Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How He Pulled Off a $17 Million Robbery | The Loomis Fargo Bank Heist

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

$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: [e-mail] 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

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August 1st. 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. Right. 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 you know and somehow or another he's come up with all this cash yeah and they've decided they're going to kill they're going to kill me right

he's going to hire 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? That's usually the title I end up with.

Yeah, bank robber for Lumas Fargo. One of the largest Lumas 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 I 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 then I was, 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, you know 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 uh no no he did this i was like oh i know exactly who you're talking about i remember watching a documentary like i was immediately excited that's why my girlfriend or my

my wife kept texting i was like you got to get this guy to come on here like he's got a great story so anyway that's that's kind of how i knew um the whole thing so but basically what i typically do is just start at the beginning getting like i'm like i'm not we're not in a hurry or anything so you know like where where were you born okay i was born in gastonia north carolina and on october 20th 1969 um really average um upper middle class lower middle middle class family good education um just a normal southern upbringing. Hunting, fishing, motorcycles.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Right. And then you ended up going into the military? Yeah. My hometown, Gastonio, at the time, was, what's a good word? They were economically not very diverse. And so I didn't have a lot of options, I felt. And so I went into the military and became an Apache crew chief. All right. were you in i mean did you see any action or um what year was this by the way sorry let's see

that was 89 or so and it was i went to desert shield desert storm came back and things at home really hadn't changed and uh got married and i spent some time down in hilton head island in South Carolina working as a working at a fixed base operation which is a airplane refueling operation. Was that for the military? Nope.

This was a private one. This is after you got out. After I got out. And eventually my wife at the time got, I usually say she got homesick, but we went back to Gastonia and there was hardly anything for me. And one day I saw an ad

in the newspaper Armored Carguard Top top dollar paid which was a huge fib and I put in an application and the next thing I knew they they hired me and put me to work

I mean those guys never like for the amount for the responsibility like they never they get paid horrible oh yeah you know like it may be top dollar for that field but that field is notorious for having horrible A horrible pay scale.

Do you, like, the guy I, the guy that I, um, had written a story about, his name was a Jamal. And he basically, he got a concealed weapons permit. And he said, a concealed weapons permit and a few months as a security guard, he said having like 90 days or I think it was like six months as a security guard and having his concealed weapons permit, he's like, that was all the qualifications I needed. that and not being a felon. I mean, did you need a secure?

Yeah. They rent a credit check on you. They do a felony background check. They make you take a firearms course. And it's always amazed me what those guys and ladies get paid to be responsible for a huge armored truck. And then all the paperwork involved,

you're dealing with professional customers every day. You might go to 100 stops. you know, a day, and they pay him peanuts. He's been known to cure insecurity just with his laugh. His organ donation card lists his charisma. His smile is so contagious. Vaccines have been created for it. He is the most interesting man in the world.

I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. So you got the job, and the job it's broken up into, I mean, I just know from having written that story, it's broken up to everybody has a different responsibility, right? Like you've got the driver, you've got the runner, you've got the loader, like the guy that loads the machines or something. Yeah, the ATM people.

Basic jobs that you found that you would find at Army Car Company is the very basic is the driver. He knows the route, knows nothing much else. He runs the radio. And then you have, we called him a messenger. He's the guy that goes into the bank. And he does all the paperwork. He knows the route forwards and backwards. He knows all of his customers.

knows which keys they need. And he's basically the boss of the truck. And then a third one would be the ATM guys. And they fill up all the ATMs. There's a myriad of other things behind the scenes. But they're not those, like the ATM guys and the messenger and driver, like they're not going out at the same time, right? Like they're on two different routes, right?

Yeah, they're usually on different routes. The ATM guys usually keep themselves. Okay. And once you get the money, you go back to like a warehouse, like a secured warehouse and unload the money and they count the money and there's a whole separate crew that counts all the money they have a money room and the messenger he never actually touches raw cash money never it's always bagged with an address never an amount and right so you you get

get your manifest in the morning you load your truck triple check everything sign it off and you go out on your route um so but you start so you started as a messenger no i started off as a driver oh okay um i drove the hickory run for close to a year um hickory's a little town up north of charlotte okay um and so when did you i thought you said you had become a messenger or then you went to a yeah there was a i'll call it an incident at wells fargo and um i ended up becoming a a messenger and then later a vault superintendent what i mean what was like layoffs or was that the layoffs sir yeah they had a large layoff and a lot of people we were really shorthand and a lot of people got promoted i probably got promoted i probably should have never been promoted probably past driver

to be brutally honest i was really good at being driver i understood the route i knew all the safety procedures and i was really good at it and i probably should never went past that um so i have I have a question because, like I said, the only reason I know this is, like, is money come up missing before? Does it just come up missing sometimes? I'm sure it does. Usually the biggest thing was they would lose coins because they have them boxed up. And one of our horror stories was Pat Rainstorm got caught in. was out taking in a load of coin

the boxes got wet and busted coins go everywhere and they had to go out there with brooms and sweep it up sweep it all up that the guy um jemal that I did the

the story on he told me that one time a guy came and turned in the bags right like here's you know the messenger came in here's the bag here's the bag he said I scanned them all in and like the the manifest or whatever he's like okay you're missing a bag you're missing like 60 grand and he said and the guy he'd been there like three years and he was like no he goes yeah he said yeah look shows him and he goes huh so he goes let me check the truck goes back in checks the truck

comes back he says it's not in the truck he says are you sure he was just telling you says you're supposed to have eight bags you got seven like he's like oh wow and he said okay he goes he said So he makes a note. He said, I'll get still figure it out later. I don't know. He said, made a note, turned it in, explained the whole thing. Guy went home. Guy came back the next day.

They talked to him. He's like, no, I mean, yeah. They called the branch. They were like, you picked it up. He's like, what should be here? It just acted like, I don't know. And he ended up not getting, like, they didn't fire him. They were like, it's just, I don't know what happened.

