Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Man Behind The Largest Bank Robbery in U.S. History | Loomis Fargo Bank Heist & Mastermind Movie

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

The Man Behind The Largest Bank Robbery in U.S. History | Loomis Fargo Bank Heist & Mastermind Movie

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. If I do this, I'm going to take enough money so that I won't have to ever come back. 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. Yeah. They're driving expensive vehicles, and the guy's a knucklehead, you know, and somehow or another has come up with all this cash. Yeah. 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 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 or 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 dollars

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 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

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 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 the whole thing so but basically what I typically do is just start at the beginning like I'm not we're not in a hurry or anything so you know like where were you born okay I was born in Gastonia North Carolina and on October 20th, 1969.

Really average upper middle class, lower middle, middle class family, good education, 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 Gastonia 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 a Apache crew chief. All right. Were you in, I mean, did you see any action or? What year was this, by the way? Sorry, let's see that was. 89 or so.

And 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 done in the hilton head island south carolina uh 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 um eventually uh my wife at the time got i usually say she got homesick but we went back to gastonia and there was there was hardly anything for me and one day i saw an ad in the newspaper armored car card top top dollar paid which was a huge fib and uh 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 for the amount for the response 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 um they they rent a credit check on you they do a felony background check they make you take a firearms course and it's it's always amazed me what those guys and ladies get paid to be responsible

for a huge 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 them 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 interested 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 was 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, something, like the guy that loads the machines or something i mean yeah the the ATM people um basic jobs that you found that you would find at armory 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 um and the he does all the paperwork he knows the route forwards and

backwards, those all of his customers, those 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, 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 a team guys usually keep themselves okay um 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 um there's a whole separate crew that uh counts all the money they have a money room and the 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 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 I drove the Hickory run for close to a year. Hickory's a little town up north of Charlotte.

Okay. 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 I ended up becoming a messenger and then later a vault superintendent. What, I mean, what was like layoffs or, was that the layoffs? 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 have never went past that. So, 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 a bad 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 the guy um jemal that I did 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. He said, he scanned them all in. And, like, 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 that 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 goes, it's not in the truck. He goes, are you sure he was? I'm just telling you. Says you're supposed to have eight bags. You got seven. And 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, 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 um i know 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 biking 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 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. One of the things I do remember is we had a messenger. He went all around. He went for like five or six stops on his route.

And I think there was like $175,000 cash. There was a little spot on the back bumper. And this bag, big cloth bag, fit. right in that little nook. Right. And he rode around, I think it was Mooresville. I'm not sure.

But somewhere in western North Carolina, he rode around for like an hour and a half. $175,000 on the back of the bumper of the truck. Did he stop, did it fall off? Did he stop and notice it? When he got to his next stop, he noticed.

And, you know, but it. Wow. I mean, yeah. Well, so, I mean, I know,

you know, I think obviously what they want to do 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 it's super secure everybody's paid well everybody's trained they're all professional but the truth is 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 a an old, they used a 38 special back then and the range is maybe seven, eight feet to the target and it's a huge, it's bigger than life-sized target and you only need to hit about eight out of ten times and you get to, everybody gets to fire a shot gun and it's, it's a really sad joke.

He 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 they show somebody shows up pulls a gun you're in a crowded place to you know give the money immediately do what they say you got a better chance of survival blah blah blah yeah but basically they tell you run away yeah and 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 oh that way you lose that one stop right and then it's Okay. So, I mean, what happened? You're working there and you're working over time. You're not making great pay. You're married. You're, you know, is your wife work? Yeah, my wife at the time worked. Okay. Did you have kids? No, no kids. Okay. 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 will be fine and that that's 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 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 on now for not remembering the guy's name um chambers oh chambers chambers yeah 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'd, 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 and 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 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 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 desperation because I've been, I mean, I'm kind of like in this, I 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, 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 that worries me and 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 um and correct this 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 search 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'd had a superintendent uh or manager threatened threatened

my job and thumb 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'd have to be on the weekend. Probably a Saturday would be easiest. That's when there'll be, you know, back then, Charlotte Vault had a very strict schedule.

It was 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 laughed at me I haven't written a paper check in

that would have been back in 2015 you're hipper than I know I just got out I'm a big I'm a big guy on convenience and utility you know 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. 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 what was that movie? I think it was he, where the bad guy told the cop, see, you. I think I got 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 all. You know, he's got a point. That is one of my favorite movies. 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. Most realistic.

