to, because he thinks $8 million is on its way. he s getting occasional cash deliveries from a man he knows only as bruno. bruno s real name is michael mckinney, a friend of steven chambers. chambers made mckinney part of the heist gang to transport money to ghantt in mexico, and to get close enough to ghantt so he could kill him. the funds mckinney brings to mexico are usually between $5,000 and $8,000, much less than what ghantt expects. in between delivery, he would find himself having to eat grilled cheese sandwiches. he actually would be holed up in his 40e tell room for fear of getting killed, eating m&ms and listening to the eagles. david ghantt suspected there was a murder plot. all he knew was that kelly campbell wasn t visiting him. every time he called kelly campbell, some guy would come down that he was very uncomfortable and nervous around. and david ghantt became very
vans can pull up inside the building and alongside the vault, so those outside the facility s walls can t see the money being loaded. ghantt backs up an unmarked company van near the vault entrance and opens the vehicle s back door. the idea he was going to take every last cent he could. he reasoned beforehand, it doesn t matter if you re a thief if you take $50,000 or $20 million. it is the act of theft that is going to get you in trouble, as long as there s no violence involved, your sentence is not going to be that different. for more than an hour, ghantt loads stacks of cash in the van. some of the cash is on push carts, but much of it is on the shelves and the floor. the security cameras capture it all, but david ghantt plans to remove the tapes before he leaves. the stacks are heavy, and david
who the fbi now consider a suspect. david, you know that i love you, that your family loves you, my family loves you. we believe that you are the victim here, david, and we stand by you 100%. while ghantt s friends and family members plead for his safe return, the stolen money is taken to steve chambers mobile him in a trailer park in nearby gastonia. imagine sitting on $14 million, and you struggle just buying your groceries, so you think having $14 million is going to be great. you still have a logistical problem of sitting on all this cash. what happens if someone breaks in? what happens if the trailer catches on fire? what happens if there s a problem at home and an ambulance comes or the police knock on the door? you can t hide this. i mean, it s stacked against the walls. chambers recruits several friends and family members to open safety deposit boxes at area banks.
each box filled with 20s would hold anywhere between $600,000 and $800,000. federal agents want to know why david ghantt would risk everything to steal so much money. all because of an unfulfilled love affair with kelly campbell. they got their answer after ghantt is arrested. during his flight from mexico to the united states. the question was, what was it about kelly, and i posed it to david, and he looked at me, and he said, you re not going to believe this, but all it took was just one kiss. and i kind of looked at him. he said, no, really, i ve only kissed that woman one time, and then he hung his head down low and he said, turns out to be a pretty expensive kiss, don t you think? at that point, i couldn t help but smile, because he was exactly right. not only was that a $17 million kiss, but something that was going to cost him the next
the following morning, the fbi moves in and arrests the heist mastermind, steve chambers. they also arrest his wife, michelle, who has a surprise for the agents when they storm into her mansion. steve was already down on the ground being handcuffed by other agents, and michelle was still getting out of bed. at that time, michelle was naked, and that distraction actually caused kind of a danger for us, because right under her pillow, not steve s pillow, was a fully loaded .9 millimeter semiautomatic. also arrested, kelly campbell, the temptress of the plot, and more than 20 others who helped chambers hide the money. the fbi did a very good job on this case. they prevented david ghantt from being killed. they were able to recover the vast majority of the money in a relatively short period of time. took us all week to actually go to the 20 boxes, open them up, what you ll see is just loaded with 20s like we had suspected.