Chuck Wright of Spartanburg: Guilty Plea, Schemes, and Sentence

Former Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright pleaded guilty on October 30, 2025, to three federal corruption charges: stealing from a charity meant to help his own deputies, keeping a cousin on the payroll for a job he never performed, and obtaining prescription painkillers by lying about where they were going. He faces a recommended 33 to 41 months in federal prison, owes $462,866.06 in restitution, and is scheduled to be sentenced on July 7, 2026, in Greenville. He resigned on May 23, 2025, after state and federal investigators had been circling for months.¹²

What Wright Pleaded Guilty To

Wright was charged by criminal Information rather than grand jury indictment and entered his plea before Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy M. Cain. The three counts:¹

Conspiracy to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, tied to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office Chaplain’s Benevolence Fund.
Conspiracy to commit wire fraud, covering the no-show salary paid to employee Lawson B. Watson from at least January 2021 through March 2025.
Obtaining controlled substances by misrepresentation, covering 147 pills of oxycodone and hydrocodone Wright acquired between May and September 2023 by falsely claiming they were for a department drug take-back program.

The FBI’s Columbia Field Office and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) handled the investigation jointly.¹

How Each Scheme Worked

The Benevolence Fund

The Chaplain’s Benevolence Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit set up in 2002 to help deputies through personal hardship, funded mainly by an annual golf tournament that brought in $10,000 to $15,000 a year. Prosecutors said Wright took more than $89,000 in unauthorized cash withdrawals for travel, hotels, and meals. In one case cited in the government’s sentencing memorandum, a deputy whose wife was in hospice for cancer was denied financial help because Wright had drained the account.³ Wright also used blank checks from the fund to buy prescription painkillers, writing them to his dealer under the pretense that he was paying a confidential informant.⁴ U.S. Attorney Bryan Stirling said: “Stealing from a fund that’s supposed to benefit law enforcement families in their darkest hours is not something that can be condoned.”⁵

The No-Show Cousin

Lawson B. Watson, Wright’s cousin, was hired by the sheriff’s office in 2005. From at least January 2021 through March 2025 he certified full-time hours on his timesheets while performing no actual work. Prosecutors put his total salary and benefits over that stretch at nearly $350,000 and said he used county resources to run a private paving and grading business. The arrangement was described in the sentencing memorandum as an “open secret” among employees who feared challenging the sheriff.³

The Painkiller Pipeline

Wright’s drug use went beyond the 147 pills in the fake take-back scheme. Federal filings say he also offered to collect leftover pain medication from the families of deputies who had died or recovered from illness, then kept the pills for himself.⁶⁷³

What the Sentence Could Look Like

Court filings from June 2026 established a federal sentencing guideline range of 33 to 41 months. Prosecutors and the defense agreed on total restitution of $462,866.06, of which Wright had already paid $28,240 to the Spartanburg County Foundation. He has also given up his law enforcement certifications.⁸⁹

Wright’s defense has asked Judge Cain for a downward variance, requesting a sentence built around substance-abuse treatment, mental-health counseling, random drug testing, community service, and supervised release instead of a long prison term. His lawyers point to no prior criminal history, acceptance of responsibility, and treatment he began before charges were filed. A psychologist, Donna Maddox, diagnosed Wright with post-traumatic stress disorder tied to years in law enforcement, and the defense frames the opioid addiction as stemming from multiple surgeries and job-related trauma. Wright has been sober for more than 16 months, according to his team.¹⁰¹¹

Prosecutors pushed back hard. Their sentencing memorandum called Wright’s conduct a “years-long pattern of corruption” rather than a one-time lapse driven by addiction, and argued that a guideline-range prison sentence is needed to “restore the public’s trust.” The memorandum stated: “When a public official uses his office and authority to commit a crime, the public understandably loses confidence in government.” While acknowledging Wright’s sobriety since the investigation began, the government wrote that “the law applies equally to all.”³ Sentencing is set for July 7, 2026, at the Carroll A. Campbell Jr. Federal Courthouse in Greenville.¹²

State Ethics Charges

Separate from the federal case, the South Carolina State Ethics Commission brought 65 charges against Wright. Sixty-three concern personal use of county funds and allege Wright spent $16,412.80 on a county credit card between November 2020 and October 2024. The itemized list includes 92 packs of cigarettes from Dollar General, more than $1,300 in Apple App Store game purchases, over $5,000 in restaurant bills, electronics from Best Buy including an iPad, and an at-home drug test kit from CVS.¹³ The remaining two charges allege nepotism: that Wright failed to recuse himself from the hiring of his son as a deputy in July 2024. A formal hearing was scheduled for February 2026 in Columbia.¹⁴

The County Wants More Money

Spartanburg County filed a victim impact statement asking for roughly $1.31 million from Wright and his co-defendants, well above the federal restitution figure. The county’s number includes $744,558.59 in salary paid to Wright between 2022 and 2025 (the county argues he could not perform his duties with the necessary “cognitive clarity” while addicted to opioids and stealing from public accounts), $349,885 paid to Watson for unperformed work, $28,240 taken from the Benevolence Fund, and $182,953.28 in election costs tied to filling the vacancy after Wright’s resignation. The county also notes uncalculated costs for hiring bonuses and overtime driven by morale and staffing problems during the scandal, and has filed a separate civil lawsuit seeking taxpayer reimbursement.¹⁵¹⁶

The Co-Defendants

Two former sheriff’s office employees pleaded guilty with Wright on October 30, 2025.

Amos Durham, 61, the department’s chaplain and director of the Benevolence Fund, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, which carries up to five years in prison. He provided Wright with a blank check from the fund that was used to buy prescription drugs. As of April 2026, Durham had requested additional time to review his presentence report, and no sentencing date had been set.¹¹⁷

Lawson B. Watson, 63, who collected the no-show salary, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum of 20 years. He had not been sentenced as of mid-2026.¹

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Former Spartanburg County Sheriff, 2 Employees Plead Guilty to Public Corruption Scheme
2
WSPA. Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright Resigns
3
FOX Carolina. US Attorney Files Scathing Motion After Chuck Wright Defense Requests Leniency
4
FOX Carolina. Former Spartanburg County Sheriff Indicted on Federal Charges
5
Spectrum News. South Carolina News: Chuck Wright Guilty
6
South Carolina Public Radio. Former South Carolina Sheriff to Plead Guilty to Drug-Related Crimes, Stealing From Benevolence Fund
7
WYFF. Former Sheriff Chuck Wright Drug Addiction Sentencing
8
WSPA. Chuck Wright Prison Term Guidelines
9
Spectrum News. South Carolina: Chuck Wright Restitution
10
WYFF. Spartanburg Sheriff Chuck Wright Seeks Lighter Sentence
11
Goupstate. Spartanburg Sheriff Chuck Wright Treatment, Reduced Sentence
12
Goupstate. Chuck Wright Full Sentence Prosecutors
13
FOX Carolina. Ethics Commission: Sheriff Spent Taxpayer Money on Cigarettes, Games
14
WYFF. SC Spartanburg Sheriff Misuse of County Funds
15
FOX Carolina. Victim Impact Statement: Spartanburg County Says Chuck Wright Case Cost Taxpayers $1.31M
16
Goupstate. Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright Sued Over Taxpayer Money
17
FOX Carolina. Co-Defendant in Ex-Spartanburg Sheriff Case Seeks More Time Before Sentencing