After Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s star James Timothy Norman was arrested for allegedly orchestrating the murder-for-hire plot that resulted in the death of his own nephew Andre Montgomery, now another man is being charged for fraud in connection the 2016 incident.
The U.S. attorney’s office in St. Louis said Thursday that Norman is also facing separate charges after a grand jury indicted him and Waiel Rebhi Yaghnam on accusations of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, reports the Associated Press. Yaghnam was one of the producers on Nelly’s multi-platinum selling album Nellyville, released in 2002.
Norman’s alleged accomplice, an exotic dancer by the name of Terica Ellies of Memphis, was also charged in the plot to kill 20-year-old Montgomery, the grandson of Robbie Montgomery, on March 13, 2016. The elder Montgomery, who is the mother of Norman, owns the popular St. Louis Missouri restaurant Sweetie Pie’s and starred in the OWN reality show that follows the show until it went off air in 2018 after nine seasons.
An official criminal complaint in the murder-for-hire case states that Norman took out a $450,000 life insurance policy on the younger Montgomery two years prior to his murder. He was the sole beneficiary of this policy.
In the charges announced Thursday, prosecutors claim that Yaghnam and Norman made false statements on those life insurance applications for Montgomery, allegedly lying about the 20-year-old’s income, network and other financial information.
According to U.S. Attorney’s Office, Norman and Ellis are being charged with conspiracy to use interstate commerce facilities in the commission of a murder-for-hire, resulting in death.
Ellis and Norman allegedly communicated through burner phones and it was on one of those phones that Ellis called Norman immediately after finding out that Montgomery had been killed. The authorities found that her phone was near the location where Montgomery was shot at the time of the murder.
Following the call, Ellis took off for Tennessee. Shortly after the murder took place, she started to deposit a total of $9,000 in cash across various bank accounts.
On March 21, 2016, a few days after the murder, Norman began inquiring about the process of collecting his settlement for Montgomery’s demise with the life insurance company.