They kept him on. Like, he just locked, I want to say it was 60 grand, but it may have been 30. I know there was two different events Then he said And he said like they literally kept him on He was listening he was about two weeks later He shows up on a brand new $12,000 motorcycle And I was like I was like no

He said I swear he is when I he was I remember looking at him Going nice bike And he goes yeah you like that And just kept on walking like yeah And he's like like I just took him for this They did nothing happen to him Now another time there was he said there was a woman Same basic thing

But she had pulled up and so when they checked the when she showed up same thing i'm missing money they're like that's weird they went back and checked the the um surveillance and she had stopped the vehicle got out went to her car and came back and they were like no something's wrong so they actually called the police went to her car and found the money she's fired and he goes but the thing is he's like i don't they recovered the money because they just fired her they didn't press charges or anything because they don't want the publicity right they don't want that in the news they don't want to be in the news at all um one of the one of the things i do remember is we had a a messenger he went all around he went for like

five or six stops on his route and i think there's like a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars cash there was a little spot on the back bumper in this bag big cloth bag fit right in that little nook right and he rode around i think it was moors i'm not sure but it's somewhere in western north kolina he rode around for like an hour and a half with the hundred seventy five thousand dollars on the back on the bumper of the truck just did he stop did it fall off did he stop and notice it uh he uh when he got to his next stop he noticed and you know but it wow but i mean yeah well so i mean i know you know what i think obviously what they want to do is they want they want the public to feel like hey this is a super secure industry we dot all our

all our eyes we cross all our t's super secure everybody's paid well everybody's trained they're all professional but the truth is that's that's not what's really happening um basically on that the emperor has no clothes right you know um you go to uh i look back on it now and the gun training we got was poor um you're firing an old they used a 38 special back then and the range is maybe 7, 8 feet to the target and it's a huge, it's bigger than life-sized target and you only need to hit about 8 out of 10 times.

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visit bemo.com slash vi-i-Porter to learn more who was saying the guy I had interviewed he was like they tell you like give up the money like if you're in a crowded place give up the money. Like don't, we don't want pedestrian shot.

We don't, don't get into a gun fight. If somebody shows up, pulls a gun, you're in a crowded place to give up the money immediately. Do what they say. You've got a better chance of survival, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, basically they tell you you run away. And if the driver is watching you, because they're supposed to watch you in the mirror,

not all of them do, he sees you run away. He's supposed to drive away as well. That way you lose that one stop. Right. And that's it. um okay so um so i mean what happened you're you're working there and you're you're working over time you're not making great pay you're you're you're married you're you know is your wife work yeah my wife at the time work okay did you have kids no no kids okay um what happened was

over time you know the stress of the job and the stress of my life we'd just bought a house, two new cars, and we're getting by, but just as long as I keep working long hours, we'll be fine. And that started to wear on me. And, you know, I probably had other issues from before, and it starts to build up. And I'm getting, I got desperate. And then when they came and suggested this to me, it looked like a way out. Right. Who, who, who, suggested it um kelly campbell and her uh friend uh chris uh no one chris who was uh i'm probably going to hate me now for not remembering the guy's name um chambers oh chambers chambers yeah but john chambers or was his first name oh hell chambers something chambers okay yeah i just actually just

watched you know earlier i actually i can picture him you know it um it was like a like a uh a uh Thought he was like a mob guy or something, but he was actually just a small-time kind of petty crook. He'd been in prison before, too, right? He'd get in trouble? I don't know. Yeah, he, well, I know that what they said was he had actually, he'd actually had problems with the law before,

and I believe they said he had had a federal case before. I don't know if he did prison time, but he definitely had had, like, a federal case. I don't know. I've never really cared enough to dig. you know what's funny is that just talking to you like I would meet guys in prison and they would some guys would come to me and say hey this guy's got an amazing story you have to hear a story and then we'd go and we'd sit down and talk and I'd take notes and just to see if it was

worth writing a story and they didn't know a ton of stuff about their case like they never looked into it like they got sentenced they knew they got five years I got to do five years and then they just kicked back and they walked the track they joined a softball game Maybe they learned to play an instrument. They read books. They're like, I'm just going to whittle away this time. And they never looked into it. Some guys didn't look into it because they were just like, I can't believe I'm here.

I don't want to think about it. And other guys, I just don't think that they realize they could look into it. And so I would interview these guys. And they didn't, if I decided to write their story, I would order the Freedom of Information Act on them. I'd get their case file. I'd get all the notes and the interviews. And I would be able to come to them and say, here's what happened. remember you said this and you didn't know why that was here's what happened and then i tell him

what the fbi file said this person got arrested he cooperated he told this guy they contacted the fbii and that that's why they were waiting for you but you know so you not knowing isn't i'm not laughing at you i'm just it's like i'm amazed because i'm so super inquisitive about everything i would have just like i would have been that a whole five years or however much time you know you did i would have been looking into it the whole time yeah i don't I think my attitude was it doesn't really concern me. I really don't care. You just wanted to get to your time and go on.

I just wanted to do my time. I spent most of my time playing softball, reading books. I studied a lot of psychology books and read, I must have read 1520 self-help books because I came to a realization that there was something slightly wrong with me and we need to address that. Yeah, that this was an option. this was this you know because for most people it's which always kills me is like as desperate as they get and i get the the desperation because i've been i mean i'm kind of like in this i've mentioned this to my wife all the time i'm like listen like we're a bad car

accident or a medical issue where you know we're we're if anything goes wrong we go down like a titanic you know maybe we can go for a month or two but that's it and and that worries me And so I get exactly what you're saying, but what most people don't think is, hey, I can do this. Most people don't think I can commit a crime and correct this issue. And, you know, I think obviously that's what separates people, you know, obviously, you know, criminals from or people that have criminal intent. I think anybody will commit a crime in the right situation. but to me my one of my first my first thought is fraud here's how I'll fix it fraud you know and I have to now I realize it's probably what you probably do is work a little harder you know cut back a little bit more but you but Kelly came to you yeah and she proposed the the thought you know how do you feel about Robin Fargo and she knew I wasn't real keen on the company right um because i we had a superintendent uh or manager threatened threatened my job and

i'm thinking about going going away anyway um and i said you know it would it really wouldn't be that hard it's just a matter of what day and understand that the weekend schedule it would be the easiest and you'd have the most time to get away right i said it's have to be on the weekend probably a Saturday would be easiest that's when there'll be you know back then the Charlotte vault had a very strict schedule it's like every other Saturday there's a fairly large amount of money in the vault cash as opposed to certain weekends it'd be 98% checks back when we used paper checks back in the dinosaur days I still write checks. I still write them.

