Reality stars Todd Chrisley and wife Julie were indicted by a federal grand jury on Tuesday for tax evasion, as well as other financial crimes, according to the Associated Press.
The indictment was handed down in Atlanta-Georgia Northern District. The Chrisley Knows Best stars’ former accountant, Peter Tarantino, is reportedly facing the same charges.
The night prior to the indictment, Todd, 50, released a lengthy Instagram post where he predicted the news and denied any wrongdoing on behalf of himself and his wife, 46. Instead, he pointed blame at an unidentified ex-employee who he claimed had stolen from his family, created “phony documents,” and forged signatures years ago.
“I’ve never talked about this publicly before, but there’s been a cloud hanging over Julie and me and our entire family for the past seven years. It all started back in 2012, when we discovered that a trusted employee of ours had been stealing from us big time,” he began the post.
While Todd said that he wouldn’t “go into details,” he claimed that the case “involved all kinds of really bad stuff like creating phony documents, forging our signatures, and threatening other employees with violence if they said anything.”
“We even discovered that he illegally bugged our home,” Todd alleged about the man, whom he did not identify. “Needless to say, we fired the guy and took him to court — and that’s when the real trouble started. 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. 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.”
Although Todd believed the case was over, he claims the former employee “persuaded a different set of” U.S. Attorney’s Office investigators to reopen the case.
“So far so good — except that our former employee didn’t give up. Somehow, he persuaded a different set of investigators at the U.S. Attorney’s office not only to reopen the case but also to grant him immunity from prosecution for his own crimes and bring charges against us,” he alleged.
“As a result, it looks like later this week Julie and I are going to be named in a federal indictment charging us with tax evasion and probably a bunch of other financial crimes as well,” he said.
The patriarch added, “We know we’ve done nothing wrong. … I’m telling you all this now because we have nothing to hide and have done nothing to be ashamed of. Not only do we know we’ve done nothing wrong, but we’ve got a ton of hard evidence and a bunch of corroborating witnesses that proves it.”
Shortly after Todd released the statement, daughter Savannah Chrisley left a supportive comment.
“Thank you for being YOU! You have and always will be the glue that holds us all together. God has a much bigger plan for all of us and this is just part of it,” she wrote.
Amid the drama, the father-daughter duo have kept busy planning Savannah’s upcoming wedding to fiancé Nic Kerdiles.
“Wedding planning has been going great,” Savannah, 22, told PEOPLE in June. “My dad has been doing a lot of it. We’re getting it done!”
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