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Months into the multi-agency probe that would eventually send former Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright to federal prison, two Spartanburg County government officials reached out to agents with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED).
The officials, as it was later revealed, were Spartanburg County Administrator Cole Alverson and then-Councilman David Britt. Within 24 hours of their making contact, agents were interviewing each man individually at Tindall Corporation, a concrete manufacturer where Britt had worked since 1988.
By the time those interviews took place in February 2025, the same agents — greenhorn SLED Special Agent Austin Mills and FBI Special Agent Justin Newsome — had already interviewed Wright, who lied to them for more than an hour about the extent of his county credit card spending.
The same duo had also interviewed an administrative assistant whom Wright may have tried to intimidate during her interview. Despite that concern being entered into SLED’s case file, the agency maintains it has no recording of the interview itself.
SLED did, however, turn over 10 of the more than 30 interviews its case file indicates agents took part in, including Alverson’s.
In that recording, Alverson lays out in brutal detail how he came to look into Wright’s distant cousin and eventual co-defendant, Lawson “LB” Watson, who has since become one of the most disputed figures in the saga.
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It all started about a month before his sit-down with SLED and the FBI, Alverson told agents, when the county’s ethics hotline received a tip alleging that Watson, a code enforcement officer with the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office, was a no-show employee being paid for work he did not perform.
The tip triggered an informal inquiry, which almost immediately turned up what Alverson described as multiple “red flags.”
He said that when asked, Chief Deputy William “Billy” Parris declined to produce any records of Watson’s work. A conversation with retired administrative Capt. Mark Berry suggested “something was here.”
Alverson then described a meeting with Britt and Wright himself that proved less than fruitful.
He said the sheriff called Watson a “good worker” and mentioned that Watson had once been in a relationship with a female sheriff’s office employee. During the meeting, Wright called Lt. Todd Floyd and told him to provide Alverson with records of Watson’s work performance.
Floyd quickly got back to Alverson with even worse news. There were purportedly no records documenting Watson’s performance, and Watson “only occasionally came to the office and left notes,” according to Mills’ memorandum of interview.
Asked by agents, Alverson noted that he had only heard rumors of Wright being addicted to pills, and that “maybe LB was involved somehow with supplying him with things.”
“It’s a rumor,” he emphasized. “That’s the only way I would treat that.”
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Months later, Watson was charged alongside Wright and former sheriff’s office chaplain Amos Durham. All three pleaded guilty to federal public corruption charges in October 2025.
More specifically, Wright admitted to conspiracy to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and obtaining controlled substances by misrepresentation. He is now serving 41 months at FCI Lewisburg in Pennsylvania.
Durham admitted to conspiracy to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds and was sentenced to five years of probation.
Watson, meanwhile, admitted to a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. As of publishing, he is serving 16 months at USP Hazleton in West Virginia.
Despite Watson’s guilty plea and accounts like Alverson’s, the limited recordings from SLED’s case file indicate he did, in fact, show up to work.
Write to Andrew Fancher at andy@fitsnews.com.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Andrew Fancher is a Lone Star Emmy Award–winning journalist from Dallas, Texas. He joined FITSNews in 2023 after leaving an NBC affiliate, where he served as on-air talent. His reporting focuses on public corruption in South Carolina, with an emphasis on law enforcement misconduct and abuse of power.
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