Charleston P&C: Sparkle City Sheriff might take pills, among other things
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Ex-Spartanburg sheriff would come to work ‘high as a kite,’ say new records as sentencing looms
- By Christian Boschult cbos...@postandcourier.com
- Jul 6, 2026 Updated 17 hrs ago
Former Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright appeared Oct. 30, 2025, at the G. Ross Anderson Jr. Federal Building and United States Courthouse in Anderson to plead guilty to three federal charges. His sentencing hearing is July 7, 2026, in Greenville. He could face more than three years in prison.
SPARTANBURG — Former Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright would sometimes show up to work “high as a kite,” slurring his words and failing to carry on conversations, according to newly filed federal court records.
He would often buy pills from a street-level dealer while in uniform and carrying his badge and gun. Sometimes he met the dealer in the sheriff's office parking lot.
Wright once asked SCSO Chaplain Amos Durham to write him a blank check for $1,000 that Wright made out to that same pill dealer who was supplying Wright with drugs.
Durham wrote him the check from the Chaplain’s Benevolence Fund, a sheriff’s office account that was set up to help deputies in need. Instead, Wright used the fund to bankroll his drug habit and otherwise spend on himself.
Those and other anecdotes contained in a federal memorandum filed with the court ahead of Wright’s July 7 sentencing hearing paint a fuller picture of his crimes. His co-defendants, Durham and Wright’s cousin, Lawson “L.B.” Watson, are scheduled to appear for their sentencing July 9.
In October, Wright pleaded guilty to three counts: conspiracy to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and obtaining controlled substances through misrepresentation.
While his attorneys, Trey Gowdy and Greg Harris, hope for less time, federal sentencing guidelines for Wright’s crimes call for between 33 and 41 months in prison — or 2 years and 9 months to 3 years and 5 months.
That’s in addition to the $462,866 in restitution Wright has agreed to pay. Court records say Wright has already paid back more than $28,000 to the Spartanburg County Foundation, which held the Chaplain’s Benevolence Fund that Wright stole from.
For the 61-year-old former lawman, a federal prison cell would mark a turning of the tables for a man who spent just shy of four decades in law enforcement and 20 years as the Spartanburg County sheriff.
His attorneys portray him as a remorseful man whose life has been defined by resilience in the face of obstacles, pointing out that he left home at 16 to escape an abusive household, lived in a fire department and never graduated from high school.
In their sentencing memorandum, Wright’s attorneys said his crimes were driven by untreated addiction and were “wholly inconsistent with the life he led before addiction took hold.”
Wright said in a statement after pleading guilty that he had squandered his dream job.
“Not only did I violate the law, but I also broke the sacred trust the people of Spartanburg County placed in me,” Wright said. “I do not have the words to adequately convey my remorse, my apologies, and my regret.”
His attorneys also said Wright voluntarily resigned from office in May, entered an inpatient drug abuse treatment facility before being charged, and continued to follow a recovery program.
While Wright initially took a leave of absence and later resigned for what he said was a “recent health diagnosis,” prosecutors noted in their memorandum that they’d asked Wright to resign when informing him that he could face charges.
“You don’t really take joy in somebody else’s demise, especially somebody that’s got a 37-year law enforcement career,” Nick Duncan, a former Spartanburg sheriff’s deputy who ran against Wright in the 2024 election and who helped bring Wright’s wrongdoing to light, said in an interview with The Post and Courier.
“It sucks that this is how he has ended his tenure,” Duncan continued. “But at the same time, just like he’s done for years, you can pray for someone that they get the help that they need and that they find the right way, but also want justice to be served.”
The beginning of the end
Wright was already addicted to pills, raiding the benevolence fund and using his county credit card on personal purchases well before the 2024 election, when he faced Duncan.
It was before the election that Duncan said he’d heard rumors of Wright’s credit card abuse and drug habit, but wasn’t sure if they were true because it was campaign season.
“People were coming forward and saying, ‘Hey, he’s spending money on this,’” Duncan said. “And then you start hearing about the pills, and they’re like, ‘Well, he also approached me about pills.’ But at that time, it’s also an election, so you have to figure out: Is that just people that are stating speculation, or are they talking truth?”
Not long after winning reelection, Wright hired his son Andy as a deputy, seemingly in violation of state ethics laws, and then promoted the hiring on Facebook. He also fired two deputies who later filed wrongful termination lawsuits claiming they’d been terminated because Wright thought they’d supported Duncan in the election.