And very realistic. Extremely realistic. Yeah, because 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 mass. 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 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 gonna 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. 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 the, you know, 95% of the country never leaves the United States. 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 walking 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 Loomis 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 a jacksonville branch which is where i live now so um and i've met that guy really he well at the time he was he was little messed up but you met him after oh no i met him like in passing in prison oh okay and i was like okay um but he was a completely different type thing he kidnapped the dude oh i didn't know that yeah it was a miss but i think he beat me by a few million right yeah his was like 18 i want to say because i remember thinking that 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 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 you know you guys hung out together was um when i first started at fargo i was um 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 for it. 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 would, what I would, 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, I'll get $1 or $2 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 were, oh, yeah, that would be great. And I didn't know that they were already planning to vote me off the island. Right. This is like almost 30 years ago? Close to it, yeah. It was a $9.7 years ago. Yeah. That's a ton of money.

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. geez 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 Sank kits 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 an economic they have economic economic citizen yeah um so so what happened

so that day you you just decide hey I'm gonna you're gonna 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. I knew about what

was going to be in the vault and went into work just normal. Right. I think we met one or two more times 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 um 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 very 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 yeah that was it like that's like the worst that's like the worst thing they could say about you but you know he's kind of a loner like so which i guess is to say he's 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, 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 like to be on time it's 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 so you went into work and you 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 and made 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 listening to the company radio for the trucks if they have a problem they call in

and 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 amy times. Are you sure you're going to go through this? Like yeah, don't worry

about me. You know, when I tell you I'm coming out the door, I'm coming out of the door. And finally the truck started coming back and we had a guy that he was a messenger and they had 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 want 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 lockup.

Go out. I see his tail lights going around the corner. I turn back around. Go right back in the building. Disarm the security system. Move my van. And this is kind of where the plan goes to shit. because I had planned on

there was two doors they were all set and one at the back and I was planning on going out the back entrance and for some reason 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 3.5, 4 foot tall, 9 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. 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'd scouted out and found the security bHS tapes and i'd 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 I was going to say they show the footage of that one where they're like I guess when the when eventually you leave and they call in saying something's wrong 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 people start calling in 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 that it's completely wide open when the FBI or the detectives come and the FBI they find that tape

and I guess they had to wait for a manager 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 you know that I'll say 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's 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 a lot. Slowed them in also when they eventually found the truck. Yeah. Law enforcement often questions him, not because he's 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 was in 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, don't put it in the box, the big box of keys. Okay, because I had a box in between the front seats filled with every key in Wells Fargo. Okay. This, we'll come back around to this.

This becomes important later. And I've already got my little bit of money I'm going 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 got an airport. I didn't know at the time that their airport closed at like nine. So I ended up scrapping Plan A, going to 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.

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 or 50,000 their balance okay so you so what what when did you first see that it was on the news um I had to since I was in Mexico I had to actually kind of dig and I found I found a newsstand they had might have been the New York yeah the New York

Times Times and they had it wasn't it didn't make the front page not for them and I found a little blurb about it I thought okay we're good I didn't think it was that big of a story of all right good

I mean I knew the FBI would be after me but I didn't think that I was pretty sure they wouldn't go digging in New Mexico hard right but it it became bigger later right like it didn't it when they started

looking yeah okay and that that takes us back to you know 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, I mean, 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 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 multi-million dollar mansion and paying cash and you go from driving a hoofty

to driving a beamer you go from a cubic zirconium to an actual diamond people notice and this guy tried to pass himself off as a professional 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 their football yeah they knew he wasn't a cowboy from any season yeah he he um his wife was telling him so they actually moved from the small town where they were in they moved to not far yeah from where uh where the loomis building where you'd rob the loomis building and you know and they it was and it was a 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 we 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 chambers wife shoot if I thought you were going to know all these or I would have written a list down 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 start calling saying, or, you know, friends start 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 has 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 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 phone calls and then when they,

and then they had watched long, the FBI officer said, look, we listened long enough that the search warrant is only good for so long. Yeah. That it was about to expire. You know, whatever, whether it was a, 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. They, once they get the money, they forget about maintenance. So, but 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, grabbed the phone and listened 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, 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 him. But you hung up so fast they couldn't get a trace. Yeah. One of the things that's never come out 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. It's one of the extravagances I did. I bought a nice omega, what was it?

Tive Master. My memory stretched then, but it was a nice omega watch. And I'm watching the time every time we talk. And I'm keeping it around two to three minutes. Yeah, I was going to say, like now they'd know where you were immediately. But back then, yeah.

back then it took them time to trace it especially out of the country oh yeah back then um oh 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 what are you waiting for?

Are you waiting for them to figure out how to bring you your money? Yeah. 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. Into Mexico, yeah.

