Ashley Massengill Grayson and her husband Joshua Grayson have been formally charged by the United States (that is the FBI) in connection to the murder-for-hire plot that the two allegedly hatched. They are facing charges of racketeering and murder under the RICO Act of 1970 and the expectation from many is that the pair will end up spending time behind bars as RICO charges are notoriously difficult to beat, especially without an attorney that adopts an aggressive strategy to challenge the mountain of evidence that will undoubtedly be collected by the federal government. In September 2020 it appeared Ashley Massengill Grayson was a rising star in the entrepreneurial space following her claim of making a million dollars in less than an hour as we previously reported.
According to Yahoo News, a woman named Sherell accused Massengill Grayson of scamming her out of $2,000 and claimed that the million-dollar figure she touted was greatly exaggerated. Sherell also claimed that Massengill got her money from a worker’s compensation settlement and not her actual business. Several other users also claimed that they too were scammed by Massengill Grayson and her husband. Massengill Grayson herself later confirmed that her fortunes changed following a workers comp settlement after she lost a finger working on an assembly line.
On April 4, 2023 Ashley Massengill Grayson petitioned the United States District Court in Oxford Mississippi to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought by Derricka Harwell. In the court documents, it is revealed that FBI agents informed Harwell that Massengill Grayson “on or around” September 26, 2022, that the influencer had attempted to hire a contract killer i.e. a hitman to kill her.
As a result of this very serious threat to her life, the FBI requested and then subsequently placed Harwell under their protection moving her from her home. Harwell makes a number of claims in the lawsuit, chief among them that Massengill Grayson sent her harassing and threatening direct messages on Facebook Messenger, Grayson made an attempt to doxx Harwell, and in an attempt to cover up the murder-for-hire investigation Massengill Grayson is attempting to sue the multiple victims of her alleged murder for hire plot for defamation.
Grayson alleged that she had to get a restraining order placed on Harwell due to defamatory remarks Harwell made on her Facebook page, a post that went viral. The court ruled that there was no merit for Grayson’s motion to dismiss Harwell’s suit and that the two sides of the story are so far apart that another court would have to decide which one of them was telling the truth and which one was lying.
“Ultimately, however, this court suspects that the competing allegations made by Ms. Grayson and Ms. Harwell will prove to be so irreconcilable with each other that it will be left to a jury to determine who is lying and who is telling the truth. This court offers no opinion on this matter, since its role in this case is not to serve as the trier of fact, but merely to determine whether triable fact issues exist. At this juncture, it rather strongly appears that they do.”
