Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
How He Pulled Off a $17 Million Robbery | The Loomis Fargo Bank Heist
Mon, 25 Nov 2024 17:00:00 GMT
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$17.3 million in cash was robbed from the Charlotte, North Carolina, regional office vault of Loomis, Fargo & Co. on the evening of October 4, 1997. It was later turned into the Hollywood movie Masterminds. Follow me on all socials! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrime Do you want to be a guest? Send me an email here: [email protected] Do you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrime Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8 Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438 The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402 Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1 Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel! Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here: Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69 Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: What happened during the Loomis Fargo bank heist?
I had a pile of money that was about three and a half, four foot tall, nine feet long, and weighed over a ton. The F-250 van that I was loading, the armored van, when I started the back bumper was pretty high up on me. When I was done, it was pretty low. If I do this, I'm going to take enough money so that I won't have to ever come back because I won't be able to.
So you're out of the country before they even know the place has been robbed. I'm eating lunch in Mexico about the time the news breaks.
Loomis was robbed, and these two knuckleheads were living in a double-wide. They just bought a multi-million dollar mansion in this small town with cash. They're driving expensive vehicles, and the guy's a knucklehead, and somehow or another he's come up with all this cash.
Yeah, and they've decided they're going to kill me. Right. He's got a buddy. McKinney, and they're going to hire him. He's going to go down to Mexico and kill me. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I am here with David Gant. David Gant was – he's – should I say bank robber or bank robber or – That's usually the title I end up with.
Yeah, bank robber for Loomis Fargo. One of the largest Loomis Fargo robberies in history. It was $17.5 million. And it was, they say this over and over again, that it was literally a ton of cash. And so we're going to do an interview and I appreciate you guys watching. And so check this out.
Like we were saying, I was saying earlier, I actually, I know I'm recapping all this, but I actually, prior to getting in trouble myself, watched a program on you. And then I watched another one where I think I was incarcerated and And it always reminded me of a story that I wrote in prison. And I kept going back to your story because the story I wrote was very similar to yours.
But it's one of those stories that always stuck in my mind. So when like my booking agent and my girlfriend got in touch with you, I'm sorry, my wife got in touch with you and my booking agent, like I immediately, usually people have to tell me like, I'm like, who is this guy? Can you send me a link? I don't know who that is. He did what? But as soon as they mentioned, no, no, he did this.
I was like, oh, I know exactly who you're talking about. I remember watching a documentary. I was immediately excited. That's why my wife kept texting. I was like, you've got to get this guy to come on here. He's got a great story. So anyway, that's, that's kind of how I knew the whole thing. So basically what I typically do is just start at the beginning.
Like, I'm like, I'm not, we're not in a hurry or anything. So, you know, like where, where were you born?
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Chapter 2: How did David Gant plan the robbery?
Yeah. I'm eating lunch in Mexico about the time the news breaks. So what was the, they were supposed to get you five million? Five million, yes. Okay. And how much did you leave with? Probably about $45,000 or $50,000, thereabouts. Okay. So when did you first see that it was on the news?
I had to, since I was in Mexico, I had to actually kind of dig. And I found, what was it? I found a newsstand they had, might have been the New York, yeah, the New York, Times. And they had, it didn't make the front page, not for them. And I found a little blurb about it. I thought, okay, we're good. I didn't think it was that big of a story. I thought, all right, good.
I mean, I knew the FBI would be after me, but I didn't think that, I was pretty sure they wouldn't go digging into Mexico hard. Right. But it became bigger later, right? Like it didn't when they started looking. Yeah. Okay. And that takes us back to, you know, the van that they left with.
3 million in it I think it was yeah they had an issue moving all there was such a bulk because most of the money was in 20s right yeah so it was such it was so there was so much mass to it that they couldn't move it all yeah and they left like three and a half million in the in the what kills me is that they didn't come back for it yeah like they just left it yeah why would you leave money on the table right exactly why wouldn't you let me go remove the money dump the money that you've got come back no one even knows it's gone yet yeah
Yeah, well, they weren't the brightest. No, they weren't. And to be honest, neither was I, but. Well, you know, I mean, so do you know what the issues were once you were in Mexico? Do you know what the issue, why, you know, why they got onto them so quickly? You were saying you've never really watched any of this stuff.