Easy. Going south, easy. Easy as pie. And I'm like, all you had to do is box it up. Send it UPS. Easy, easy. Stick it in a car. They're not stopping cars going into Mexico. You just drive down here. Could have bought a hooty, an old station wagon, bam, whatever. fill it up drove it down done deal forget about me so all right but that's not happening what what

is happening do you know do you um the gist of it is they've had a 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 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 some 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 nonviolent 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 and how did the FBI figure out where you were? I'm not sure exactly, but I'd move down to Cozumel and Playa Del Carmen.

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 um you could hang on just a second you'd hear hear them hang up it go click and then you hear a second click right and the tap would be broken yeah because the the the the line was still live it was really like a second person yeah holding the phone in the same room. Yeah. 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. It 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 and he says you know that this guy is planning on killing you I'm like I was shocked and I tipped the guy handsomely

you were shocked shocked okay I mean because to me it made 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 Gant 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 that 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. But you're not wrong. Yeah. Um, but I don't know, I think I, I took it personal for a long time and I'm working with that.

I'm working, processing through that feeling of disgust. But, well, that's, that's a whole different story. Um, um,

um, um, um, so what, what, what, what, tells you that what do you think are you thinking i'm fucking i'm out of here or um weirdly after this

every time i meet he was calling himself bruno um every time i meet bruno it's in a very public place and i've 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 Playa del 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 they how did that happen um it was weird because it was a very touristy town um during the week there's no gringoes right you know i was an oddball and then when there were

three more gringoes in town it was 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 they thought i was running and they caught me coming back to the hotel and uh the fbii agent comes up says hey mr gant i'm know who you are you're under arrest and that was the beginning of the end so speak um had had um Kelly and everybody already been arrested at that point yeah they had already arrested them um round them rounded them up they were I think they had even got Bruno at the same time I want to say and and I don't know this um I do remember

remember and it's funny because I I only watched a bit a few bits and pieces I'm really remembering this from seeing it 20 years ago I want to say that 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 egg right so he 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 up to a to a local police a police station or did they bring you straight to the airport like they brought me um i spent the night with the mexican

federales and they were going to big air quotes here deport me from Mexico okay and they put me on an airplane flight that just happened to have two FBI agents right so okay so they don't need to extradite you um 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 uh marshals marshals right there in charlotte macklenburg and they put me on the sixth floor which is like their version of max okay um because the story had exploded right um um what so when you know when the did they explain to you hey these guys they're going to kill you oh yeah

uh me and the FBI agent had a long long conference we actually became friends oddly yeah he he seemed like look like 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. 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. If they... 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 what um it 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 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 by my research search 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 poem out in front and then a night's coming behind it I can figure out how to beat your ass you know you can't account for You can't account for the nine million other things 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 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 or a mistake or, you know, in this case, like had, had changed. members, had they gone with the plan, let's let's let them sit down there, wait a month or two, 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. get caught later. Maybe you go to Costa Rica. Maybe something happened you get caught later, but at least they followed that portion of the plan. Yeah.

But you know, 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 look back on it in Heinz, like, if we'd have got that money into a Cayman bank account, all of it. And he could, he lived off the interest easy i think the interest would have been 7580 000 a year there was no inch if you put five million dollars into you know if you put five million

dollars and lived off of 50 thousand dollars you could live for 50,000 dollars in the Cayman islands yeah you might as well be making 300,000 dollars but so okay so so what happened with a you end up taking a plea i mean you can't go to trial yeah 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 right um unless you got big bucks you can't fight the government no i that 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 we're

what did you end up taking what was the last see was it 96 months it's like just a little over six years okay did you take art app was there an art app program a drug program um to knock a year off i'm not no obviously they didn't take it they didn't have it um because they told me oh there's no 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. Do you do all of it? I did all of it.

And I ended up going back because when I got, I realized that the halfway house was just an extortion. Just to wait for someone attached to the government to rob you. I basically said, and I went to my hometown. And when we got down to Jacksonville, they arrested me, took 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 Florida. The dude that's showing up and working every day. They weren't even worried about me. Yeah, that's usually how it goes. You don't give me any problems.

They don't, yeah, they'll leave you alone. They got enough guys giving them problems. I was going to say, so you got what are you doing now? I'm a heavy equipment operator for a construction company in Jacksonville. Petticoat Schmidt. I've been there eight years, and I've been in construction for about 15 or 17. Okay.

Yeah, so, I mean, okay. So have you ever talked to the... I know you did an interview when you got out of... prison yeah um but you know did you have you ever seen the FBI agent or spoke with the FBI agent um I met Mark the FBI agent at the the premiere of mastermind's movie that they did and we just picked up our friendship like before me his wife she was really nice um took a selfie with me um and uh I've I've never wished him in the ill will right yeah I mean he's just you know he just doing his job he's doing his job

And he's one of the few government, mostly when we think about government employees, we don't think real highly of them. But he was actually out there doing the job that we pay him to do. Yeah, it's, I was going to say, the, the, 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 COs.