Nobody else does. I haven't laughs at me. I haven't written a paper check in that would have been back in like 2015. You're hipper than I know. I just got out.

I'm a big guy on convenience and utility. So, okay, so here's the that my next question is but you didn't think to yourself yeah we could set up a robbery or a bag could go missing we could get a couple hundred

thousand you thought I can empty out the entire vault of $17 million and walk away clean yeah um that's a huge leap well here's my thought if you're going to break the law go all in all in or don't go right you know because uh what was that movie i think was he where he where the bad guy told the cop to see you think i got boys Born to Lose tattooed on my chest, I'm robin 7-Elevens. No, no, no. Right. And I'd seen that movie prior to doing this.

I'm off. You know, he's got a point. That is one of my favorite movies, I don't know. It is, um, from, from my point of view as prior military and, you know, seeing the gun fight, the gun battle, the run, that's probably one of the coolest running gun battles you'll ever see in a movie. And most realistic. And very realistic. Extremely realistic.

Yeah, because they're. They're actually reloading. They're moving from point to point. And it goes back to military. If you're not shooting, you need to be moving. If you're not moving, you need to be reloading. Yeah, De Niro and Pacino. That's a great man.

That's great. I want to watch that movie again. So, okay, so, I mean, so you got, so how long does it take before you decide, you know what? This is, I mean, clearly your wife's not going to be okay with it oh no i knew i knew that that she would she would lose her shit if i'd have mentioned it and i'm thought oh and i come to a realization that i'm going to have to walk away from everything and i'm weighing it in my head this goes on for uh four or five days i'll go all right

i'm going to go for it i've never done anything outrageous in my life this is it i'm going to change my life i'm gonna probably end up down in costa rica sitting on a beach fishing and that's where i want to go that's what i'm going to do are are you thinking about changing your identity or how how are you going to get out of the country is any of that a concern and well i thought about it backwards i thought where do i want to go how am i going to get there and i looked into the Cayman Island banks. I looked into Costa Rica. I looked at the FBI

and some crime statistics and I figured, okay, most criminals stay in like a 500, 3 or 500 mile circle of their home. The cops catch a lot of people at their mama's house. Right. Okay.

Because when they, people know they've done something wrong, they won't feel safe. And they don't want to leave that little bubble. I'm like, okay, if I get outside that bubble, my chances increase. So I've got to get out of the country as quickly as possible. And, well, I mean, for one thing, just leaving your home is gutsy. Yeah.

I mean, people don't realize that. They don't, you know, you have to walk away from everything that, every comfort, everything that makes you feel comfortable, you have to leave. And most people don't leave, you know, 95% of the country never leaves the United States. It's, you know, half those ever leave even the state that they live in, you know, so, so it's, you're picking up leaving, not calling, not coming back, not just walk away from everything like that alone, even if you weren't already wanted. Yeah. And, you know, that's already gutsy. So, so my other question is, did you think that there was going to be heat on you?

Did you think that the media would get, were you thinking this will be in the news, this, or did you think, oh, there'll be an article and that'll be it? I knew it would be a big story, especially for that area, because even before I really came up with a solid plan, what I thought was a solid plan, I knew about how much money it would be. I knew it would be more than 10 and less than 20, 20 million. And I knew that would be a huge story. There had been a Lumas Fargo had been robbed like a year or two earlier of like 18 million

Did you know about that? Yeah, it was big news Matter of fact, it was the I can't remember if he robbed the Tallahassee branch or the Jacksonville branch or the Jacksonville, I think. Yeah, it was the Jacksonville branch which is where I live now.

So, and I've met that guy. Really? He, Well, at the time, he was a little messed up. You met him after? Oh, no. I met him, like, in passing him prison. Oh, okay.

And I was like, okay. But he was a completely different type thing. He kidnapped the dude. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, it was a mess. But I think he beat me by a few million. Right. Yeah, his was like 18.

I want to say, because I remember thinking, was it was roughly about a million more and I was thinking yours was 17 it was 17.5 but I was thinking 17 I think they said 18 so I remember thinking it was about a million it was roughly a million um so uh okay so so uh what about Kelly like why like everything I saw they said you and Kelly were close that you you know you guys hung out together was um when I first started at Fargo I was friends with her driver all the drivers

kind of hang out together and so I ended up talking to Kelly and I ended up driving for her for quite a while and we just hit it off okay so when she came to you just trusted her you were friends but she wasn't there anymore though right yeah she had quit got fired

I'm not really sure once again it's one of those things where it didn't concern me I didn't look into it so you decided you were going to do it You talked to her. Talk to her. And what was the plan? The basic plan was for them to get me a fake ID, which we did, which back then was way easier.

And what I would do was we'd pick a Saturday. And I would basically empty the ball. At first they only wanted me to take, I think he said, $250,000. And then he came back a lot. I'll get one or two million. I'm like, no, we're not doing that. 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. Okay. And as it worked out, the original plan was I wanted to get at least 15, which worked out pretty good. And it was like, here's your five.

here's your five just make sure you deliver my five anything that's left after that you can have you can keep it I only want my five and they're oh yeah that'd be great and I didn't know that they were already planning to vote me off the island right this is this is like they're almost 30 years 30 years yeah close to it yeah the $5 million seven years ago yeah um imagine if we'd have got that money to the Cayman Islands back then. Because back then, the Cayman Islands were wide open and paying really good interest.

Jeez, you could have gotten it. I mean, they would have issued you a citizenship and a passport probably with just... Yeah. Like, I mean, they've got St. Kitts right now. I think if you, you buy a... You just buy a piece of property

for like $350,000. They'll give you a passport. They'll make you a citizen. They have economic citizen. Yeah, yeah. Economic citizen, yeah. Um, so, so what happened? So that day you, you just decide, hey, I'm going to, you're going to be, you guys are going to be waiting.

