Why Todd Chrisley wants a new trial

Prosecutors said they independently obtained through email search warrants electronic versions of the documents recovered in the warehouse search.

The Chrisleys filed a civil lawsuit against one of the state tax investigators and recently settled that case for $1 million. Chrisley was separately found liable for slandering another Georgia Department of Revenue investigator and ordered to pay her $755,000.

Chrisley’s attempt to nix his tax evasion convictions centers on the fact that he and his family members featured on the “Chrisley Knows Best” reality television show were paid via a company called 7C’s Productions Inc. Chrisley said receiving income through a company is a legitimate and standard practice in the entertainment industry, and that there was no evidence the use of 7C’s was unlawful.

Prosecutors claimed the Chrisleys used 7C’s to hide from the IRS the more than $6 million they made from the show, keeping Todd Chrisley’s name off the company and its bank accounts to evade paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding taxes.

Appellate judges are also set to consider Friday whether Chrisley’s wife, Julie Chrisley, should be acquitted on five bank fraud charges and resentenced on five other counts. She is serving a seven-year prison sentence in the case.

Former Atlanta multimillionaires and reality television stars Todd and Julie Chrisley are appealing their bank fraud and tax evasion convictions.

Julie Chrisley, 51, is challenging the $17.2 million restitution that she and her husband were ordered to pay and a related $17.2 million forfeiture ruling allowing prosecutors to take their property.

Prosecutors said the $36 million in bank loans that the Chrisleys fraudulently obtained over several years contributed to the downfall of three Atlanta banks – Alpha Bank & Trust, Haven Trust Bank and Integrity Bank. The couple falsely claimed that Todd Chrisley had $4 million in a Merrill Lynch account, among other things, and targeted community banks that tended not to undertake the due diligence of larger banks, records show.

Peter Tarantino, the Chrisleys’ former accountant who was prosecuted alongside them, is also appealing his convictions. Tarantino wants a new trial on his three tax evasion-related charges, for which he was sentenced to three years in prison and fined $35,000.

The trio were sentenced in September 2022. The Chrisleys began their prison sentences in January 2023. Todd Chrisley is in a minimum security prison in Pensacola, Florida, while Julie Chrisley is at a prison facility in Lexington, Kentucky. Tarantino, 61, started serving his sentence at the federal prison in Montgomery, Alabama, in June 2023.

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