Jeff Diamant - Heist: The Oddball Crew Behind the $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft

Dont double-cross us, the woman on the phone told David Ghantt. Dont back out on us. Steves a serious guy.

David didnt appreciate her tone. Who was she to be pressuring him ? Steve was a serious guy? It was David who was hours away from committing the most daring act of his life, and she was going off about Steve being a serious guy?

He angrily hung up the phone at Loomis, Fargo & Co., his soon-to-be former employer in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was 2:00 p.m. on October 4, 1997, and tension was building between two planners of what would rank high among the largest heists in United States history.

The woman on the phone was Kelly Jane Campbell, and David had a mad crush on her. She had attitude. Spunk. A parrot tattoo on her right ankle. She was five-foot-seven, had dirty-blond hair, and had worked with him for about a year at Loomis Fargo, until she left for another job in 1996. But theyd stayed in touch, and now they were poised to attempt a crime like almost no other.

After hanging up on her, David returned to work. The only other employee with him on this day was a trainee. David was supposed to be showing him the ropes of the job, which included cash pickups and deliveries. Loomis Fargo, the nations largest privately held armored-car company, used vans to transport hundreds of millions of dollars a day belonging to banks and other businesses, stocking automated teller machines and storing money in the Loomis vault between deliveries.

The trainee didnt yet know how the place worked, a fact David planned to use to his advantage. At 2:20 p.m., the phone rang; it was Kelly again. Everythings gonna be all right, she told him. The plan was still on, but David remained steamed. Just remind Steve, he said, that I might be trouble my own self. Getting that off his chest calmed him some, and the conversation returned to the plan.

David said he needed Kelly to drive to Loomis before the theft that night to remove a duffel bag from his parked pickup truck. The bag held his mobile phone and handgun. He added that he would be able to send the trainee home at about 6:00 p.m. and would then need about an hour to load the money from carts, shelves, and the floor into a Loomis company van.

Do you know how much theres gonna be? she asked.

About fourteen or fifteen million dollars, he said.

When they hung up, she called his pager and left the code 1-4-3, beeper-speak for I love you, based on the number of letters in each word.

Kelly had approached David with the idea in the summer, knowing he had a crush on her and winning him over with the promise that a shady friend of hers with Mafia ties would help them. The friend was Steve Chambers, and Kelly said he knew his way around the world of crime. David and Steve had never met, but Steve had already secured somebody elses birth certificate and social security card for him and given it to Kelly to pass along. David and Kelly had driven to Rock Hill, South Carolina, and used the documents to obtain a fake ID that David would also rely on after the theft.