I'll let you know when I, I mean, you grab the money and what happened. So I picked October the 4th. Um, I, I knew about what was going to be in the vault and went into work just, just normal. Right. Um, I think we met one or two more times. Um, and we made a run to get my. big quote unquote fake ID which was just a state ID

yeah I was going to say the FBI when they interviewed like your friends your wife friends from the military like every single one of them your wife too she was like no like nothing nothing has changed like he is he is

you know on a schedule he's always the same behaved like you didn't vary like even made like a doctor's appointment or a dentist appointment or something you'd even made like an appointment for like the week or two prior to that like like you were going to be there like everything like there's nothing that says this guy should not have come home that day and everything you know went to the grocery store did this did that you know whatever walk the dog took the garbage like didn't argue there was no fight there was nothing like everything and all of the

everything was the same and all of your your buddies were like this is absolutely 100% uncharacteristic of this guy this is a guy that follows the rules this is a hard worker this guy's conscientious this is you know this is you know they said if there was anything I remember one of the guys had said that there if there was anything abnormal about you at all they said he's kind of a loner that was it like that's like the worst that's like the worst thing they could say about you But, you know, he is kind of a loner. Like, so, which I guess is to say, he is the kind of guy that he's not afraid to be alone or walk away.

A lot of guys have to be social. Yeah, that was it. I've never been a social butterfly. Yeah, that's, um, so this was just totally out of character. And now that I'm much older, I had to be a cold-hearted SOB. I had to be.

That was the only way you had to put on that mask and wear it all the way to the door. because if I'd acted any different the whole world would have known right you know because I did have a schedule I got I went to bed at the same time I got up I carried two sandwiches an apple or some fruit I mean it was almost like I had some weird OCD you know because I carried the same thing for lunch almost all the time and I'm still that way I love to have a schedule like being late today aggravated me you have no idea and it was everything that was completely out of my control right because i i like to be on time it's it it's i don't know if it's from the way i was raised but there's something about if i say i'm going to be here at noon i'm going to be there 1145 usually it's funny my dad and i actually say the same thing is that you know being on time is being 15 minutes early yeah

but you were only like 10 minutes late. So you went into work and the trucks come in, you count the money, you check it in. What were you doing that day? Just checking it in. I was in charge of the vault. And in the morning, I made sure everybody got all their load out in the morning. Make sure they had all their paperwork, sent them out.

And then the rest of the day, you're pretty much sitting there listening to the radio. listen to the company radio for the trucks. If they have a problem, they call in. You're basically just sitting there scratching your butt until they start coming back. And they call, Kelly and them, they must have called me out how many times. Are you sure you're going to go through with this? Like, yeah, don't worry about me. You know, when I tell you, I'm coming out the door, I'm coming out the door.

and finally the truck started coming back and we had a guy that he was a messenger and they'd said hey we want you to stay with Dave kind of learn it and he'll be in charge and he'll show you what to do and worked with him great guy though I hate I hate I kind of hate I did that to him but finally got to the last bit I said hey man if you want to take off It's going to take me a while. If you're going to take on off, I got you covered. So he leaves, and I mock, lock up everything. I don't set the timer on the vault.

Nothing. I don't spend the big wheel on it. I mock lock up. Go out, I see his tell lights going around the corner. I turn back around, go right back in the building. building, disarmed the security system, moved my van, and this is kind of where the plan goes to shit. Because I had planned on, there was two doors, they were offset, one to front, one at the

back, and I was planning on going out the back entrance. And for some reason, oh, I'll get to that, but for some reason it wasn't working that night. It didn't work that night, so I had to go. but anyway i pushed the first bin out there and it was mostly small bills and by the time i was done 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 the back bumper was pretty high up on me when I was done it was pretty low right so you so then this is after

every truck's already come in dropped off the money and gone yeah all the trucks are done nobody's coming back nobody's supposed to be coming back in anything you're and you're just there alone I'm there alone so you load up the so you loaded up the truck you get in the truck and you just well yeah um and I had scouted out and the security VHS tapes and I secured two or three of them and I missed one somehow. They had another recorder up in the ceiling. Yeah, right. And I didn't get that one.

Yeah, that's, I was going to say they show the footage of that one. Yeah. Where they're like, I guess when the, when eventually you leave and they call in saying something's wrong. Yeah. You know, when they show back up the next day or later that, you know, I think it was the next day. They show up the next day and they start call, people start calling in. You know, your wife's calling in. If people are calling in, they say, you know, he didn't show up.

And everything's open. Yeah. So they're like, it's completely wide open. When the FBI or the detectives come, the FBI, they find that tape. And I guess they had to wait for a manager or somebody to come and open the back to find the tape. but when they find it the manager or I don't know what he was

the manager of the place when he saw that it was you because they assumed you'd been kidnapped somebody had taken the money kidnapped you they were concerned that you were hurt

because he certainly had nothing to do with it and so when they saw you they said like the manager you've got to watch it the manager is like oh my God he's like that's David Gantz

that's David that's like they were like he kept the FBI officer's like that he kept saying it over and I'm like oh my god like he was absolutely in shock yeah that you were that he was watching you load the vehicle and and to buy myself time i stole almost all their keys right yeah that slowed them down oh yeah a lot slowed them out also when they eventually found the truck yeah law enforcement often questions him not because he suspected of a crime, but because they find him fascinating.

He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. So what happened when you left there? Where did you go when you left with the truck? Let's see, what wasn't that place?

It was some sort of aluminum recycling place where we met, and they had rigged the gate that When I pulled up, it would open, and I got out, and the sky comes walking up on me. And he says, don't worry, I'm with you. Just give me the keys. I hand him the keys, and this becomes important later. I said, this is the keys to the van. They open all the doors. Don't put it in the box, the big box of keys.

Okay, because I had a box in between the front Z. filled with every key in Wells Fargo okay this we'll come back around to this this becomes important later and I get in I've already got my my little bit of money I want to take with me because I didn't know how much money I could get through a metal detector with at the airport I was unsure you know so I didn't take that much money so Kelly and I get in her truck and we go to Columbia South Carolina where they've got an airport I didn't know at the time that their airport closed it like nine so I ended up scrapping plan A going plan B hop on a bus in Columbia

South Carolina go from Columbia South Carolina to Atlanta Georgia hop on a plane in Atlanta from Atlanta to New Orleans New Orleans to Cancun Mexico and you just and back then you didn't need a passport right didn't need a passport 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 um so what was the they were supposed to get you five million five million yes okay um and how much did you leave with probably about 45 five or 50,000 thereabouts. Okay. So you, so what, 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, um, what was it? I found a newsstand they had might have been the New York.

