Public fascination over the heist reached such heights that on February 20, 1999, about five thousand people crowded the Metrolina Expo flea market in Charlotte for the government’s auction of seized items believed to have been bought with heist loot. Federal auctions like this typically attract little public notice, but this one drew advance newspaper coverage, People magazine, and network TV crews.
In the days leading up to it, callers across the country had phoned in asking about the velvet Elvis, by now a symbol of what made the heist narrative so funny to so many people. Without its infamous context, the Elvis was worth about thirty dollars, but the auctioneer expected it to bring as much as $1,000. Among other attention-grabbing items up for sale were a blue barrel that Steve Chambers used to store money, Michele’s BMW, a silver cigar holder engraved with Steve Chambers’s name, statues, paintings, and the six-foot wooden Indian.
The steady hum of laughter in the auction space grew louder when Manny Fisher, the bespectacled, gray-haired auctioneer, announced that the blue barrel was up for bid. Like the velvet Elvis, it was worth maybe thirty dollars brand new but was clearly going to fetch more—perhaps $100, some speculated, or $150 if someone really wanted a souvenir.
The bidding shot up to $500 in less than thirty seconds. It kept rising—$600, then $700. Even Fisher, who expected some antics today, couldn’t believe where it was going. Eight hundred dollars, then $900, then, finally, $1,050 from the owner of a Charlotte recycling company, who would proudly place it in her front office.
The crowd cheered again when Fisher raised the velvet Elvis in his arms. Bids shot past $1,200, then $1,300, and it finally sold for $1,600 to Tom Shaw, the owner of the American Gun and Pawn Shop on South Boulevard, where it would hang for the publicity. Shaw even received a certificate of authenticity that the piece was a “seized asset from the $17 million Loomis Fargo robbery.”
Most people at the auction spent lesser amounts on small statues, paintings, or knickknacks from Steve and Michele’s house, or on furniture seized from their store. The owner of a publicity company spent $32,000 on Michele’s BMW, about $1,500 less than it was worth, planning to donate it to a children’s charity he owned, which would then raffle it off. Eric Payne’s Harley-Davidson sold for $16,000.
In all, the auction raised $360,000, all of it destined for Loomis Fargo and its insurance company, Lloyd’s of London. Two months earlier, Steve and Michele’s criminally acquired house had sold for $486,000 to a doctor, his wife, and their children. The companies remained about $2 million in the hole.
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On January 20, 1999, Philip Noel Johnson was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for stealing $18.8 million from Loomis Fargo in Florida and holding up his colleagues at gunpoint twenty-two months earlier.
The defendants in the North Carolina heist expected far less time behind bars, because they did not use, or threaten to use, weapons during the theft. Technically, they did not “rob” anybody, since the term “robbery” implies the use or threat of force. No one, therefore, was charged with robbery; instead, the defendants faced charges of bank larceny, which carried a maximum sentence of ten years, in addition to money laundering, which had a maximum sentence of twenty years. Their guilty pleas and—generally speaking—their insignificant prior criminal records would likely mean their prison sentences would be far shorter than the maximums.
On February 23, 1999, six of the defendants walked into the federal courthouse on Trade Street to learn their punishments. Perusing a paper sentencing grid that used current and past convictions as a guide for each crime, Judge Graham Mullen sentenced Scott Grant to four years and seven months in prison and ordered him to pay $26,000 in restitution. The judge sentenced Eric Payne, who had spent much more heist money than Grant, to six and a half years in prison and ordered him to pay $292,000 in restitution. A portion of whatever money they made when freed would go to Loomis Fargo and its insurance company, until both were fully reimbursed.
“Mr. Payne, I realize there’s probably no way on God’s green earth you can pay back $292,000,” Judge Mullen told him. “The law requires that I impose that.”
“I made a bad mistake,” Payne said. “And Lord knows, I would take it back.”
The longest sentence of the day, eleven years and three months, went to Mike McKinney. The shortest went to Sandra Floyd, Dennis Floyd, and Calvin Hodge, each of whom received three years of probation. In addition, Hodge was sentenced to spend four months under house arrest and to perform one hundred hours of community service.
Michele Chambers came to court to watch her parents’ sentencing. She knew they wouldn’t have been there if not for her, and she cried and hugged her sister when Mullen announced probation instead of prison for the Floyds, who held each other’s hands as the judge spoke. Brian Whisler, the prosecutor, told the judge the Floyds had been the most forthcoming of all the defendants in the case.
The next day, two more defendants—John Hodge and David Craig—each received two years of probation on their money-laundering convictions. Hodge’s lawyer, James Gray, cracked up the courtroom when he revealed that his client had actually declared the $14,200 paid to him by Chambers as income on his tax return. After the court hearing, Hodge told the Charlotte Observer he considered it a “service” to buy the checks for Chambers.
“I didn’t have any reason to doubt that it [was] legitimate money,” he said. “Nowadays, you never know who has $100,000 or $150,000 available.”