Dallas influencer sentenced to 10 years in murder-for-hire plot involving social media rival
DALLAS - A Dallas woman who was known for her online courses and business advice was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison after being convicted in a murder-for-hire case.
According to Reagan Fondren, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, 35-year-old Ashley Grayson ran an internet-based business and gained notoriety from her online presence.
On her Instagram account, Grayson called herself a bestseller, eight-figure business coach, course creator, and philanthropist. She claimed she made $1 million in just 40 minutes with an online course teaching others how to turn their own skills into online courses.
However, prosecutors said that in 2021, she had a falling out with a woman from Mississippi who ran a similar business, even though the two had never met in person.
That’s when Grayson contacted a friend in Memphis and asked her to fly to Dallas to discuss a "business opportunity." The Memphis woman and her husband traveled to Dallas in September of 2022 to meet with Grayson and her husband.
Grayson asked the couple to kill three people – her business rival in Mississippi, her ex-boyfriend, and a Texas woman who had made negative comments about her online. She offered to pay them $20,000 for each murder, prosecutors said.
The Memphis couple agreed to the deal, but instead of carrying out the murders, gave police a video of Grayson saying she’d pay them an extra $5,000 to kill the Mississippi woman as soon as possible.
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The couple also sent Grayson a video of police lights from an unrelated incident and claimed they had attempted the murder, but it was unsuccessful. Grayson gave them $10,000 for their attempt, prosecutors said.
The case went to trial in Memphis this past March. Jurors acquitted Grayson’s husband but found her guilty of murder-for-hire.
"This was a 21st-century crime where online feuds and senseless rivalries bled into the real world. The defendant tried to hire someone to murder a woman over things that happened exclusively on the internet," acting U.S. Attorney Fondren said.
Last month, a judge gave Grayson the maximum sentence of 120 months in prison.
She will not be eligible for parole because it was a federal case.