Yeah, the New York. Time, of course. And they had, it wasn't it didn't make the front page not for them um and i found a little blurb about it i thought okay we're good because i didn't think it was that big of a story i thought all right good i mean i knew the fbi bi bi after me but i didn't think that i was pretty sure they wouldn't go digging into mexico hard right but it it it became bigger later right like it didn't it when they started looking yeah okay um and that that takes us back to um yeah the van that they left with three 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 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 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 right to a multimillion dollar mansion

in paying cash. Paying cash. And you go from driving a hoofty to driving a beamer. You go from a cubic to zirconium to an actual diamond, people notice. And this guy tried to pass himself off

as a former professional football player. Right. And I don't know what you know about a lot of football fans and, you know, people are rabid fans about their football. Yeah. They knew he wasn't a cowboy

from any season. He, his wife was telling him. 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, you know, and they, it was already a little town, but it happened to have 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, 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, what was his name again?

Oh, Chambers. Chambers' wife, shoot if I thought you were going to know all these or I would have written a list out. 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 the paperwork for the government? And the woman says, like, you know, well, up to 10,000, she goes, okay, she says, listen, it's not drug money. Like, everything that you could have said that is going to get a suspicious activity report filed on you.

You've just said, drug money, how much, what's the, what's the maximum limit that nobody won't be reported? I mean everything that right then it's like this is so overly suspicious and of course they immediately fill out a report and not just that but people start calling friends of their start calling saying or you know friends starts calling saying listen 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 you know and somehow or another he's come up with all this cash yeah so immediately the FBI get on to them oh yeah very quickly and it's no surprise to me

right and then they they watched them for a while and it became so overwhelming that something was wrong they convinced a federal judge to give them allow them to start listening to their to their phone calls

and then when they and then they they had watched long the FBI officer said look we listened long enough that the search warrant is only good for so long that it was about to expire

you know whatever whether it was they got a 30 day or 60 I don't know but it was just about to expire when Kelly received a page or a phone call from you and you had scheduled a time

and one you had you needed more money so they were trying to arrange to send you more money and two they had arranged a time for you to call a pay phone and but she wasn't there she missed the appointment or something because

you know I guess she had better things to do than try and maintain the robbery which is a big problem for criminals once they get the money they forget about maintenance so but that I guess they said the FBI was waiting they had a tap on the phone you called she wasn't there the office one of the FBI officers walks over because they needed to hear you yeah walked over grab the phone and listen and said hey hello and then you said something on the phone where they heard your voice and then they were like you know I forget I think he said you like you said something you had a little brief exchange and they hung up the phone but they were like that's him like we've got but you hung up so fast they couldn't get a trace yeah um one of

the things that's never come out in the inner in any of the interviews is i'm on the other end and i'm timing our phone right phone calls i bought a really expensive watch just for this was one of the extravagances i did i bought a nice omega what was it dive master my my memory stretched then but it was a nice omega watch um and i'm watching the time every time we talk and i'm keeping it around two to three minutes um yeah i was going to say like now they'd know where you were immediately but back then yeah back then it took time to trace it especially out of the country oh yeah back then this goes back to me doing my research i found out that they they could trace a phone but it took them two and a half to three minutes right um and like you said outside the country even

longer because they've got to contact the country and deal with back dealing with the mexican government back then would have been a nightmare i'm sure so what were you thinking when you're in cancun you're in cancun you're hanging out how long has it been and and what are you waiting for are you waiting for them to figure out how to bring you your money yeah what's what's what's what's going through your head well i'm in cancun and i'm moving from place to place and i'm starting to get concerned that this should have been easy you can smuggle anything you want into mexico yeah easy going south easy easy as pie and i'm like all you had to do is box send the 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 So All right But that's not happening What is happening Do you know

Do you The gist of it is They've had a meeting and they've decided they're going to kill they're going to kill me right and he's going to hire 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 something missing money we can print the money again there's insurance there's now somebody's going to get killed and they realize also that you know there's bigger players involved and more serious players where you were doing something that was non-violent 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 you know 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'd hurt somebody so so what so at what point or do you know that they're obviously they've got their their phones tapped and they're listening

do you know what happened that and how did they the FBI figure out where you were I'm not sure exactly but I'd move down to Cozumel in Plydele Carmen And 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 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, you'd hear them hang up, it'd go click, and then you 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 eight thousand bucks which made me suspicious the way he acted made me suspicious and the cherry on top of the cake was after he left one of the guys one of the Mexicans he was working with

came by my apartment his nickname was Gordo he's a big guy um and he says you you know that this guy is planning on killing you i like i was shocked and i tipped the guy handsomely you were shocked shocked okay i mean because to me it made i'm very naive it made no sense there was plenty of money for everybody right why don't just pay you and just pay me and forget about me i mean they're they're From their perspective, and I'm only, I'm only saying this because I've watched, you know, the documentaries and the FBI agent was saying, he's like, the problem is, is that from their perspective, they're thinking, everybody knows you took the money. Nobody knows, and from their mind, obviously the FBI does know, but they're thinking everybody knows that Gantt took the money, but they don't know who we are.

yeah so if he dies then it dies with him he took the money they find some money they assume he's hidden the money they'll never get to us of course they already had gotten to them yeah they didn't know that so they're thinking you know cut off the head of the snake and then you know the whole thing will die down you know not that i think you not that i think that's a justified reason but you're not wrong yeah well um but but I don't know, I think I took it personal for a long time And I'm working with that I'm processing through that feeling of disgust But that's a whole different story So what happens So the guy tells you that What do you think? Are you thinking I'm fucking I'm out of here or?

Weirdly after this every time I meet He was calling himself Bruno Every time I meet Bruno It's in a very public place And I've bought myself a knife And sharpened it up Every time we meet, it's in public It's face to face

And I don't let him You know, close to me And we end up Staying in Plydele Carmen He brought me some money And this is right there at the end of it. And I'm at the

Turtle La Tortuga Hotel when the FBI picked me up. How did that happen? It was weird because it was a very touristy town. During the week,

there's no gringoes. Right. I was an oddball. And then when there were three more gringoes in town, a little strange and I noticed them I even talked to one of them at one point and eventually

I'd gone out to do laundry and they thought I was making a break for or they thought I was running and they caught me coming back to the hotel and the FBI agent comes up says hey Mr. Gant I know who you are and you're under arrest

and that was the beginning of the end so speak had had Kelly and everybody already been arrested at that point? Yeah, they had already arrested them

rounded them up and they were, 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 um i want to say that um 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 he rolled over like a hard mold air right so so they may he may have been he may have told them exactly where you were you know for all for all i know or maybe they had been tracing the phones and they had figured out by that point i i don't know but but they grabbed you um did they they bring you

to a to a local police a police station or did they bring you straight to the airport like no they brought me um i spent the night with the mexican uh federales and they were 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 right so

okay so they don't need to extradite you yeah so you show up back in did you where did you fly into um flew I think we went straight to Charlotte okay

you're processed in by the marshals marshals right there in Charlotte Mecklenburg and they put me on the sixth floor which is like their version of Macs.