Just before the election, Duncan had also managed to get his hands on a couple of Wright’s credit card statements, and charges to Apple.com and Dollar General raised his suspicions.
In September 2024, The Post and Courier used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain more than six years of credit card statements detailing more than $56,000 in spending, including many purchases that appeared personal in nature.
That reporting prompted the State Law Enforcement Division to open an investigation, and it worked jointly with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to examine Wright’s crimes.
The state ultimately declined to pursue charges, reasoning that any sentence Wright would get would be less time than what he would receive in federal court, making a state prosecution moot.
Meanwhile, the federal sentencing memorandum said a tip about Wright’s cousin being on the county payroll without doing work caused Spartanburg County to conduct an audit, “which led to the investigation that brought Wright before this court.” At the time the tip was submitted Jan. 15, 2025, SLED was already investigating.
Duncan also filed an ethics report based on the credit card statements, and the ethics commission has since charged Wright with spending more than $17,000 in public funds on himself between November 2020 and September 2024.
Duncan said he began feeding the ethics investigators tips about Wright’s drug use and the benevolence fund. Soon, he became convinced that the rumors were true as multiple people in the department told him that Wright had asked them for drugs.
“The people he was approaching at the sheriff’s office, they thought that their instances were isolated, that he was only asking them,” Duncan said.
In fact, the practice was widespread.
Wright’s pill addiction
Last year, two former deputies told The Post and Courier that Wright had personally asked them for pain pills. They weren’t the only ones.
The prosecution’s sentencing memorandum details Wright’s pervasive habit of asking for pills from his subordinates — whom he could fire at any time — and from “families experiencing medical hardship.”
For example, after the partner of an employee died of a drug overdose in 2024, Wright asked that employee for pain pills. He asked the same employee for pills again after they had a dental procedure.
After a witness suffered a gunshot wound and underwent several surgeries, Wright asked them for their leftover pills, went to their house and took 147 oxycodone pills under the guise of a drug take-back program, despite wanting the pills for himself.
The federal memorandum said Wright often met people at gas stations and targeted folks post-surgery. He even asked a post-surgery employee to call the pharmacy to ask for refills.
Wright asked another witness to go to one of their parents after a shoulder surgery to ask them for pills, the court filing says. The parent met Wright at a gas station and turned over the pills at his direction.
A dealer who sold to Wright and cooperated with the investigation said at his addiction’s worst, Wright would spend up to $600 a week on pills, often buying them from the sheriff’s office parking lot. Sometimes he would be in uniform.
One employee said that “Wright would show up to work ‘high as a kite,’ slurring his words, and unable to carry on a conversation,” according to the memorandum.
His addiction was the result of opioid pills Wright had been prescribed following multiple surgeries, and it was also due in part to his inability to process the trauma of decades in law enforcement and the abuse of his father, Wright’s attorneys said in their presentencing filing.
“That unaddressed trauma manifested as post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that went untreated until the events of this case forced him to confront it directly and seek help,” his attorneys wrote.
For 30 years, Mary Black Foundation has helped shape the health of Spartanburg
But Wright wasn’t just buying drugs. He was stealing county money to do it.
Wright steals from the chaplain’s Fund
The chaplain’s benevolence fund was set up to help deputies and their families in times of need. But in recent years, deputies who asked for help from the fund were turned away despite ongoing fundraising.
Duncan said he personally knew people who’d asked for assistance but were denied.
“And they were only asking for like $300 or $500,” Duncan said. “And they went to the chaplain and he was like, ‘No, we don’t have any money.’ They’re like, ‘You just had a golf tournament where you should have raised $10,000. Like, where is that money?’”
Federal filings detail two specific cases. In one, a deputy whose wife was in hospice with Stage 4 cancer requested help and was denied. In another, a deputy whose house was wrecked by a falling tree was turned away.
The sheriff’s office and the county frequently promoted the fund on social media and asked for donations. Former deputy Andy Clark, who also ran for sheriff, even organized a 5K to raise money for it.
But according to federal filings, 97 percent of the money the fund brought in from 2022 to 2024 was spent, “much of it by Wright.”
Enlisting Durham in his scheme, Wright withdrew more than $89,000 in cash from the fund from 2018 until his resignation last year, despite a policy prohibiting cash withdrawals. Wright also cut checks from it, including 11 he wrote to himself totaling more than $5,000.
The federal filings say much of the spending was unaccounted for, but a few examples are noted.
