David Ghantt was a vault supervisor at Loomis Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina. Every day, millions of dollars passed through his hands. His pay: $8.15 an hour. His shifts: twelve hours long, sometimes eighty hours a week. At home, he was drowning in debt.

The company had locks, crews and backup cars to protect its money on the street. But nothing protected it from the man holding the keys.

Then a former coworker named Kelly asked him a simple question: what would it take for you to actually do it?

On October 4th, 1997, David emptied the vault. More than a ton of cash. Over $17 million — one of the biggest cash heists in American history. The gate jammed, the keys got mixed up, and his partners left more than $3 million behind in an abandoned van. And a third camera he didn’t know about recorded everything.

David fled to Mexico with a fake ID, waiting for the woman he loved to join him. Back home, his partners were spending the money — and planning something much darker.

So was David Ghantt the thief — or the victim? And why was the most wanted man in North Carolina relieved when the FBI finally found him?

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CHAPTERS

0:00 – Eight Dollars and Fifteen Cents
3:46 – Take the Money and Run
7:39 – The Third Tape
9:40 – Dog Food
12:46 – The Hitman Who Brought the Cash
15:41 – The FBI Starts Listening
18:22 – Five Months on the Run
20:42 – A Pretty Expensive Kiss

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

United States v. Ghantt — U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit (2000)
The Charlotte Observer — coverage of the Loomis Fargo heist (via Retro Charlotte archive)
WCNC Charlotte Archives — the 1999 U.S. Marshals auction of the Loomis Fargo assets
Wikipedia — David Ghantt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ghantt
Wikipedia — Masterminds (2016 film): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterminds_(2016_film)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━