Texas influencer Ashley Grayson has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison over a murder-for-hire plot targeting three people – including an ex-boyfriend, a business rival, and someone who trashed her on social media.
Grayson, 35, ran a popular internet-based business from her home in Dallas. She touts herself on Instagram as a bestseller, an eight-figure business coach, course creator, and philanthropist, per the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Tennessee.
According to Fox 4 News, Grayson once claimed to have made $1 million in just 40 minutes.
In 2022, Grayson hit up her friend in Memphis and asked her to fly to Dallas to discuss a “business opportunity.” She then went on to pay her alleged pal and her husband to kill three people for $20,000 per hit, Fox 4 News reported.
“This was a 21st Century crime where online feuds and senseless rivalries bled into the real world, acting US attorney Reagan Fondren said in a press release. “The defendant tried to hire someone to murder a woman over things that happened exclusively on the internet.”
The pal and her husband pretended to agree to her request but instead gave the authorities a video of Grayson offering to pay them an extra $5K to carry out the murder of the Mississippi business rival within the week.
The Memphis couple later sent the influencer a video of police lights from an unrelated incident, claiming they tried to carry out the murder but got caught. They later met with Grayson and were offered $10,000 for their “attempt,” prosecutors said.
“Fortunately, no one was physically hurt in this case, but the victim and her family still felt a severe and emotional impact as the result of the defendant’s actions,” Fondren added.
“The proactive response from the investigating agencies and our prosecutors prevented an even more serious crime from occurring.”
In July 2023, a grand jury in Tennessee indicted Grayson and her husband for the use of an interstate facility in commission of murder-for-hire. The case went to trial in March 2024, where a jury found Grayson guilty but acquitted her husband.
She was sentenced to 120 months in prison and will not be eligible for parole because it was a federal case.