For instance, Wright took more than $4,000 from the benevolence fund, ostensibly to pay for a trip to Washington, D.C., to honor a fallen deputy. He and Durham frequently ate out, and more than 80 percent of those bills were charged to the benevolence fund. Wright also diverted money from the fund to pay a criminal informant.
In one instance, he had Durham write a $1,000 check from the fund that Wright made out to his drug dealer.
Durham told investigators that on some days, it felt like all he was doing was going to the bank or the ATM for Wright. “It was so much, I couldn’t keep up,” Durham said.
He wasn’t the only one implicated in Wright’s wrongs.
Watson’s money for nothing
Wright’s cousin, L.B. Watson, worked at the sheriff’s office for years, drawing a paycheck without working and instead using county resources at his own business.
Watson had been a county employee for years before joining the sheriff’s office.
On March 31, 2005, several months after being sworn into office, Wright reclassified a vacant master deputy position to a code enforcement officer and then hired Watson for the role, according to county records.
The new job came with higher pay, but Watson immediately received a raise on top of that because of his “prior experience and expertise,” his personnel file said.
But in recent years, he was rarely seen at the office, despite being assigned to the civil division to serve court papers. Some deputies just thought he was retired. Many others knew he was on the payroll but were too scared to say anything for fear of being fired, the federal memorandum says.
A whistleblower tip to the county in January 2025 blew the scheme wide open.
When investigators from SLED and the FBI began looking into it, more than 20 witnesses confirmed the theft, federal records say. Watson didn’t check his email, didn’t know how to submit a timecard and let his passwords expire all while drawing a public salary of more than $50,000.
At most, Watson was in the office two or three times a year, using his county phone and vehicle for his own personal grading business. But he got away with it, prosecutors wrote, because he was known as an “FOC” — a “friend of Chuck.”
Federal records say Watson and Wright now owe the county almost $350,000 for the theft.
For Duncan, the crimes that were eventually documented in federal court filings weren’t a surprise.
“You kind of have a sixth sense when you meet somebody,” Duncan said. “I got that feeling after I got to know him, but most people don’t know him.”
What awaits Wright at sentencing?
Wright’s sentencing hearing is in federal court in Greenville on July 7, with Durham and Watson appearing two days later.
Wright’s attorneys have asked the court to grant a downward variance, a legal move that can help him get a lighter prison term than what the federal guidelines call for. They pointed to Wright’s long career in public service before addiction, his willingness to get treatment and his acceptance of responsibility after he was caught.
They also point to other South Carolina sheriffs who’ve been convicted and generally received lighter sentences — mostly on state charges. One exception: Chester County Sheriff Alex Underwood, convicted in federal court in 2021 for conspiracy, wire fraud, federal program theft and deprivation of rights, received 46 months.
Finally, they argue that a longer sentence is unnecessary since Wright can never hold office again and isn’t at risk of being a repeat offender.
“A sentence driven solely by Mr. Wright’s former status, rather than by his actual conduct and culpability, would create — not avoid — unwarranted disparity,” they wrote in their memorandum.
The federal government disagrees, arguing that Wright’s status as a former sheriff and the power he held over hundreds of employees were more than enough to argue against a lighter sentence.
While he’s accepted responsibility now, prosecutors wrote, he failed to do so for years, even when confronted by employees. He would tell them it was “his name on the building, not theirs.”
Prosecutors say Wright also claimed his county credit card had been hacked, even though he was the one responsible for using it to make personal purchases.
At a South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy graduation ceremony in January 2025, Wright was already deflecting responsibility for his credit card spending.
“I’ve got some people that couldn’t win the last election against me, thank you Jesus,” Wright said at the time. “The only thing they want to talk about is credit card spending. … Well, I’m here to tell you that that is a done deal. I’ve done nothing wrong whatsoever. Why? Because my integrity means something to me. It’s not just a catchphrase.”
Prosecutors argue that giving Wright a lighter sentence than the guidelines call for would send the wrong message to other public officials who might consider abusing their power the way Wright did.
Wright “used his office to commit the offenses, he led subordinates into their own federal convictions, and he put the many under his command in difficult circumstances as they navigated his addiction and the fraud schemes,” prosecutors wrote.
In his statement after pleading guilty, Wright said he had no excuses for his actions.
“I accept full responsibility,” he said. “I am prepared to accept whatever punishment is meted out by the court.”
Reporter
Christian spent six years in Myrtle Beach before moving to the Upstate. When he's not working, he's reading a book, making a mess in the kitchen or running around Spartanburg.