Okay. Because the story had exploded. Right. What? So when, you know, when the,

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. Hungry now. Now? What about now? Whenever it hits you, wherever you are, grab an O'Henry bar to satisfy your hunger.

With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating. Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today. Oh hungry, oh Henry. He seemed, like, look, I've watched a lot of these. like he he genuinely seemed to to like you and like he like I've never seen one of these where they just didn't have is that they had a lot of bad things to say about chambers 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 like that's how they and that's not far from wrong right I see myself as an opportunist. And I think most humans are opportunist.

In the right circumstances. In the right circumstances, anybody would have done what I did. So when you come back, you have a long conversation with him. Like, what's the conversation? I told him my version of the story. and he asked more and more questions and I think one of the things that kind of impressed him about me this is I'm going to make a huge assumption here is I explained my logic behind everything and how I looked at the crime itself and told him about my research and he's like you you thought

you put a lot of thought into I'm like yeah you guys are easy to beat on any given day you you approach every crime the exact same way it's a chess game if i know that you're going to lead with your palm out in front and then a night's coming behind it i can figure out of you you can't account for you can't account for the the nine million other things yeah that can go wrong yeah i said i always say whenever people say oh do you ever think about crime I'm like or do you think you could get away with what you did today I always think yeah I can my my problem is you cannot account for the fly in the ointment yeah like you just there's just there's just no accounting for someone screwing up yeah or a mistake or you know in this case like

had had chambers had they gone with the plan let's let's let them sit down there wait a month or give them some money, wait a month or two, bring down a couple million, wait a couple, made another month, bring down a couple more a million, because you never know if you're going to, to me, I'd be afraid. What if I get pulled over by the police?

They search the car if they get the money. I would have been more like, hey, let me bring you a couple million, wait, a couple million, bring you the last million, and you're good. You know, had they done that, then, you know,

maybe you do get caught later. Maybe you go to Costa Rica. Maybe something happens you get caught later, but at least they followed that portion of the plan. Yeah. but you know that but you can't account for what happened with them was from the very get-go they decided to double cross you yeah how are you going to figure that out how do you know that yeah how do you foresee that and i'll i look back on it in hines like if we'd have got that

money into a cayman bank account all of it and you could he'd have lived off the interest easy I think the interest would have been 75, 80,000 a year. There was no inch. 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. that's stupid um almost no one that gets uh goes to federal court almost everybody takes a plea of some sort yeah yeah it's they felt like a what 97% uh conviction rate um unless you got big bucks you can't fight the government no i sort of listen i always say look even if you're guilty you got a 50% chance of being found i mean even if you're not guilty yeah you have a 50% chance of being found guilty oh yeah so so what what did you end up taking what was that

see what 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 a good time 85% or whatever

yeah and do you do all of it and i did all of it and i ended up going back because when i got uh i realized that the halfway house was just an extortion um just to wait for the someone attached to the government to rob you i basically said and i went to i went to my hometown and when i when we got down to jacksonville they arrested me to me right back to butner and i did my the last six months in special housing did you get a home confinement i mean not home sorry you got probation right yeah supervised release yeah how much supervised release two years um and basically um

soon as i got out i got a job and after a while the probation officer didn't didn't even care to see me they had they had so many other basket cases bouncing around that part of flor to that the the dude that's showing up and working every day they didn't they weren't even worried about me yeah that's that's usually yeah usually how it goes if you don't give me problems they don't 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 uh i'm a heavy equipment operator for a construction company in jacksonville um petticoat shm I've been there eight years and I've been in construction for about 15 or 17.

Okay. Yeah, I'm as, 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 Mastermind's movie that they did. And we just picked up our friendship like before. Made 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. He's one of the few, mostly when we think about government employees, We don't think we're highly of them But he was actually out there doing his doing the job that we pay him to do Yeah, it's I was gonna say the the there were there were some nasty

It was that there was one really just nasty FBI agent on my case and you know the other ones were just like they're just it's kind of like the guards Yeah, it's like the guards that are there that are just like when you know I'm sorry it's CEOs when you go to prison like some of them are just complete Sadistic assholes yeah 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 at 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 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

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. Well, okay, so, and now, and so 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 adoption program. 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, their 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 a lot. something I can get behind you know these 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 you know buy a t-shirt whatever and it helps these people it helps these young people I don't mind it right I actually wrote a story about a kid named by Jacob Diaz and he was foster care and when it turned like I want to say 18 or 19 he just they basically were like hey well you know you got to leave next week and yeah

he was like what yeah here's the garbage bag put your stuff in it get out and he was just like he was like actually and his foster family was like he was like like or the where he was staying he was like everybody was really nice to me but nobody had even prepared me that this is something that's happening and he said I guess I should have known that but I like this was my

home and it just one day it was like hey bro like you know next week you're leaving right well what do you mean i'm leaving where am i going i don't know where you're going but you can't stay here can't stay here right you know a lot of those places the the kids they take take in are just a paycheck yeah each kid is valued at whatever and they when that check ends you're they have then 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. You know, a program to help, they can improve that program easily. Yeah, just ease them back into society, you get a job, get a, that there's, what's funny is like there's, it's, there's lots of jobs.

Like, there's lots of jobs and there's lots of jobs that you can make a decent living and, and take care of yourself, you know, but if you don't even know they're out there and you're not being prepared to, to, to. to kind of acclimate yourself into society or ease yourself into society to 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? Yeah. What kind of neighbor do you want coming out of there? Yeah. Do you want somebody that hasn't really changed?

