already know so i decided to smoke me a cigarette calm myself down i'm shaking too bad like a cigarette sitting there thinking dave you gotta be calm after months of planning david gantt's simple plan seemed as if it would come to a simple end loomis fargo vault supervisor david gantt had just driven out of his company's warehouse in a van stuffed with millions of dollars it seemed just as he was about to begin his life as a millionaire fortune was not on his side then his luck changed and he went on his way the police didn't follow it seemed they hadn't heard of the heist gant was in the clear he then pulled into the reynolds and reynolds parking lot with the gang following right behind as he got out of the van yet another stranger approached i'm with you all right come on give me the key eric payne assured him it was okay he was with the gang gant handed off the key to the loomis van [Music] gant and campbell drove off but what they left behind was a major problem the key to the van was on an 8-inch ring with about 200 others in all the excitement someone lost track of exactly which key opened the loomis van did or not settling in for the ride to columbia airport in south carolina and unaware of the chaos they left behind david and kelly were excited they actually pulled it off of the millions david had taken from loomis fargo he only took 30 thousand dollars to start his new life but for all his meticulous planning he didn't give any thought to how he would carry it aboard the plane kelly had a quick solution they pulled into a convenience store and she bought a pair of pantyhose which she cut up and stuffed with money it was quick thinking on her part but thinking wasn't quite as quick back at the van after unsuccessful efforts to find the right key the trio moved on to more desperate methods of trying to open the van apparently it didn't occur that armored vans have bulletproof glass while chambers and company struggled to get the money david gantt was wearing his back at the van the gang held the key to their future in their hands but they still didn't know which one [Music] chambers and his accomplices froze in awe at the sight of so much money though they didn't yet know how much they had come on let's get the barrels chambers brought three blue barrels to carry the cash but was the barrels filled to the brim the trio had to leave behind the packets of one and five dollar bills they headed off to ditch the van and hide the money at the columbia airport kelly and david encountered their own problems because his plan didn't include making plane reservations gant and campbell learned only upon arriving at columbia airport that there were no flights to mexico it's all right it's killing kelly phoned steve chambers who told her to send gant to atlanta about 200 miles away okay as the bus pulled out of the columbia bus station david began his life as a fugitive with the hope that kelly would soon join him in mexico [Music] but david's trip to mexico wouldn't be without incident on a layover 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 in computer cells i kind of have a mild panic attack i'm not sure if the news has come out yet because i'm not sure what time it is i said no ma'am i'm not force backer [Music] from the moment gant arrived in cancun mexico he started living it up dining in all the best restaurants alone gant the stranger in a tropical paradise found his reception chilly throughout the carefree months of october 1997 gant's wallet was getting thinner he continued to spend but because he couldn't carry his share of the loot with him to mexico he had to rely on his accomplices to send him the cash he needed by the end of october only a few weeks after the heist gantt's resources were already drying up i called camo i said hey i'm running low on money and you just send me something and i asked for like fifty thousand dollars oh that's not not too bad of a request i mean they've got plenty of money why shouldn't they send me something to deliver gantt's money steve chambers sent mike mckinney who traveled under the name bruno mckinney's orders were to give gantt the cash and keep an eye on him until the gang could find the perfect time to kill him charlotte yeah who are you bruno finally shows up one morning bad been out partying and uh i opened the door and asked me you're looking for some help from charlotte and i go yeah invite him in bruno gave gantt a small packet of money [Music] when gant protested he told him that's all they gave him and it's like eight thousand dollars it's hardly anything and um i called campbell up where's my money i'm i'm suspicious of something now cause i i've asked for one thing and got another adios amigo for the first time it occurred to david gant that he might never see the millions of dollars he thought would be his [Music] but david gantt soon encountered a larger problem he was eating dinner at a restaurant in cancun when a stranger approached and uh he says you know who you look like i'm thinking boris becker he goes you look like that guy that stole like 20 million dollars in north carolina i'm like really i'm i give him a little spiel about how i'm living and been living in mexico for years you know it couldn't be me and inside i'm panicking gant was shaken if people were recognizing him the story of the heist must not be dying down he knew he would have to make some changes [Music] gantt laid low continuing to keep to himself spent his time reading comics and listening to eagle cds [Music] while he was keeping his low profile gantt got some unexpected help hey my name's robert a stranger knocked on his door the man identified himself as robert and told gant 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 you know no man i ain't got nothing to do with that stuff he says well these people want to kill you what's the deal with that instantly i knew that i was never going to see my money and that these people were trying to kill me and now i'd have to change the way i lived robert told gant bruno was working for the people in charlotte and they were putting together a plan to have him killed [Music] they were just waiting for the perfect opportunity but he came to warn him i got two thousand dollars here gant gave robert two thousand dollars to keep quiet [Music] and vowed to himself he wouldn't give them the perfect opportunity if he ever met bruno again it would not be the two of them alone [Music] david's grand plan hadn't worked out as he had expected he was now wanted by the fbi for stealing money that he would likely never see and targeted for death by his accomplices he started staying inside most of the day and coming out only at night afraid for his safety since that life-saving tip from the mysterious robert gantt started changing hotels and using aliases it was at this time the gang lost touch with him [Music] stealing all the money being on the lamb having somebody trying to kill you um it makes you find out what kind of person you are you know do you really have guts um can you really think on your feet look i gotta have some more money while thinking on his feet gant made one mistake he didn't believe kelly was part of the plot to have him killed and when he called her again to ask for money he told her where he was staying i'm in cozumel the gang and the fbi both learned where gant was shortly after that he ran into the fbi he walked out of his hotel one morning and was picked up by agent rozzi now that the fbi had gant in custody they needed the