Well, my guess is this. We live in a small town. If you go from a double wide to a multi-million dollar mansion. And paying cash. Paying cash. And you go from driving a hoopty to driving a beamer. You go from a cubic zirconium to an actual diamond. People notice. And this guy tried to pass himself off as a former professional football player. Right.
I don't know what you know about a lot of football fans and People are rabid fans about their football. They knew he wasn't a cowboy from any season. Yeah. His wife was telling her. So they actually moved from the small town where they were in. They moved to not far from where the Loomis building, where you'd rob the Loomis building. And it was already a little town, but it happened to have a...
this really nice gated community and they bought that house there with cash and when i say with cash i don't mean like you know we typically people will say oh i paid it cash paid for it cash doesn't mean you paid for it in one lump sum with a check it's literally this guy paid in cash so that raised huge red flags oh yeah it would his wife um what was his name again Oh, Chambers. Chambers.
Chambers' wife... Shoot, I thought you were going to know all these or I would have written a list down. So his wife starts trying to launder the money and literally walks into a bank, opens up... a bag of cash and says, how much of this can I deposit before I have to fill out that the paperwork for the government? And the woman says like, you know, well up to 10,000, she goes, okay.
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Chapter 3: What were the challenges faced during the heist?
Send it UPS. Easy peasy. Stick it in a car. They're not stopping cars going into Mexico. You just drive down here. Could have bought a hoopty, an old station wagon, van, whatever. Filled it up. Drove it down. Done deal. Forget about me. But that's not happening. What is happening?
The gist of it is they've had a meeting, and they've decided they're going to kill me. He's got a buddy, McKinney, and they're going to hire him. He's going to go down to Mexico and kill me. Right, and the FBI hears this. The FBI hears this, and that's when they really start looking to figure out exactly where I'm at in Mexico.
Right, because they have a bigger issue now. Yeah. Now it's not, okay, there's some missing money. We can print the money again. There's insurance. There's this and that. Now somebody's going to get killed, and they realize also that there's bigger players involved and more serious players where you were doing something that was nonviolent. You were taking advantage of an opportunity.
These guys are ready to start killing people. They think they're gangsters. I went out of my way to avoid violence. Right. I didn't because, and I know this sounds hypocritical of me, none of that money was worth a drop of human blood. Right. I would have set the money on fire before I would have hurt somebody.
So so what so at what point or do you know that they're obviously there? They've got their their phones tapped and they're listening. Do you know what happened? And how did they the FBI figure out where you were? Um.
I'm not sure exactly, but I'd move down to Cozumel and Playa del Carmen. We're getting towards the end of it. See, that would have been January or so that year. And I'm talking to Kelly Campbell, and I hear a second click after she hangs up. And we'd had a conversation later. Listen, I told her, I told them, your phone's tapped. I heard a second click.
Because that was one of the telltale signs back in the olden days that your phone was tapped. You could hang on just a second, and you'd hear them hang up. It'd go click, and then you'd hear a second click, and the tap would be broken.
Yeah, because the line was still live. It was really like a second person holding the phone in the same room. So they had to wait, and you'd hang up, and then they'd hang up.
Yeah, back then it was very analog. Right. And so now I'm thinking something's not right. And. McKinney had come down to Mexico and had brought me some money, brought me like seven, excuse me, seven, eight thousand bucks, which made me suspicious. The way he acted made me suspicious.
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Chapter 4: How did David escape after the robbery?
Yeah, they had already arrested them, rounded them up. I think they had even got Bruno at the same time.
I want to say, and I don't know this, I do remember, and it's funny because I only watched a few bits and pieces. I'm really remembering this from seeing it 20 years ago. I want to say that... Chambers, they grabbed him and he told them where you were. I could be wrong. I do know that when they grabbed him, he immediately rolled over on everybody. He rolled over like a hard-boiled egg.