You want somebody, like one of my greatest accomplishments when I was in is, and I had to do it on the slide 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 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 what's what's funny is that people want prison to be hard they people get upset that

i for instance i did an interview with a guy the other day um and somebody in the comment section because the guy didn't 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 grand 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 the 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 going to bitch about, are you bitching because about recidivism

or are you going to bitch because you 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. Or do you, or let him get a, get a job become a paying, taxpaying citizen and not go back to prison. So, you know, pick your battles, bro. Yeah. And he's, he just did 25 years. Is that not enough for you? yeah so but yeah so we talk about that me and this guy uh boziac that it really all not everybody but some of the guys talking and it is it's a the the re-entry program is horrible yeah like like the idea that you know like me getting out of i got out of prison had i not been preparing

the entire time while i was in prison to get out of prison i literally would have gotten out with no money seven months halfway house they're taking what 35 percent yeah of everything gross yeah gross so basically you're making less than a dollar yeah you know now me i was i made it try to make it a game to to to save as much as i could and live you know like i ate the bologna sandwiches every day i ate all the free meals i never paid like you could pay to upgrade and get a hamburger if you want to like I'm not paying nothing yeah so I'm getting the bologna sandwich whatever you give me for free I'm sleeping here I'm buying I'm going to Walmart buying the cheapest stuff and I still got lucky because I happen to have sold an option

and they option re-optioned it and I got a check a couple weeks after I got out I happen to get a check for a few thousand if not I don't know what I would have done oh yeah and I had seven months to prepare but you're starting your entire life over yeah's difficult and if you don't plan at all you're screwed no if you're not a planner and you're not bright enough to know this is coming which most people just aren't no and it's not about being smart it's having well it takes a little but to plan ahead and if you don't if you're not a planner right then you're you're done right and listen and anybody that thinks that there's some counselor in prison preparing you like hey you need to think about this you need listen those counselors don't want to see you at

at all. They despise you. Oh, we, God, yes. And it's obvious, too. It's like, you know, they're like, well, Mr. Gaget, you need to program, but blah, blah, blah. I'm like, you want me to take the GED? I graduated high school. Right. I've

been in the military. I can read right. I can do advanced mass. You've got nothing to offer me. And that they've just all of them. I just, they wanted me to work in Unicorn.

I'm like, I don't owe you y'all a dime. I got angry back at them. I'm like, I don't owe you nothing. I had a counselor one time tell me that because one of my charges was identity theft.

She said, identity theft. She went, you know, she said, I think, she says, I think people like you, oh, identity theft and fraud.

She goes, I think people like you should be strung up by the, by the flagpole. I said, well, thank God they don't do that. Yeah. And she just, you know, and she was, she just, she was just a nasty person. Luckily, over time, she ended up liking me.

But for the first, listen, for the first five years, like five years is a long time. It takes a long time to win someone over. Yeah. You got to be working at it. After five years, she started being civil. Yeah. That's oddly not an uncommon attitude from them. Yeah.

It's like, we should have. probably just shot you. I'm like, maybe you should have it, have been cheaper, but then you'd be out of a job. I was going to say, it's funny because even the guys

we were talking about where I was saying, they just come and it's just a job and they leave, even them, although those are the guards I liked because, you know, they're just enforcing the rules

and they have nothing in it. There's no skin in the game. They're still not going to go above and beyond. No. And the status quo is make sure they don't, you know,

count them, but and that's it like as far as preparing them to go back into society they're like ah they're grown man they're they'll figure it out what they could have figured out how to live and function in society to begin with they probably wouldn't have been here um and i this is kind of weird but i look at is prison people getting out of prison is an untapped resource these people show have shown that they're self-starters a lot of them are natural entrepreneurs Why not harness that? I used to teach the real estate.

You know, the ACE courses? Yeah. I used to teach the real estate one. And I used to go in there and I would say, listen, real estate is the one thing that you guys can train. Because most of them, 85% of the guys in my class were drug dealers. Yeah. I was like, it's the one thing that you got you, that the drug dealers, I said, will exceed that. Yeah.

Because you're hustlers. Yeah. And they understand that. I was helping a buddy of mine do a math class. And we had 20 or 30 former drug dealers. And they were struggling with fractions. I'm like, dude, you guys have dealt. How much is it an eight ball?

Yeah. Oh, that's an eighth. There you go. You've been using fractions your whole life. And once that clicked in their head, man, they took that next math test and blew it out of the water. I used to love, they would say, well, I can't do it. I can't, I can't, I'm not smart enough to figure this out. I'm like, really, you can tell me the starting lineup of the Super Bowl.

You can tell me how much all these people make, how much this actor made or this, this rap star. You can tell me, like, you know the stats for every single person playing in the NBA, but you can't remember this. Stop it, bro. Like, don't give me that shit. Like, that's a cop out. And, you know, eventually, yeah, they, I ended up teaching the, the SLD class and GED. it was the same thing I had a guy that I always think this is tragic I had a guy that had

taken the GED and failed it like twice two or three times not a not a stupid guy yeah like he just he couldn't pass the essay portion so they sat him in a room with me for about a week we wrote multiple essays I gave him a very simple formula he went back and passed the GED and including the essay portion and I was always like like that's great like wow that I did I know so I noticed yourself like I felt great about that he died about two weeks later massive heart attack but you know he you know so it's not a great story yeah it's not a great story but it's but i hear you i hear you yeah um so okay i mean i feel i feel like you know i feel like i've uh i've gotten everything i get

out of you uh what i mean you can you can you think of anything else you want to say or clear up or well I think the biggest thing I learned about prison is if you have to go don't waste your time apply yourself pick up a book

I spent years reading psychology books self-help books and just reading in general from everything from small engine of repair to science and history and

don't be the guy that spends your time living on your bunk did you kind of have a plan for what you figured you were going to do when you get out

I had a general idea that I wasn't going back to North Carolina and I wanted to get away from anything that had to do with security and I wanted to work outside and I just wanted to change my life

and so that's why I started looking at psychology books and self-help books and I had to fix Dave first before that or everything else would fail okay I mean I trust me I feel the same way like when I had a when I started writing like my memoir writing and my memoir writing and my memoir and reading about writing and reading about that the things in your past have helped shape you and reading about that makes you do a lot of self-reflection and to me that's like at that point I had like a I would say it was like a fundamental shift in my attitude I went from it was everybody else's fault to no it's my fault it's my fault I fucked up right and then you have to go okay

Where do I fix this? Right. Why am I a walking can of worms? Right. And then figure it out. Yeah. I have a buddy Pete who always says, you cannot come to prison and continue to behave the way you did prior to prison and not expect to come back.

