Almost Perfect Crimes: The Audacious Heists That Nearly Got Away

Seventeen point three million dollars. All in cash. That’s how much David Ghantt was trying to cram into the back of a Loomis Fargo van on a warm October night. It’s a different kind of audacity than the teenager we talked about last week, who bluffed his way onto a million miles of free flights. This wasn't a bluff. This was two thousand pounds of stolen currency. And Ghantt was the only person in the vault. He had methodically loaded stacks of twenties into the van, leaving the one- and five-dollar bills behind. He was sweating, not from the effort, but from the sheer, unbelievable reality of what he was doing. He locked the vault door behind him, got in the driver's seat, and simply drove away. For a moment, it was the perfect crime.

The plan was born out of a workplace crush. Ghantt was a quiet, unassuming vault supervisor in Charlotte, North Carolina. An army veteran trusted with the keys to everything. He was also infatuated with a former coworker, Kelly Campbell. After she quit, she introduced him to an old friend of hers, Steve Chambers. Chambers was a small-time crook with big ideas. The three of them started talking. And what began as a joke slowly became a blueprint. Ghantt was the inside man. He would use his key, his knowledge of the security protocols, and his late-night shift to pull off the impossible. He would do the hard part, then take fifty thousand dollars and flee to Cozumel, Mexico. Chambers and his crew would collect the rest of the millions from the van, hide it, and then slowly wire Ghantt his three-million-dollar share.

Ghantt would be a ghost. They would ALL be ghosts. That was the plan. The plan worked. For about a day. The problem wasn't the robbery; it was the robbers. Steve Chambers and his family were supposed to disappear. Instead, they moved from their mobile home into a mansion in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in town. They paid for the house with stacks of cash. His wife, Michelle, walked into a bank and asked a teller how much money she could deposit before it triggered a report to the IRS. Which, of course, triggered an immediate report. They bought a BMW Z3. They bought diamond jewelry. They even bought a large, velvet painting of Elvis Presley. Their spending wasn't just conspicuous; it was a BEACON. The FBI was on to them almost immediately.

Meanwhile, Ghantt was in Mexico, waiting for his money. But Chambers had decided his old partner was now a loose end. He took some of the stolen cash, and hired a hitman to find Ghantt and silence him… permanently. The FBI didn't need a brilliant detective. They just needed a tape recorder. They tapped the Chambers' phones and listened as the crew documented their own downfall. When they overheard Chambers arranging the hit on Ghantt, the investigation went into high gear. They arrested the would-be hitman. They located Ghantt in Playa del Carmen. And in a series of raids, they rounded up Chambers, Campbell, and everyone else involved. They recovered almost all of the money. In the end, the crew who stole seventeen point three million dollars were brought down by a velvet Elvis, a new sports car, and the simple, fatal inability to just lie LOW.

They traded a lifetime of freedom for a few weeks of playing rich. And all that’s left of their spectacular crime is the faint, lingering smell of brand-new money in an empty van.