Todd Chrisley

Todd Chrisley
Born:	April 6, 1969 Westminster, South Carolina
Occupation:	Real estate developer, reality television personality
Known for:	Chrisley Knows Best
Charges:	Conspiracy to commit bank fraud, Bank fraud, Wire fraud, Conspiracy to defraud the United States, Tax evasion
Sentence:	12 years in federal prison, 3 years supervised release; $17.8 million restitution (joint with Julie Chrisley)
Facility:	Federal Prison Camp Pensacola
Status:	Released (presidential pardon, May 28, 2025)

Michael Todd Chrisley (born April 6, 1969) is an American real estate businessman and reality television personality. He is best known for Chrisley Knows Best, a USA Network series that followed his family across homes in Georgia and Tennessee. The show ran from 2014 to 2023 and produced the spinoff Growing Up Chrisley.

In 2019, a federal grand jury in Atlanta indicted Chrisley and his wife, Julie Chrisley. Prosecutors said the couple submitted false documents to community banks to obtain more than $30 million in loans, then hid income from their television work to avoid taxes. A jury convicted both in June 2022. In November 2022, U.S. District Judge Eleanor L. Ross sentenced Todd Chrisley to 12 years in federal prison and Julie Chrisley to seven years. The court ordered them to pay $17.8 million in restitution.

Todd Chrisley served at Federal Prison Camp Pensacola, a minimum-security facility in Florida. Julie Chrisley was held at Federal Medical Center Lexington in Kentucky. On May 27, 2025, President Donald Trump announced pardons for both. They were released from custody on May 28, 2025, after serving roughly two and a half years.

Early Life

Todd Chrisley was born on April 6, 1969, in Westminster, South Carolina, a small city in Oconee County in the western part of the state. He moved to the Atlanta area as an adult and established himself in real estate development, building a portfolio of commercial and residential properties across the region. He cultivated a public persona centered on prosperity and Southern refinement, presenting himself and his family as emblematic of a certain style of affluent Southern life. That image would later become the organizing principle of his family's reality television franchise.

Career

Chrisley worked in real estate development and built a portfolio of business ventures in the Atlanta and Nashville areas, regularly presenting an image of extreme wealth to clients, lenders, and the public alike. In 2012, he filed for bankruptcy. Court filings from that case listed close to $50 million in debt against about $4.2 million in assets, a disparity that federal prosecutors would later cite as relevant context for their fraud case.

Chrisley Knows Best premiered on the USA Network on March 11, 2014. The series centered on Todd, his wife Julie, and their children, Chase, Savannah, Grayson, and younger daughter Chloe, and was filmed primarily at the family's homes in the Atlanta suburb of Roswell, Georgia, and later in Nashville, Tennessee. Todd was cast as a fastidious, domineering patriarch preoccupied with appearances, order, and his children's social lives, a persona that proved broadly appealing to cable audiences. The show ran for ten seasons before USA Network ended it in 2023. A spinoff, Growing Up Chrisley, followed adult children Chase and Savannah as they relocated to Los Angeles and later Nashville, airing on USA Network before that series also concluded. The family earned millions from the television franchise during its run, income that would become central to the government's tax evasion case against them.

Federal Case

In August 2019, a federal grand jury in the Northern District of Georgia returned an indictment against Todd and Julie Chrisley. The charges included conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and tax evasion. Their longtime accountant, Peter Tarantino, was charged separately in the tax portion of the case.

Prosecutors described two connected schemes. The first ran from roughly 2007 to 2012. The Chrisleys and a former business partner submitted false documents to community banks in the Atlanta area. The documents included fabricated bank statements, audit reports, and personal financial statements that substantially overstated the couple's assets and net worth. On the strength of those fraudulent papers, the couple obtained more than $30 million in loans from a series of smaller regional lenders.

According to the government, the couple spent the loan proceeds on luxury cars, designer clothing, real estate, and travel, the same lifestyle that Chrisley Knows Best presented to viewers as the natural product of legitimate business success. When portions of the debt could not be repaid, Todd Chrisley filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and walked away from more than $20 million of the outstanding obligations, leaving the defrauded lenders to absorb the losses.