rest of the gang but agent rozzi had a question i just wasn't sure what it was about kelly that was this force that would allow him to commit a crime of this magnitude so the question for david gantt was what is it about kelly obviously there's something there and david's answer to me was if you can believe this i only kissed her once and then he turned and looked at me and said turns out to be a pretty expensive kids kiss doesn't it and obviously it was an expensive kiss when the plane landed in charlotte the fbi knew they had to move quickly to arrest the rest of the gang before they learned gantt was captured on monday march 2 1998 five months after the loomis fargo heist the task force of fbi agents and local police quietly approached the chambers home in the early morning hours when steve chambers came to the door he was told that someone had broken into his furniture store what happened get on the ground get on the ground upstairs agents arrested michelle chambers on the night of the robbery steve chambers had sworn his cohorts to secrecy should they ever get caught on the day of the arrest steve chambers named them all to the fbi as the chambers were being arrested in their mansion kelly campbell was also visited by the fbi the agent searched her home they confiscated anything that might have looked suspicious they took credit cards appliances jewelry and boxes of cash [Music] gang member mike mckinney was arrested in his gastonia north carolina hotel room [Music] stand them up all right get him up get him up all right you have the right to remain silent for his part helping to unload the money eric payne met the same fate agents seized everything stolen money could buy and anything that might have been used in a crime same thing all the items that triggered his co-workers suspicions about his wild spending were confiscated including his chevy tahoe the fbi recovered well over a million dollars in cash from the gang's private homes of course the most cash the most jewelry the most everything came from the chambers palace 720 000 in cash and 460 different items all of it carried out of the house by federal agents [Music] the neighbors including kramerton mayor kathy biles now understood the suspicious looking cars and strangers around the neighborhood over the past months i was shocked when i found out it was one of those very surreal moments where you start piecing everything together that had happened since the loomis fargo story had first come out and then you start thinking about all the times you've seen the chambers and what they were like and how the money had revealed itself in their lives as neighbors looked on they could see the fbi using money counting machines for two full days inside the house [Music] agents found cash in desk drawers a shoe box in michelle's closet a blue barrel from the night of the robbery in the basement [Music] the chambers had once borrowed a shovel from a neighbor leading the fbi to believe that maybe there was money buried in the backyard [Music] ironically none of the six accused had enough money to hire their own attorney they were appointed counsel by the court and held without bond until their hearing in the courthouse as kelly campbell and david gant were waiting for their hearing they had a moment to talk thinking back on all that had happened kelly began to regret betraying her friend [Music] she apologized to david but it was too late david gant at that time believed he was in love kelly campbell at that time wanted wanted the money and that was pretty consistent throughout the investigation david gam believed he was going to live with her for the rest of his days on a beach somewhere with his third of the money and her third of the money kelly campbell i don't believe ever had any intentions of leaving this country a total of nearly 10 million dollars was recovered from 24 different safe deposit boxes that chambers paid his friends and relatives to set up on his behalf in all there were 21 defendants 20 pleaded guilty only one pled not guilty attorney jeffrey guller who was convicted by a jury for money laundering [Music] united states attorney for the western district of north carolina mark callaway gives credit where it is due in the end we indicted 21 people 20 of those people pled guilty the one that went to trial was convicted and i think that stands to show that the fbi did a terrific job in investigating the case eric payne who helped hide the money was sentenced to six and a half years for ditching the van scott grant was sentenced to four years and seven months michelle chambers received seven years eight months her husband steve received 11 years three months [Music] for the planned hit on david gantt mike mckinney received 11 years six months for charges including conspiracy to commit murder because she cooperated with authorities kelly campbell received five years in 10 months the lightest sentence of all the principal defendants she is currently serving time in the federal prison camp in alderson west virginia well i thought with all the money that life would just be so much simpler that all my problems would go away and i wouldn't have to worry about anything but in reality it just more or less caused more problems because of the way that it was obtained [Music] david gantt received seven years six months in prison he is now serving his time in the federal correctional institution in butner north carolina to my family you know i cause them a lot of grief there are still you know kind of touchy moments with me and my family um and it was too much for my wife she divorced me about uh about a month ago now this heist cost david gantt everything yet he remains undaunted well now that i've been sentenced would i do it again yeah um opportunity like that comes around once in a lifetime and now that i'm already in prison and been judged and everything i can be more honest and say sure the gang members were ordered to pay millions of dollars in restitution this is money they will likely be paying for the rest of their lives for the fbi it was a relief to know they had captured the loomis gang this was not an easy case to wrap up in a nice neat bundle at all and there was a pressure that we put on ourselves a lot we wanted it all we wanted david gantt back safe and sound we wanted all the people responsible all the people that participated and we wanted the money in the end the fbi got it all to agent john wydra it seemed the gang hadn't fully thought their crime through i don't think they were thinking um that they could get away with it they were looking at uh the end result they were looking at you know being millionaires on a beach the way everybody daydreams and they weren't thinking of the consequences at all the gang lost everything every item they bought with the loomis cash was confiscated by the fbi in february of 1999 over five thousand people turned out for an auction of over one thousand items bought with money from the heist michelle's convertible bmw and a velvet elvis were among the souvenirs that went to the highest bidders [Music] the proceeds of about 360 thousand dollars went to lloyds of london loomis fargo's insurance company [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: FD Crime

Views: 154,438

Keywords: Free documentary, documentary, crime, crime documentary, true crime, true crime documentary, fd crime, documentary (tv genre)

Id: 3iF3Lr-ktoo

Length: 100min 55sec (6055 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 25 2022