This Day in History: The Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery was a robbery of $17.3 million in cash from the Charlotte, North Carolina, regional office vault of Loomis, Fargo & Co. on this day in 1997. The robbery was committed by Loomis vault supervisor David Scott Ghantt, his married girlfriend Kelly Campbell (a former Loomis co-worker), Steven Eugene Chambers (a one-time FBI informant), his wife Michelle Chambers, Michael Gobbies, and four other co-conspirators. An FBI criminal investigation ultimately resulted in the arrest and conviction of eight people directly involved in the heist, as well as sixteen others who had indirectly helped them, and the recovery of approximately 88% of the stolen money.
This robbery was the second-largest cash robbery on the U.S. at the time, as only seven months earlier, on March 29, 1997 in Jacksonville, Florida, $18.8 million was stolen from a Loomis Fargo armored vehicle...by yet another employee.
The Charlotte robbery was made into a 2016 comedy starring Zach Galifianakis, Owen Wilson and Kristen Wiig.
"An even earlier armored car robbery occurred in 1950 at the Brinks car depot in Boston. Eleven criminals staked out the depot for a year to determine what day it would have the most money. Then they stole the plans for the alarm system, they got into the counting room, tied up the guards, and stole around $2.7 million. The robbers were caught just days before the crime's statute of limitations would have expired."~Alvin Ward
In 2008 Anthony Curcio was responsible for one of the most elaborately planned armored car heists in U.S. history. "For three months, Curcio observed a Brink's armored car as it made deliveries to the Bank of America branch in Monroe, Washington. He took notes of the schedule, diagrammed locations of the bank's cameras, and noted the armored car's blind spots. He also estimated how much money was being transferred to the bank and how much was being removed via ATMs.
He considered police protocol in responding to robberies and the location of the bank and decided on using a local creek to escape.
After weeks of hand-dredging the creek in Woods Creek and a failed practice attempt at using a jet ski for the getaway, he changed his approach and created a cable pulley system to quickly pull himself, and large bags of cash, upstream using a connected canvas-wrapped inner tube.
Curcio's planning culminated with an advertisement he placed on Craigslist a few days before the robbery. The online ad sought 15 to 20 workers for a fictitious city cleanup project, promising $28.50 an hour. The laborers were told to wear jeans, a blue shirt, work shoes, and a yellow safety vest. The ad also told the applicants they needed to bring safety goggles and a painter's mask. The ad directed them to meet in the Bank of America parking lot at the exact time Curcio planned to rob the armored car.
On September 30, 2008, Curcio, dressed identically to his decoy applicants, pretended to work the grounds near the bank. Wearing a blue shirt, jeans, yellow safety vest, work boots, and painter's mask, he pepper-sprayed the Brink's armored car guard who was pushing a dolly loaded with money into the bank. The pepper spray forced the guard to reach for his eyes and release the cart that held the money. Curcio grabbed two bags of money, containing more than $400,000, and ran toward the creek. Meanwhile, police arrived to find the bank's parking lot filled with men matching the robber's description.
At the water's edge, Curcio threw the money into the inner tube and pulled himself up the creek with the cables he had previously strung. He traveled about 200 yards upstream and exited the creek behind several businesses on the opposite side of the highway from the bank. Curcio removed his wig and worker's clothing that had been attached by Velcro, revealing different attire underneath. He climbed into the trunk of a getaway vehicle driven by an associate and left.
Curcio's careful planning and unusual getaway gained national attention. The timing of the robbery came days after announcements of the government's bank bailout package that included Bank of America. The unique robbery techniques gained notoriety for the mysterious robber who was referred to as the "Craigslist Robber" and "D.B. Tuber", after the 1970s hijacker D. B. Cooper." Source
Every year, there are between 25 to 35 attempted armored car robberies in the United States, while at the same time approximately 4,000 banks are robbed in the same period.
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