TODD Chrisley allegedly had an affair with his male business partner years ago. And when their relationship soured, the man is said to have tipped off the cops about the federal fraud charges Todd and his wife Julie are now facing.
In a shocking court development, the reality star was accused of carrying on the affair with partner Mark Braddock in the early 2000’s.
But in addition to being lovers, the two also allegedly teamed up to commit fraud by submitting false bank reports and evading $2 million in taxes.
According to Business Insider, the pair had a personal falling out in 2012, long after the end of their affair, when Todd, now 53, locked Mark out of the office and threatened to have him arrested.
After the falling out, Mark confessed he became vengeful, and sent incriminating information about the Chrisleys to the government and news organizations, tipping them off.
The stars of the USA Network reality series Chrisley Knows Best are currently on trial for evading taxes, and operating a conspiracy to defraud banks by making it appear that they were wealthier than they were.
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Mark, who was given immunity from prosecution, has admitted to helping the husband and wife commit bank fraud, adding that he created some of the fake documents and then submitted them to banks for a big payout.
He even confessed to impersonating Todd on phone calls, allegedly with Todd’s full knowledge.
The scheme seemed to begin to unravel after Todd and Mark started receiving anonymous text messages threatening to expose them for fraud, as well as out their secret affair.
According to Mark’s testimony, the texts said “pay cash and we’ll shut up.”
And that’s what they did.
Mark testified he made four withdrawals of nearly $10,000 each from the business account, for a total of $38,000.
He then allegedly met Todd in a parking garage and gave him the cash “in a little bag” to pay the blackmailer.
SCANDAL
Scandal erupted when reality stars Todd and Julie Chrisley
were accused of evading their taxes from 2008 to 2016.
The reality show pair reportedly turned themselves in to an FBI office in Atlanta hours after they were indicted for federal tax evasion charges in August of 2019.
The couple walked into the courtroom shackled, but walked out “vowing to fight,” WBS in Atlanta reported.
They pled not guilty on all charges and maintained their innocence.
“We stand in our faith, and we stand in what we know is right. We are fortunate to have the counsel that we have, and our family will stick together, and we’ll walk this road because we know that the good Lord will hold our hand and take us through,” Todd said.
HIDDEN HINTS
In a lengthy Instagram post in 2019, Todd told fans the couple fell victim to an ex-employee who somehow convinced federal agents to go after them.
The caption reads: “To get revenge, he took a bunch of his phony documents to the U.S. Attorney’s office and told them we had committed all kinds of financial crimes, like tax evasion and bank fraud,” Todd wrote.
He continued: “That got their attention all right, but once we had a chance to explain who he was and what he’d done to us, they realized it was all a bunch of nonsense and they sent him on his way.”
In August of 2019, Todd and Julie were accused of conspiring to defraud “numerous banks” by giving the institutions false personal financial statements and other information while getting millions of dollars in loans, the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said.
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“Todd and Julie Chrisley are charged not only with defrauding a number of banks by fraudulently obtaining millions of dollars in loans, but also with allegedly cheating taxpayers by actively evading paying federal taxes on the money they earned,” Byung J. Pak, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said.
Lawyers for the couple have denied the allegations laid out in the charges.
