[ad_1]
O’FALLON, Mo. (AP) — An investigation into 2016 killing of a man whose grandmother’s St. Louis-area soul food restaurant was the setting for the reality show “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s” has led to fraud charges against his uncle and a man who helped produce a hit album for the rapper Nelly.
The slain man’s uncle, James Timothy Norman, of Jackson, Mississippi, and an alleged co-conspirator, Terica Ellis, of Memphis, Tennessee, were arrested earlier this week on charges alleging they were involved in a murder-for-hire plot that led to the shooting death of 20-year-old Andre Montgomery near a St. Louis park four years ago.
The U.S. attorney’s office in St. Louis announced Thursday that in addition to the murder-for-hire charge Norman was already facing, a grand jury charged him and 42-year-old Waiel Rebhi Yaghnam, of St. Louis, with conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud. Yaghnam, who is not charged in the alleged murder-for-hire plot, is an insurance agent, but in 2002 he was one of the producers of “Nellyville,” which sold more than 6 million copies in the U.S.
Norman, who is a son of Sweetie Pie’s owner Robbie Montgomery, and the victim, who was her grandson, appeared on “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s,” which ran for five seasons on the Oprah Winfrey Network starting in 2011. Robbie Montgomery’s family has not spoken publicly about the charges.
In a news release announcing the new charges, federal prosecutors allege that Yaghnam conspired with Norman to fraudulently obtain a $450,000 life insurance policy on Andre Montgomery. Yaghnam was Norman’s insurance agent at the time.
[ad_2]
Source link