The second scheme involved federal taxes. As Chrisley Knows Best became a commercial success, the couple earned millions through a loan-out production company. Prosecutors said they structured the corporate accounts in Julie Chrisley's name in order to keep the money beyond the immediate reach of the IRS, which had been attempting to collect approximately $500,000 in delinquent taxes owed by Todd Chrisley personally. The couple also failed to file or pay income taxes for several years during the period when the show was generating its largest revenues. Accountant Peter Tarantino was accused of assisting in concealing the income and filing false returns on the couple's behalf.

Trial and Sentencing

The trial opened in May 2022 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta before Judge Eleanor L. Ross. The government presented documentary evidence including the fraudulent loan applications, bank records, tax filings, and testimony from former associates and bank officers who described the fabricated financial documents they had received from the Chrisleys. The defense argued that Todd Chrisley had been framed by a disgruntled former employee who had stolen documents and fed false information to investigators, a claim the jury ultimately rejected.

On June 7, 2022, a federal jury convicted both Todd and Julie Chrisley on all counts of the superseding indictment. The verdict covered conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit tax evasion. Julie Chrisley was additionally convicted of obstruction of justice for submitting false documents to investigators during the course of the inquiry. Tarantino was convicted on two tax-related counts.

On November 21, 2022, Judge Ross sentenced the couple. Todd Chrisley received 12 years in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release. Julie Chrisley received seven years followed by three years of supervised release. The court ordered the two jointly to pay $17.8 million in restitution to the victims of the bank fraud.

Chrisley denied wrongdoing throughout the proceedings and continued to do so after sentencing. He maintained publicly that he had been targeted by a former employee who supplied false information to investigators, and he stated that he felt no remorse because he did not believe he had committed the charged crimes.

Incarceration

Todd Chrisley reported to Federal Prison Camp Pensacola in January 2023. The facility is a minimum-security satellite camp adjacent to Naval Air Station Pensacola in the Florida panhandle, housing male inmates with relatively short sentences or low security classifications. Julie Chrisley was designated to Federal Medical Center Lexington, a Bureau of Prisons medical facility for female inmates in Lexington, Kentucky.

The couple pursued appeals while in custody. In June 2024, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld both convictions in full but vacated Julie Chrisley's sentence on a narrow procedural ground. The panel found that the district court had miscalculated her guidelines range by holding her responsible for the bank fraud scheme from its inception in 2006, when the trial record did not support a finding that she was involved at that early stage. The Eleventh Circuit remanded the sentencing question to Judge Ross.

Julie Chrisley was resentenced on September 25, 2024. Her attorneys argued for a term of no more than five years, citing her role as caregiver and the time already served. Judge Ross reimposed the original seven-year sentence, stating on the record that Julie Chrisley had been a central and knowing participant in both schemes and had not accepted responsibility for her conduct.

The Chrisleys also filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review their case. That petition remained pending when the presidential pardons rendered the litigation moot.

Pardon and Release

On May 27, 2025, President Donald Trump announced that he would grant full and unconditional pardons to both Todd and Julie Chrisley. The couple was released from federal custody the following day, May 28, 2025. Todd departed Federal Prison Camp Pensacola and Julie departed Federal Medical Center Lexington. The two returned to the Nashville area after their release.

The pardons followed a sustained public campaign led primarily by the couple's daughter, Savannah Chrisley, who had assumed care of her younger brother, Grayson, and her niece, Chloe, during the period of her parents' incarceration. Savannah Chrisley spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where she argued that her parents had been the victims of a politically motivated prosecution and praised Trump as someone who would correct that injustice. She also retained legal counsel to formally seek clemency on her parents' behalf.

A White House statement accompanying the pardons described the action as providing a second chance for individuals the administration characterized as having been unfairly targeted by the justice system. After his release, Todd Chrisley again denied having committed the crimes of which he had been convicted. In his first public comments following the pardon, he said he had been found guilty of acts he did not perform, maintaining the position he had held since before trial. The $17.8 million restitution order entered by the district court in favor of the defrauded banks remained a separate civil matter; presidential pardons extinguish criminal liability but do not automatically vacate court-ordered restitution obligations, though the legal status of that order following a full pardon was not immediately resolved in public filings. The family announced plans to return to television following their release.