Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Rich Influencer is in BIG Trouble - The Ashley Grayson Story

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Ashley Grayson, a 35-year-old Dallas-based online influencer known for teaching others how to monetize their skills, orchestrated a chilling murder-for-hire scheme after feuding online with a business rival in Mississippi.

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My whole world is falling apart right now. It's chaos. Watch the Hulu original series. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for Bumno subscribers. Terms apply. So this influencer hates when people talk trash about her online. Her name is Ashley, and Ashley's 32 when this story starts, living in Texas,

and she's a social media influencer who sells courses, teaching people how to make money and repair their credit scores. And I don't know, it all seems very scammy to me. But whatever, it's what she does. And for what it's worth, she claims she's a millionaire. I had a goal for it to be a million dollar company within three weeks. Now, like anyone who sells courses like this, she definitely posts Instagram picks of herself looking wealthy, like shopping and stuff and standing next to nice cars, trying to look like, you know, she's a millionaire.

Now, you would think that people would be happy for Ashley, but apparently not everyone is. Specifically, this woman. Her name's Dr. Derricka. And Dr. Derricka is also an influencer who runs an online business similar to Ashley's, where she helps people repair their credit scores. She also claims she's a millionaire, and she wants to help other people become millionaires. Now, Ashley and Dr. Derricka eventually start beefing.

Allegedly, Dr. Derricka doesn't like her, feels threatened by her success or whatever, according to Ashley. And allegedly, she starts creating some fake social media profiles specifically to trash Ashley and her business. Now, it doesn't really matter if that's actually true what matters is that Ashley is convinced that it's true. She believes this woman is out to destroy her. And this pisses her off real bad.

And she starts talking trash about Dr. Derricka in comments on Facebook. And Dr. Derricka sees all these comments and she doesn't want any internet beef. So she responds by basically saying, fuck you. And she blocks Ashley and she moves on with her day while hoping that Ashley moves on too. Oh, but see, Ashley doesn't move on. Instead, she gets even more pissed off, like, oh, hell no. And she takes the time to create a bunch of fake social media profiles pretending to be other people, and she posts all kinds of awful things about Dr. Derricka on each social media platform.

And when that's not enough, she also straight up doxes her, just puts her address out there for everyone to see. So now, Dr. Derricka is pissed off, and she makes a post telling her follow. that she had to take legal action and file a restraining order against Ashley. Even though she didn't actually file a restraining order, I think she's just trying to make Ashley look bad and look crazy. But then this restraining order post blows up. It apparently gets over 40,000 shares.

So now Ashley is pissed because people think she's a crazy stalker. Plus, she's still convinced Dr. Derricka is out to get her and destroy her career. And so she continues to harass her. harass her for like months, which in turn makes Dr. Derricka really go to the police, like for real this time. And she reports everything and she gets an actual restraining order against Ashley. And so Ashley's like, what the fuck? And she does the only thing left to do. She files a lawsuit against Dr. Derricka for defamation.

And Dr. Derricka, of course, sues her right back for the same thing. And so it seems like all this internet drama will just have to be settled in court. But here's where this all turns into a freaking murder plot. So it's like 2022 now. And this feud is still going on. Ashley still doesn't like Dr. Derricka. She doesn't like the fact that she's being sued by her. And one day, she decides, instead of going through all this legal drama, why not just

hire a hitman to a kid man to a. assassinate her. That'll take care of the problem. And so Ashley reaches out to this woman, Olivia, a woman she's done business with in the past. Why does she think Olivia might be willing to assassinate Dr. Derricka for her? I actually have no idea. But regardless, she reaches out to her, and she offers to fly her out to Dallas, where Ashley lives, to discuss a business opportunity. And Olivia's like, a business opportunity? All right. And so she and her husband, they fly from Tennessee, away to Dallas thinking that they're about to discuss some kind of business deal. So they get there and when they arrive Ashley picks up Olivia from the airport

while Ashley's husband picks up Olivia's husband from the airport and they ride separately in two different cars for some reason. During this car ride Ashley is complaining to Olivia like people have been attacking me online and they're trying to ruin me and my business and I guess Olivia's like okay and Ashley's like, and therefore, I want you to unalive some people for me. And then Ashley tells her the three specific people that she once killed. One of them being Dr. Derricka. The other two people being her ex-boyfriend and also some woman from Texas who posts negative things about her online. I guess she just wants all these people gone so that they can't talk trash about her on the internet

anymore. I don't know. Anyway, meanwhile, while this is going on, in the other car with the two husbands in it, they're having a similar conversation. Now, the price for these three assassinations is around $80,000 for all three. And Ashley tells Olivia that she's ready to pay her to do it. And so later, once Olivia and her husband get back together, they start talking about this business deal that they were just pitched. And, you know, they don't really want to do it. But the idea of making some money does sound kind of nice. And so they come up with a plan to fake the assassination, and rip off Ashley. And so Olivia hits up Ashley, and she tells her that they should only discuss these plans

on FaceTime, because it's safer for some reason. And so they get on FaceTime, and of course, Olivia secretly records the conversation. Here is the recording. It's got her dumb watermark all over it, but this is the actual recording. And so now they have evidence against Ashley in case they need it. Then they move on to the second part of their plan. Fake Dr. Derricka's assassination. And so Olivia and her husband, they get in their car and they drive around town until they find some police cars at a scene with flashing police lights. Then while they're there, they face time Ashley to make it look like they're near a crime scene.

And they're like, hey, we just shot up Dr. Derricka's house, but we didn't get her. And of course, Ashley believes them because, you know, she can see the flashing police lights and hear sirens in the background. And so Ashley agrees to pay them $10,000 for the attempted murder. And so, boom, Olivia and her husband made some easy money. Here's the thing about all this, though. None of these people in this story seem to be very stable. Like, this all seems like petty high school drama that somehow evolved into attempted murder. Although admittedly, the drama is very entertaining to me.

But eventually, as you probably could have predicted, at some point, Olivia and Ashley have some kind of falling out, some personal drama that I'm not privy to and I'm not sure I care about. But the point is that they're now mad at each other. And Olivia decides to really stick it to Ashley by sending her a clip of that face time call that she recorded of her. And Ashley's like, oh, hell no, how dare she record me? And she contacts the FBI to tell them that Olivia is trying to extort her. And so I guess the FBI starts looking into all this, and this, of course, freaks Olivia out because they were all involved in a murder-for-hire plot. And so Olivia goes to the FBI, and she turns over all the evidence that she has that Ashley was trying to assassinate Dr. Derricka.

And so, bam, the FBI arrests Ashley. Also, bam, they arrest her husband. And I don't have a mugshot, but here is a picture of the both of them. And so ultimately, Ashley gets sentenced to 10 years in prison while her husband, he gets acquitted somehow. So no prison time for him.