Right. So he may have been... He may have told them exactly where you were, for all I know. Or maybe they had been tracing the phones and they had figured out by that point. I don't know. But they grabbed you. Did they bring you to a local police station? Or did they bring you straight to the airport?
No, they brought me... I spent the night with the Mexican federales. And they... we're going to big air quotes here, deport me from Mexico. Okay. And they put me on a airplane flight that just happened to have two FBI agents.
All right. So, okay. So they don't need to extradite you. Um, so you show up back in, did you, where'd you fly into? Um, flew, I think we went straight to Charlotte. Okay. You're processed by the marshals? Marshals right there in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, and they put me on the sixth floor, which is like their version of Max. Okay. Because the story had exploded.
Right. Did they explain to you, hey, these guys, they're going to kill you? Oh, yeah. Me and the FBI agent had a long, long conversation. We actually became friends, oddly. Yeah, he seemed, like, look, I've watched a lot of these. Like, he genuinely seemed to like you. Like, I've never seen one of these where they just didn't have, they had a lot of bad things to say about Chambers.
Mm-hmm.
They had they really portray them as just being bumbling idiots. But he none of the FBI interviews portray you as anything other than just being a nice guy who was frustrated with his situation and saw the opportunity and took it.
Yeah, that's how they and that's not far from wrong. right um i see myself as an opportunist and i think most humans are opportunist if they in the right circumstances in the right circumstances anybody would have done what i did um so so when you come back you have a long conversation with them like what's the conversation what
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Chapter 5: What led to the eventual capture of the robbers?
Yeah, how do you foresee that? And I look back on it in hindsight. If we'd have got that money into a Cayman Bank account, all of it, And he lived off the interest easy. I think the interest would have been $75,000, $80,000 a year. There was no interest. If you put $5 million into, you know, if you put $5 million and lived off of $50,000, you could live for $50,000 in the Cayman Islands.
Yeah.
You might as well be making $300,000. But so... Okay, so what happened with you end up taking a plea? I mean, you can't go to trial. Yeah, that's stupid. Almost no one that goes to federal court, almost everybody takes a plea of some sort.
Yeah, yeah. They've got like a 97% conviction rate. Unless you've got big bucks, you can't fight the government. No. Listen, I always say, look, even if you're guilty, you've got a 50% chance of being found. I mean, even if you're not guilty, you have a 50% chance of being found guilty. Oh, yeah. So what did you end up taking? Let's see. Was it 96 months? It was like just a little over six years.
Okay. Did you take RDAP? Was there an RDAP program, a drug program to knock a year off? I'm not. No. Obviously, you didn't take it. They didn't have it because they told me, oh, there's no drugs in your case. You don't get this. And so I got your standard issue, good time, 85% or whatever. Yeah. And... Did you do all of it?
I did all of it. And I ended up going back because when I got... I realized that the halfway house was just an extortion. Just a way for someone attached to the government to rob you. I basically said... And I went to my hometown, and when we got down to Jacksonville, they arrested me, took me right back to Butner, and I did the last six months in special housing.
Did you get home confinement? I mean, not home, sorry. You got probation, right? Yeah. Supervised release. Yeah. How much supervised release? Two years.
And basically... As soon as I got out, I got a job. And after a while, the probation officer didn't even care to see me. They had so many other basket cases bouncing around that part of Florida that the dude that's showing up and working every day, they weren't even worried about me. Yeah, that's usually how it goes. You don't give them any problems. Yeah, they'll leave you alone.
they got enough guys giving them problems. Um, I was going to say, um, so you got, what, what are you doing now?
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Chapter 6: What was the aftermath of the Loomis Fargo heist?
Uh, I'm a heavy equipment operator for a construction company in Jacksonville. Um, Petticoat Schmidt. I've been there eight years and I've been, uh, in construction for about 15 or 17. Okay. Um, Yeah. So, I mean, okay. So have you ever talked to the, I know you did an interview when you got out of prison. Yeah. But, you know, did you, have you ever seen the FBI agent or spoke with the FBI agent?