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 yeah 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 yeah um 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 they was this one that was just a complete jerk. It seems like there's always one, you know?

Yeah, yeah, 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. Um, they've gone through their whole life, uh, bouncing from house to house. A lot of them, you know, and when they turn 18, the, the adoption of 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, this organization works with them, helps them, helps them get their GEDs, get some education, get a 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 something I can get behind you know 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 buy a t-shirt whatever

and it helps these people helps these young people I don't mind it right I actually wrote a story about a kid named 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 or 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 this was my home.

And it's just one day, it was like, hey, bro, like, you know, next week you're leaving, right? 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. You can't stay here. Right.

You know, a lot of those places, the kids that take in are just a paycheck. Yeah. Each kid is valued at whatever. And they... When that check ends. You're, they have no use for you. Yeah.

and in a country like America that this goes on that this happens and our government screws up a lot but this this could be easily fixed you know a program to help they can improve that program easily now just ease them back in a society you get a job get a that there's what's funny it's like there'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 prepare 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, um, kind of acclimate yourself into society or ease yourself into society to just be, 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 what kind of neighbor do you want coming out of there

yeah do you want somebody that hasn't really changed or 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. People get upset that, for instance, I did an interview with a guy the other day and somebody in the comment section, because the guy had ended 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, granted, 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 my thought was the likelihood that he gets an education

and gets out of prison and goes back is very low. 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 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, 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, we talk about that, me and this guy, Boziac, that, really all, not everybody, but some of the guys talking. And it is, it's a, the, the reentry 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% 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 wanted 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 and buying the cheapest stuff. And I still got lucky because I happened to have sold an option. And they re-optioned it, and I got a check a couple weeks after I got out. I happened 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. That's difficult. And if you don't plan at all, you're screwed. Oh, yeah. 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, then 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 to, listen, those counselors don't want to see you at all. They despise you. Oh, God, yes. And it's obvious, too. It's like, you know, they're like, well, Mr. Gaget, you need the program to 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 that 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 um identity theft she went you know she said i think She says, I think people like you, oh, I did any theft and fraud.

She goes, I think people like you should be strung up by the, by the, by the flagpole. I asked her, well, thank God, they don't do that. Yeah. And she just, you know, and she was, she just despot. 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's. started being civil yeah um that's oddly not an uncommon attitude from them yeah it's like we we should have probably just shot you shot you i'm like maybe you should have it been cheaper and but then you'd be out of a job um you know i was 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 um even them although those are the guards i liked because you know they're just enforcing the rules and

they're not they have nothing in it there's no skin in the game they're still still not going to go above and beyond. No. And the status quo is make sure they don't, you know, count them, feed 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'll figure it out.

They could have figured out how to live and function in society to begin with. They probably wouldn't have been here. And this is kind of weird, but I look at, as prison, people getting out of prison is the untapped resource these people show have shown that they're self-starters a lot of them were 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 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 um I was helping a buddy of mine do a math class and we had 20 or 30 former drug dealers and he was they were struggling with fractions I'm like dude you guys have dealt how much is 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, 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 don't give me that shit like that's 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 passed the GED and including the essay portion and uh 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 um so okay i mean i feel i feel like you know I feel like I've gotten everything I can get out of you. I mean, can you think of anything else you want to say or clear up?

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 did you kind of have a plan for what you figured you were going to do when you get out um 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 I had to fix Dave first before that or everything else would fail okay I mean I mean trust me I feel the same way like when I it I had a, when I started writing, like my memoir, writing in 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 too no it's my fault it's my fault I fucked up I screwed up right and then you have to go okay well where do I fix this right why did I fuck why am I a walking can of worms right and then figure it out yeah I have a buddy Pete who always says you 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 yeah took that to

heart and so yeah i and now now i'm here with you this was david gant's story and i want i appreciate you coming by obviously and um i appreciate you guys watching and uh do me a favor check out my patreon all of the links to my books are in the description box see you 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 the books are on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Audible, their e-books, check out the trailers. Using forgeries and bogus identities, Matthew B. Cox, one of the most ingenious conmen 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 Best 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. from head to toe, with an addiction to strippers and fast Cadillacs, Boziak was not your typical computer geek. He was, however, one of the most cunning scammers, counterfeiters, 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. Boziak'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 Services 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 Africans 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 Audubord. Pierre Rossini, in the 1990s, was a 20-something-year-old, Los Angeles-based drug trafficker of ecstasy 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 Rossini. 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 Racini knew something that no one else knew. The truth. And Robert Miller 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 shrinker 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 distress 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, Khan'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 Audubon.

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 first. 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.