Yeah. You know, and then that was really, like I took that to heart. And so, yeah, I, and now I'm here with you. This was David Gant's story, and I, one, I appreciate you coming by. obviously. And I appreciate you guys watching and do me a favor. Check out my Patreon. All of the links to my books are in the description box. See ya. I don't know if you guys know this or not, but when I was locked up, I wrote a whole bunch of true crime books. And all of the books are on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, Audible, their e-books. Check out the trailers.

Using forgeries and bogus identities, Matthew B. Cox. one of the most ingenious con men in history, built America's biggest banks out of millions. Despite numerous encounters with bank security, state, and federal authorities, Cox narrowly, and quite luckily, avoided capture for years. Eventually, he topped the U.S. Secret Service's most wanted list and led the U.S. Marshals, FBI, and Secret Service on a three-year chase, while jet-setting around the world with his attractive female accomplices. Cox has been declared one of the most prolific mortgage fraud con artists of all time

by CNBC's American Greene. Bloomberg Business Week called him the mortgage industry's worst nightmare, while Dateline NBC described Cox as a gifted forger and silver-tongued liar. Playboy magazine proclaimed his scam was real estate fraud. And he was the best. Shark in the housing pool is Cox's exhilarating first-person account of his Stranger-than-Fiction story. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Bent is the story of John J. Boziak's phenomenal life of crime.

Inked from head to toe, with an addiction to strippers and fast Cadillacs, Boziac was not your typical computer geek. He was, however, one of the most cunning scammers, counterfeitors, identity thieves, and escape artists alive, and a major thorn in the side of the U.S. Secret Service as they fought a war on cybercrime. With a savant-like ability to circumvent banking security and stay one step ahead of law enforcement, Bozziak made millions of dollars in the international cyber underworld, with the help of the Chinese and the Russians. Then, leaving nothing but a John Doe warrant and a cleaned-out bank account in his wake, he vanished. Bozziak's stranger-than-fiction tale of ingenious scams and impossible escapes, of brazen run-ins with the law and secret

desires to straighten out and settle down, makes his story a true crime con game that will keep you guessing. Bent. How a homeless teen became one of the cybercrime industry's most prolific counterfeiters. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Buried by the U.S. government and ignored by the national media, this is the story they don't want you to know. When Frank Amadeo met with President George W. Bush at the White House to discuss NATO operations in Afghanistan. No one knew that he'd already embezzled nearly $200 million from the federal government. Money he intended to use to bankroll his plan to take over the world. From Amadeo's global headquarters in the shadow of Florida's Disney World, with a nearly inexhaustible

supply of the Internal Revenue Service's funds, Amadeo acquired multiple businesses, amassing a mega conglomerate. Driven by his delusions of world conquest, he negotiated the purchase of a squadron of American fighter jets and the controlling interest in a former Soviet ICBM factory. He began working to build the largest private militia on the planet, over one million African strong. Simultaneously, Amadeo hired an international black ops force to orchestrate a coup in the Congo, While plotting to take over several small Eastern European countries, the most disturbing part of it all is, had the U.S. government not thwarted his plans,

he might have just pulled it off. It's insanity. The bizarre, true story of a bipolar megalomaniac's insane plan for total world domination. Available now on Amazon and audible. Pierre Rossini, in the 1990s, was a 20-something-year-old, Los Angeles-based drug trafficker of ecstasystasy. and ice. He and his associates drove luxury European supercars, lived in Beverly Hills

penthouses, and dated Playboy models while dodging federal indictments. Then, two FBI officers with the organized crime drug enforcement task force entered the picture. Dirty agents, willing to fix cases and identify informants. Suddenly, two of Rossini's associates, confidential informants, working with federal law enforcement, or murdered. Everyone pointed to Rassini. As his co-defendants prepared for trial, U.S. attorney Robert Mueller sat down to debrief Rassini at Leavenworth Penitentiary, and another story emerged.

A tale of FBI corruption and complicity in murder. You see, Pierre Rissini knew something that no one else knew. The truth. And Robert Mueller and the federal government have been covering it up to this very day. Devil Exposed. A twisted tale of drug trafficking, corruption, and murder in the city of angels.

Available on Amazon and Audible. Bailout is a psychological true crime thriller that pits a narcissistic con man against an egotistical, pathological liar. Marcus Schrenker, the money manager who attempted to fake his own death during the 2008 financial crisis, is about to be released from prison, and he's ready to talk.

He's ready to tell you the story no one's heard. Shrinker sits down with true crime writer, Matthew B. Cox, a fellow inmate serving time for bank fraud. Shrinker lays out the details, the disgruntled clients who persecuted him for unanticipated market losses, the affair that ruined his marriage, and the treachery of his scorned wife, the woman who framed him for securities fraud,

leaving him no choice but to make a bogus destruction, call and plunge from his multi-million dollar private aircraft in the dead of night. The $11.1 million in life insurance. The missing $1.5 million in gold. The fact is, Shrinker wants you to think he's innocent. The problem is, Cox knows Shrinker's a pathological liar and his stories of fabrication. As Cox subtly coaxes, cajoles, and yes, Kahn's Shrinker into revealing his deceptions, his stranger-than-fiction life of lies slowly unravels. This is the story Shrinker didn't want you to know. Bailout, the life and lies of Marcus Shrinker, available now on Barnes & Noble, Etsy, and

Audible. Matthew B. Cox is a conman, incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a variety of bank fraud-related scams. Despite not having a drug problem, Cox inexplicably ends up in the prison's residential drug abuse program, known as Ardap. A drug program in name only. Ardap is an invasive behavior modification therapy, specifically designed to correct the cognitive thinking errors associated with criminal behavior.

The program is a non-fiction dark comedy, which chronicles Cox's side-splitting journey. This first-person account is a fascinating glimpse at the survival-like atmosphere inside of the government-sponsored rehabilitation unit. While navigating the treachery of his backstabbing peers, Cox simultaneously manipulates prison policies and the bumbling staff every step of the way. The program, how a conman survived the Federal Bureau of Prisons cult of Ardap, available now on Amazon and Audible. If you saw anything you like, links to all the books are in the description box.