I met Mark, the FBI agent, at the premiere of Masterminds, the movie that they did. And we just picked up our friendship like before. Met his wife. She was really nice. Took a selfie with me. And I've never wished him any ill will. Right. Yeah. I mean, he's just, you know, he's just doing his job. He's doing his job.
And he's one of the few government, mostly when we think about government employees, we don't think real highly of them, but he was actually out there doing his, doing the job that we pay him to do.
Yeah, I was going to say there were some nasty – there was one really just nasty FBI agent on my case. And the other ones were just like – it's kind of like the guards. It's like the guards that are there that are just like – I'm sorry, COs. When you go to prison, some of them are just complete sadistic assholes. And the other ones are like, listen, man, this is just a job.
Like I just want to come punch the clock, sit down, please don't bother me. You know, let me get out. Let me do my thing. Let me go home. Like those are the guards that are great. Even if you're enforcing the rules, I don't mind that you enforce the rules, but you don't have to be a dick about it. Um, so yeah, I had some of the secret service agents and FBI agents that were totally cool.
I was totally cool with them. And then there was this one that was just a complete jerk. It seems like there's always one, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's always, yeah. That's the one that makes them all look bad. Yeah. Um, Well, OK, so and now and so why are you why are you in Tampa?
I came down. There's a charity here in Tampa. It's called Forgotten Angels, and they help young people who have timed out on the the adoption program. And they've gone through their whole life bouncing from house to house. A lot of them, you know, and when they turn 18, the adoption houses, I'm not sure what the correct term is, they don't have anything to do with them.
So a lot of them end up out on the street. Right. A lot of them turn to drugs or crime or whatever. And this organization works with them, helps them, helps them get their GEDs, get some education, get a driver's license, job skills, and they help them get back on their feet. And when I heard about it, I'm like, that's something I can get behind.
You know, a lot of these people that they're helping never got first chance. And here I am with several chances in my life. And if I can come down here and spend a little money with them and buy a T-shirt, whatever, and it helps these people, helps these young people,
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Chapter 7: How did the heist influence popular culture?
Each kid is valued at whatever. And they, when that check ends, you're, they have no use for you. Yeah. And, uh, In a country like America, that this goes on, that this happens, and our government screws up a lot, but this could be easily fixed. A program to help, they can improve that program easily.
Just ease them back into society, get a job. What's funny is there's lots of jobs. There's lots of jobs, and there's lots of jobs that you can make a decent living in and take care of yourself.
But if you don't even know they're out there and you're not being prepared to kind of acclimate yourself into society or ease yourself into society and just have it thrust upon you, you're not prepared for that as an 18-year-old.
Yeah. And they can do the same thing with the prison system. And I've told people, well, yeah, you want prison to be harsh. Cool. All right. I get that. What kind of, when they come out, what kind of, that guy's going to be your neighbor. What kind of neighbor do you want coming out of there? Do you want somebody that hasn't really changed?
Or do you want somebody, like one of my greatest accomplishments when I was in is, and I had to do it on the sly because he was in the Muslim Brotherhood and he wasn't supposed to be associating with us crackers. And I helped this guy, he was four,
better than 40 i helped him learn to read and to me that's one of my highest personal accomplishments right you know and granted he didn't like me i had no real reason to like him but i helped him read
Well, what's what's funny is that people want prison to be hard. They people get upset that, for instance, I did an interview with a guy the other day and somebody in the comments section because the guy ended up getting like a master's degree or a master. He got a college degree. I think he was trying to get his master's, but.
The guy was upset because he had gotten a college education while in prison. Now, granted, the guy had like 20 something, 25. I think he did 25 or 26 years. Yeah. So they was upset. Like, I can't believe that he's being taken care of. And he got an education. And my thought was.
the likelihood that he gets an education and gets out of prison and goes back is very low yes if he doesn't get the education there's a damn good chance he goes back to prison oh yeah so are you gonna bitch about are you bitching because about recidivism or are you gonna bitch because he got you're giving him an education because you got you can only pick one to bitch about so if you don't give him the education he goes back and now you're bitching about him going back to prison yeah
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