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A thermos container with log and swag just down the street from the site of one of the most infamous robberies in Charlotte history. Stealth will be needed and please re-hide the cache as well or better than you found it. The clue is a bit of a spoiler, so use it only if you have to!!
Down the street from this cache at 2050. Suttle Avenue is a one-story, unmarked tan building with a high fence surrounding it. This building is the Charlotte offices of a large money storage and security company.
It was at this building on the evening of October 4, 1997, that David Scott Ghantt, an armored car driver and vault supervisor, calmly and methodically loaded 17.3 million dollars - most of it in 20 dollar bills - into a company van and drove away with it. The van was later found a few miles away, with the money missing. Later that same evening, Ghantt took $50,000 (the maximum that could be taken across the border by law without further authorization) with him and left for Mexico, winding up at the popular Yucatan Peninsula resort of Cozumel.
Previous to the heist, Ghantt had struck up a relationship with a fellow employee, Kelly Campbell; they continued to maintain contact even after Campbell left the company. In August 1997, Campbell informed Ghantt about an old high school friend of hers named Steve Chambers, who could assist Ghantt to execute a massive cash robbery of the Money storage vault in one night. Chambers had broached the possibility of a robbery to Campbell earlier in the summer.
The plan was for Ghantt to commit the actual robbery and then quickly leave the country for Mexico - but to leave the bulk of the cash with Chambers. Chambers would then occasionally wire Ghantt money and see to his basic financial needs; when "the heat was off," Ghantt was to re-enter the U.S. and the money would be split up among all of the co-conspirators.
Chambers had no intention of wiring any money to Ghantt and intended to have him killed to keep him from implicating the others. Chambers had told Campbell to do whatever she needed to do to get Ghantt to commit the robbery. Campbell led Ghantt to think she loved him and they would flee to Mexico together, but she actually wanted to make a better life for herself in the U.S.
Although security videotapes clearly showed Ghantt loading the van, his co-conspirators Campbell and Chambers were harder to connect to the crime.
The FBI was inadvertently aided by the gang members' extravagant spending. They all had initially agreed to control their spending for a year or two, in the belief that the government would vigorously track the spending habits of any and all suspects for at least a year before relenting. However, Chambers had no intention of following those rules, believing the FBI would never connect him to Ghantt. He and his wife, Michele, moved from their mobile home in Lincoln County to a luxury house in the wealthy Cramer Mountain section of Cramerton. They kept several furnishings from the previous owners, including a velvet Elvis. They also bought a BMW Z3 with cash and made several large purchases, including a $600 statue of a Native American. Campbell used part of her share of the money to buy a brand new minivan in two cash installments.
An additional tip reached the FBI when Michelle Chambers made a large deposit at a bank. She had previously been making frequent small deposits to avert suspicion. But after one visit, she asked a teller "How much can I deposit before you have to report it to the feds?" followed by "Don't worry, it is not drug money," the bank filled out a suspicious activity report, which ultimately reached the FBI.
Ghantt's spending in Mexico was extravagant at first. He had stayed in a luxury hotel and paid for expensive food and activities such as scuba diving and parasailing. Ghantt reported to Chambers that his supply of money was running low, but Chambers sent Ghantt just $8,000. Ghantt, in order to conserve this money, curtailed his spending. He also took various measures to change his appearance, such as shaving, after a patron at a restaurant pointed out to him that he "looked like the man who robbed a bank of $20 million."
After successfully tracing Ghantt's phone calls, FBI agents and Mexican police arrested Ghantt on March 1, 1998 at Playa del Carmen, a resort near Cozumel. The next day, Steve and Michele Chambers, and Campbell were arrested.
The defendants became the targets of many barbed jokes in Charlotte and across the country, in part because of their extravagant spending. For a time, it was nicknamed "the hillbilly heist" because nearly all of the major players in the case came from small towns around Charlotte. It was later confirmed by the FBI that more than 95 percent of the stolen cash had been located or otherwise accounted for.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Qverpgyl npebff sebz gur sver ulqenag.