Local

Todd Chrisley stopped from working as chaplain at federal prison for ‘associating with inmates’

ATLANTA — “Chrisley Knows Best” reality star Todd Chrisley is no longer working in the federal prison.

His attorney Jay Surgent told People Magazine that Chrisley was removed from his job as an assistant to the chaplain.

Chrisley is currently serving a 12-year sentence at the federal prison in Pensacola, Florida after being found guilty of fraud in 2022 along with his wife Julie and their accountant Peter Tarantino.

Surgent said Todd Chrisley was removed from his position due to “associating with inmates” who are part of the prison’s Residential Drug Abuse Program.

According to the attorney, Chrisley is “very disappointed and upset that he can no longer participate in the administration of the set-up for religious services at Pensacola, which includes Christian, Jewish, and Muslim services.”

“For privacy reasons, we do not comment on the conditions of confinement for any incarcerated individual, including their work detail assignments,” a representative for the Federal Bureau of Prisons told TMZ, which first reported the news.

The Chrisleys are in the process of appealing their convictions. In June, Julie Chrisley’s sentence was vacated by an appeals court judge but was then reinstated after the case was sent back to the lower court for resentencing last month. The same appeals court upheld Todd’s Chrisley’s conviction.

RELATED STORIES:

Julie is currently serving her seven-year sentence at a federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky.

The Chrisleys were initially indicted in August 2019. Prosecutors said the couple submitted fake documents to banks when applying for loans.

Julie Chrisley sent a fake credit report and bank statements showing far more money than they had in their accounts to a California property owner in July 2014 while trying to rent a home.

A few months after they began using the home, in October 2014, they refused to pay rent, causing the owner to have to threaten them with eviction.

The money the Chrisleys received from their reality television show, “Chrisley Knows Best,” went to a company they controlled called 7C’s Productions, but they didn’t declare it as income on federal tax returns, prosecutors said.

The couple failed to file or pay their federal income taxes on time for multiple years.

The family had moved to Tennessee by the time the indictment was filed but the criminal charges stem from when they lived in Atlanta’s northern suburbs.

Channel 2 Action News first started investigating the Chrisleys in 2017, when we learned that Todd Chrisley had likely evaded paying Georgia state income taxes for several years.

Court documents obtained by Channel 2 Action News showed that by 2018, the Chrisleys owed the state nearly $800,000 in liens.

The couple eventually went to trial and a federal jury found them guilty of bank fraud and tax evasion.

0