In his thirty years of life, Steven Eugene Chambers had been a bookie, a tax cheat, and a loan shark, but he had never been into this kind of cash. Few criminals ever had.
For several hours after the theft on October 4, 1997, Steve’s well-furnished mobile home near Lincolnton, North Carolina—about forty-five miles from Loomis Fargo—was Heist Central. It was where most of David Ghantt’s accomplices counted the money while David fled the country, and it was Kelly’s immediate destination after saying good-bye to him in Columbia.
Steve had assumed control of the stolen money shortly after David stole it, from the moment in the Reynolds & Reynolds parking lot when David entered Kelly’s pickup and left for the airport. He had waited in his Mazda outside the Loomis Fargo building while David was inside stealing the money, and he was not alone; with him was his cousin Scott Grant, one of two last-minute recruits Steve brought into the plan. Kelly waited nearby, alone in her pickup.
Steve had recruited Scott and another man, Eric Payne, with the promise of $100,000 for each. Scott had said he would help only if there were no guns. Eric, who’d known Steve since they worked at a sock factory as teenagers, insisted he not touch anything. Steve assured them there would be no guns and no need to leave fingerprints. And the job itself would be a piece of cake.
• • •
Steve stayed cool during most of the night’s excitement and chaos. When David was late coming out of the Loomis building, Scott asked nervously, “What’s gonna happen if he don’t come?”
Steve calmly answered, “He’s coming, he’s coming.”
Twenty minutes later, when David couldn’t open the front gate, Steve directed his cousin to help. When Scott protested, Steve said, “You have to. He can’t do it alone.” So Scott left the car and hustled to the gate, remembering not to let David see his face.
Steve’s Mazda had taken up the rear of the thieves’ three-vehicle caravan from Loomis Fargo to Reynolds & Reynolds, where Eric Payne was waiting with a van rented earlier in the day from Budget. As the caravan neared Reynolds & Reynolds, where Eric was an employee, Steve called him so Eric would open the parking-lot gate for them when they arrived.
Steve had caught a glimpse of David before the redhead left with Kelly. Then, along with Eric and Scott, Steve began the next essential task of the heist—transferring the mounds of loot from the Loomis Fargo van to the rented Budget van. The plan then called for abandoning the Loomis vehicle nearby in a secluded area and driving the loaded rental van to Steve’s home.
Right away, they had cause for alarm after David left with Kelly. Scott hadn’t held onto the exact key that David placed in his hand, and now David was gone and Scott had a key ring filled with about 125 keys, only one of which would open the back of the Loomis van.
In the dark, Scott tried to insert one key after another into the slot. Plenty fit but none would actually turn to open the lock. Steve cursed as Scott continued to fumble with the keys, because the ability to empty the money there and transfer it to the Budget van was an essential piece of the plan. If they couldn’t open the back door they might have to abandon the van somewhere with the money inside it, because they certainly couldn’t risk being spotted with it the next day after news of the crime broke.
Some frantic minutes later, after dozens of tries, Scott finally found the right key. There was no time to celebrate. He opened the back door.
The vision silenced them. Plastic bags of money in shrink-wrap filled the cargo space almost to the top. Outside of the movies, they had never seen anything like it. Scott’s and Eric’s jaws dropped.
“Unload it,” Steve said.
He directed Eric to hop inside, but Eric refused, not wanting to leave fingerprints. So Steve pushed Scott toward the vehicle. Once inside, Scott began passing stacks of cash to Steve and Eric, who placed them in the rented Budget van, inside fifty-five-gallon blue barrels that Eric had taken from the printing company’s loading dock.
As sweat moistened Scott’s face and clothes on the cool October evening, he heard a siren in the night. The wailing terrified all three of them as it grew louder. Could the police really have been tipped so soon? Scott walked to the edge of the Loomis van, felt himself stop breathing, put his hands up, and froze.
The siren faded. He saw the flashing lights of an ambulance distancing itself on the highway. Just an ambulance. It seemed like either a cruel joke or a miracle. Relieved, the men got back to work.
Steve’s phone rang. It was Kelly, passing an urgent reminder from David to make sure they took the two videotapes that David had left in the Loomis van.
Steve told Scott to grab them, and the men kept working, developing an easy rhythm as the minutes rolled by, taking armloads of cash from the Loomis van, walking a few yards to the Budget van, and filling the plastic barrels with money.
Their haul was so large that the barrels in the rented van couldn’t hold it all. They would have to leave millions behind, Steve realized. The alternative—scattering shrink-wrapped cash in the rear of the van—was a nonstarter that would spell doom if a cop pulled them over on the way back to Steve’s home, for whatever reason, and made them open the back.
Cool and in charge, Steve told Scott to ignore the stacks of ones and fives and stick to the larger denominations. And leaving money could actually work to their advantage; maybe whoever found it would steal it themselves, drive the van elsewhere, and cloud the group’s trail.
The barrels in the rental van were full about forty minutes after the money had arrived at Reynolds & Reynolds. The next task was to abandon the white Loomis van, which of course still had money inside. Scott and Steve handled this while Eric drove the rented van full of loot to a nearby British Petroleum filling station in Mount Holly, where the other two would meet him minutes later.
Scott, followed closely by Steve’s Mazda, drove the Loomis van to a wooded area less than a mile from Reynolds & Reynolds, off Moores Chapel Road. Forgetting to turn the car off or take the videotapes, Scott jumped out, closed the door, and hopped into Steve’s car.
