A Dallas, Texas woman will spend the next 10 years in federal prison after plotting to kill a Mississippi business owner.
Ashley Grayson, 35, was sentenced after being convicted of a murder-for-hire plot. According to court records, Grayson ran an online business and got into an in 2021 got into an argument with a Mississippi woman who ran a similar business. Although the two had never met in person, Grayson suspected the woman of creating fake social media profiles to criticize her business
Grayson, formerly known online as Ashley Massengill, amassed a loyal social media following and parlayed the audience into a multi-million online course business. She built a reputation for flashing luxury cars, purchasing mansions, and making claims such as earning $1 million in 40 minutes online through her “digital course blueprint.”
In 2022, Grayson filed a defamation lawsuit against a financial coach named Derricka Harwell, alleging that a comment Harwell posted under one of Grayson’s Facebook posts was “false, defamatory, and injurious.
In August 2022, Grayson contacted a Memphis woman she knew and asked her to fly to Dallas to discuss a “business opportunity.” The woman and her husband flew to Texas the next month to speak with Grayson and her husband.
She offered the woman and her husband a “business opportunity”. Grayson requested they a kill her ex-boyfriend and a Texas woman who made negative social media posts about her.
She was willing to pay the couple at least $20,000 per killing, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In September 2022, the Memphis woman recorded a FaceTime video call to Grayson where Grayson confirmed she wanted the woman killed as soon as possible and offered an extra $5,000 for the murder to happen within a week.
Later, the Memphis couple sent Grayson a picture of police lights from an unrelated incident under the guise that they had attempted to kill the woman but were unsuccessful. They demanded and received $10,000 from Grayson for the “attempt.”
Ashely then called the FBI saying she was being extorted..
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies began to investigate the case and by July 2023, a grand jury in the Western District of Tennessee returned a one-count indictment against both Grayson and her husband, Joshua. While Joshua was acquitted during a week-long trial in March 2024, Grayson was convicted for her role in trying to get the rival woman killed.
“This was a twenty-first-century crime where online feuds and senseless rivalries bled into the real world,” Acting U.S. Attorney Reagan Fondren said. “The defendant tried to hire someone to murder a woman over things that happened exclusively on the internet. Fortunately, no one was physically hurt on this case, but the victim and her family still felt a severe and emotional impact as the result of the defendant’s actions. The proactive response from the investigating agencies and our prosecutors prevented an even more serious crime from occurring.”
Grayson appears to have deleted her official social media accounts, though some accounts posing as her continue to post old videos in which Grayson made lavish purchases and pointed the audience toward her digital creator business.
After a decade in prison, which will be served without the possibility of parole, Grayson will go into three years of supervised release. This was the maximum sentence for the crime at hand.
