A Hendersonville man prosecutors call a "serial fraudster" is headed to Tennessee state prison for 15 years, after a trial that started with a bogus luxury boat deal and unraveled into a wider web of forged documents and suspect money moves.
Chase Brodie Brown, 26, pleaded guilty to multiple fraud, theft, and money laundering charges and will serve his new state sentence after he finishes an existing federal term. Investigators say the Tennessee case grew out of a 2024 probe that began when a high-end wake boat paid for with a bad check suddenly came back to haunt its buyers.
What prosecutors say
Sumner County District Attorney Thomas Dean said Brown pleaded guilty to criminal simulation over $60,000, theft of property over $10,000, criminal simulation over $250,000, and money laundering, according to WSMV. Dean said Brown was already on the radar of federal authorities for what he described as elaborate fraud schemes, and that Brown had previously pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in Illinois in 2021 while on supervised release, according to the same report.
The district attorney emphasized that the 15-year Tennessee sentence will run consecutive to Brown's federal time, meaning the state term starts only after his federal sentence is complete.
How the boat sale triggered the probe
According to law enforcement, the case broke open when TNT Water Sports in Hendersonville reported trouble with a sale involving a 2024 Malibu wake boat. Checks used in the roughly $50,000 transaction bounced, and investigators say Brown had used a fraudulent check to obtain the boat, then sold it to a third party who later had to give it up, as reported by Sumner County Source.
That May 2024 report put Hendersonville detectives on alert and led them to dig deeper into Brown's financial dealings. At the time, police and local media said he was initially charged with theft and criminal simulation, and those early counts eventually ballooned into the broader case that landed him the 15-year sentence.
Documents, fake closings and money moves
As the investigation ramped up, authorities executed a search warrant on a storage unit in May 2024. Inside, they found hundreds of financial documents, including what prosecutors describe as a fraudulent check for $380,476.54 that appeared to be closing proceeds from a Madison title company, according to WSMV. The title company later confirmed there had been no such closing.
Investigators also say Brown opened a bank account to park the proceeds from the wake boat sale, then tried to disguise the source of the money by moving funds through Zelle to a then-girlfriend who ran an OnlyFans account. Prosecutors pointed to that pattern as part of a larger effort to conceal where the cash was coming from.
Legal fallout
Brown's guilty pleas under Tennessee law expose him to the full 15-year state prison term, and prosecutors stressed in court that the punishment is stacked on top of his unfinished federal sentence, not alongside it. Court records and local reporting note his prior federal guilty plea in Illinois in 2021, which remains in effect while he now faces the additional state time.
Officials say financial investigators are still working on restitution and other monetary remedies for victims in the case. A timetable for Brown's transfer into Tennessee state custody was not immediately released.
For more on the wake boat deal that first raised red flags for investigators, see earlier reporting by Sumner County Source.