“Did you cut the van off?”
“No, I kept it running,” Scott said.
Steve was not pleased. He had wanted Scott to turn the ignition off. That way, whoever found the van would be able to drive it to a new location that would throw off FBI. But now it was stuck there.
As they approached the BP station to meet Eric at about 9:00 p.m., Scott found yet another reason to worry. A Mount Holly police car was waiting in the gas station’s parking lot. “We’re gonna get caught,” he said worriedly to Steve.
Steve kept his cool. He never flinched in these situations. True, he had never done anything quite like this, but he had a solid career as a small-time crook under his belt. With the officer only dozens of feet from the Budget rental van, Steve left the Mazda and walked nonchalantly to the driver’s side of the loaded van while Scott casually slid behind the wheel of the Mazda.
The police officer ignored them.
In two vehicles, the three men left the BP station and drove back onto I-85 and into the heart of Gaston County. “I brought you into this because I trust you,” Steve told Eric on the way. “If it went down, I know you wouldn’t rat me out.” Already, Steve was planning for the worst-case scenario.
As they drove, Steve called Scott on his cell phone to make sure his nervous cousin was all right. Scott said he was fine. The men took Interstate 85 exit to Route 321 North, starting a thirty-minute ride into the northwestern reaches of rural Lincoln County, to Steve’s mobile home, which was located near a creek at the end of a gravel road.
There, Steve’s wife, Michele, was waiting with ten bags of rubber bands, a calculator, cardboard boxes, and a slashed-and-emptied mattress that one of her children had slept on in a bunk bed before it was gutted.
When the men arrived around 10:00 p.m., the money was finally secured on Steve’s property. And it was time to count.
Steve and Eric carried the barrels into the mobile home while Scott looked for something to drink. He knew he had just made the worst mistake of his life and needed to relax, so he grabbed a Sun Drop soda. The twenty-six-year-old plant worker, who had dark hair and a medium build, was clearly out of his element. He had obtained his GED two years earlier and had a six-year-old daughter who lived with her mother, while Scott lived with his girlfriend in a mobile home.
Eric also was nervous. At five-foot-ten and one hundred ninety pounds, with a firm chin and brown mustache, he carried the air of a tough guy. But while he may not have been the nicest guy in the world, he wasn’t an experienced criminal. The most serious conviction on his record was for driving while impaired.
The counting began, assembly-line style. Scott passed bundles of cash to Eric, who passed them to Steve, who called out the amounts written on the bundles to Michele, who added everything up on the calculator.
Scott stopped counting when he reached $100,000. “We’re gonna get caught,” he said. “We’re gonna get caught.”
Steve told him to calm down. “We won’t get caught,” he said, “if everyone does what they’re supposed to do.”
“We’re gonna get caught,” Scott repeated, staring wide-eyed at the floor.
Michele, keeping tabs, just laughed. “Look at all this money!” she exclaimed. “Look at all this money!”
Steve and Michele loaded twenty-dollar bills, in $10,000 stacks several inches thick, into the slashed mattress. They planned to close it up and put it back on the top bunk above where one of their kids slept.
Scott stopped pacing and leaned against the kitchen counter, folding his hands across his chest and staring at the mattress. “Jesus,” he told Michele. “If that falls on your son’s head, it’s gonna kill him.” When the mattress was full of cash, Steve took one end and told Michele to grab the other. They tried to lift it together, but it was too heavy. So they unloaded the cash from it and returned it to the barrels.
Steve, calm throughout, swore everyone in the group to eternal silence.
As Scott got ready to go home, Steve reminded him to stay calm. The count had reached $2.7 million, and Scott just couldn’t bear to be around anymore, though his nervousness didn’t keep him from carrying $6,000 with him as a first installment. He would have taken more, but he didn’t want his girlfriend to suspect anything. While fearing he would be arrested that night, he somehow managed to fall asleep next to her after returning home, only to be awakened by a loud pounding on the door and shouts of “Police! It’s the police!” Panicked, he again wondered how everything could have fallen apart so fast. But it turned out to be just a drunken relative.
The others at Heist Central continued counting after Scott left, past midnight. Kelly joined them after her drive from Columbia. The total was more than $14 million. Michele wrote the amount on paper. “I’m rich,” she said, laughing again. “I love this money!”
Steve placed dog food over the money in the barrels and moved them to a shed behind his mobile home, securing the shed with a Master Lock. He went to sleep at 6:00 a.m.
When he awoke four hours later, he set about the task of moving the money from his home to other locations. He sent Michele to rent space at a storage facility about a mile from their home, and on her return he placed the barrels in the back of their Ford pickup truck. Together they drove to the storage facility to leave the money. Later, Steve would also bury $150,000 in a duffel bag off a trail behind his mobile home.
In the coming days, Steve would better secure the stolen cash. On October 6, Scott’s brother, Nathan Grant, and Nathan’s girlfriend, Amy, helped Steve move it to two facilities he felt were more secure, Bubba’s Mini Storage and Lincoln Self Storage. Steve had arranged for Nathan, a twenty-year-old mill worker, to rent locker space there, lying to him by saying he was just hiding gambling winnings. Before bringing the money over they stashed it in duffel bags, cardboard boxes, and suitcases. The facilities had gates that allowed vehicles to pass once the driver punched in security codes. Only Steve and Nathan kept the keys to the lockers inside.
For their help, Steve would pay Nathan and Amy $70,000. The small circle of heist beneficiaries was widening.