A South Carolina man and woman were sentenced Thursday in federal court for a cyberstalking scheme that prosecutors said targeted a vulnerable Chick-fil-A employee in Charlotte, stole access to his financial accounts and ended with the victim dying by suicide days later.
U.S. District Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr. sentenced Trysten Anthony Cullon to 41 months in prison and Jade Ashlynn Stone to 27 months after both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit cyberstalking. Federal prosecutors said the harassment campaign lasted only a few days in September 2024, but its effects were devastating. The case matters now because it turned a brief encounter at a fast-food restaurant into one of the more disturbing federal cyberstalking cases in recent memory, with prosecutors arguing that lies, threats and extortion aimed at a man with an intellectual disability pushed him into overwhelming fear about losing his job or going to jail.
According to the U.S. attorney’s office, the scheme began Sept. 5, 2024, when Cullon approached Christopher John Tsoulos while Tsoulos was working at a Chick-fil-A in Charlotte. Prosecutors said Tsoulos, described in court records as a man with an intellectual disability who depended heavily on his family for support, allowed Cullon to use his phone. That moment gave Cullon and Stone what federal authorities later called “unfettered access” to the device, its Apple ID and the financial apps connected to it. Court records said the pair had already created a new Gmail address and a Cash App account earlier that day, a detail prosecutors used to argue the plan had been set in motion before Cullon ever entered the restaurant. Within minutes of getting the phone, according to Law&Crime’s summary of court records, Cullon used it to send Stone urgent messages to come get him, then left the restaurant and returned to the car where she was waiting.
The first phase of the scheme was financial. Prosecutors said Cullon and Stone used the unlocked phone and its stored account access to try to move money out of Tsoulos’ accounts, including Cash App, PayPal and his bank account. Those transfer attempts failed, but investigators said the defendants did not stop there. Instead, they moved to threats. Using the stolen phone, they began sending messages to Tsoulos’ family members demanding money and threatening to spread humiliating false claims about him if they were not paid. One message quoted in court records warned a relative that Tsoulos was a “pervert” and said the sender would tell his employer and other relatives unless compensation was paid. Another message demanded $300 and threatened to ruin and embarrass him. Prosecutors said other false accusations included claims that he harassed girls and paid for sexual pictures. The case shifted there from theft into psychological pressure, with the defendants allegedly using shame and fear as tools when direct financial access did not get them what they wanted.
Federal authorities said that campaign lasted from Sept. 5 through Sept. 8, 2024. In that short span, the government argued, Tsoulos was left facing a barrage of threatening messages built around the things prosecutors believed would frighten him most. The U.S. attorney’s office said he feared he would lose his job or go to jail. On Sept. 8, he died by suicide. Public reporting on the case has differed on some details, including his age, but the broader outline has remained consistent across the federal court record, the sentencing announcement and his obituary: Tsoulos was a well-known Charlotte man whose family support was central to his daily life, and who was remembered by relatives and community members as kind, trusting and deeply connected to the people around him. His obituary described him as a person with a “limitless heart” who had worked both at his family’s restaurant and, more recently, as a host at Chick-fil-A, where service and friendliness were part of how many people knew him.
The courtroom on Thursday was shaped as much by that loss as by the prison terms themselves. U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson said after sentencing that “there was not a dry eye in the courtroom,” a remark that local Charlotte television reporting echoed in describing the hearing’s emotional tone. Ferguson said the defendants preyed on one of the most vulnerable kinds of victims: a man who had shown kindness to a stranger and was then exploited for it. FBI Special Agent in Charge Reid Davis said the couple “intentionally tormented a young man with intellectual disabilities for personal enrichment.” Federal officials also said the defendants were driven by drug addiction, with Ferguson arguing that their need for money led them first to try theft, then to extortion, and finally to a course of conduct that ended in a death. In sentencing them, Cogburn called it a “particularly egregious version” of the crime because the conduct resulted in a victim killing himself, according to the Justice Department.
The legal case narrowed as it moved through court. A federal grand jury first charged Cullon and Stone in December 2024 with conspiracy to commit extortion, cyberstalking and wire fraud. By the time of the guilty pleas in 2025, however, both had admitted only to conspiracy to commit cyberstalking. Stone pleaded guilty in April 2025, and Cullon followed in June 2025. That plea path matters because it shows how prosecutors ultimately chose to frame the case: not chiefly as a theft prosecution, but as one centered on sustained intimidation and emotional coercion. At sentencing, the judge ordered not only prison time but also three years of supervised release for each defendant and restitution of $26,699.65. Federal officials said both remained in custody and would be transferred to the Bureau of Prisons once designated to facilities. No public filing released Thursday suggested that either defendant had withdrawn a plea or challenged the central factual basis that the cyberstalking drove Tsoulos’ suicide.
The case also highlights how modern stalking and extortion can unfold with almost no physical contact after the opening encounter. Prosecutors said the defendants did not need prolonged access to Tsoulos in person once they had control of his phone and access to his accounts and contacts. From there, they could pressure him through family, money apps and the threat of public humiliation at work. That structure gave the case an especially cruel shape. The government’s theory was not that Tsoulos was chosen at random in the abstract, but that he was selected because his vulnerability was visible and exploitable. Local reporting said prosecutors described him as sympathetic and trusting, the sort of worker who would lend a phone to someone asking for help. That detail, more than any technical description of cyberstalking, explains why the case struck such a nerve in Charlotte. The conduct began with a simple act of kindness in a public-facing job and ended with a family planning a funeral.
Tsoulos’ death also left a strong mark outside the courtroom. His obituary said he had once been the “co-owner” of John’s Family Restaurant and later embraced his work at Chick-fil-A as another way to make people feel welcome. That kind of description has helped shape the public memory of the case because it stands in direct contrast to the false allegations prosecutors said were used against him. The gap between who his family says he was and what the defendants threatened to tell others became central to the government’s moral argument at sentencing. For relatives and friends, this was not only a criminal case about money and phone access. It was also about the use of humiliation as a weapon against someone who, in the public record, appears to have been defined by warmth, routine and trust. More than 60 relatives and friends were reported to have been in or around the courthouse for sentencing, a sign of how many people had continued to carry the case long after the original September weekend ended.
Several details, however, remain less clear in the public record than the sentencing itself. The Justice Department’s March 12 release described Tsoulos as 27, while his obituary identified him as 37. Authorities also have not publicly laid out a fuller explanation of why the restitution total reached $26,699.65 or whether it reflects funeral expenses, financial losses, counseling costs or some combination of those categories. Nor did Thursday’s sentencing announcement include a detailed defense account beyond the fact of the guilty pleas. What is clear is the court’s core conclusion: the defendants engaged in a short but severe harassment scheme, and the judge believed prison was warranted because of the devastating outcome. In that sense, the sentencing closed the criminal case’s main chapter, even if it did not resolve every factual point that relatives or the public might still want explained.
By the end of Thursday’s hearing, the federal case had moved from accusation to punishment. The brief encounter at a Charlotte Chick-fil-A had become a matter of prison terms, supervised release and restitution. For Tsoulos’ family, the sentences could not undo the four days between Sept. 5 and Sept. 8, 2024, when prosecutors say the threats spiraled. But the ruling did put an official legal judgment on what happened: a federal court accepted that the conduct was criminal, deeply harmful and grave enough to warrant years in prison. The lasting public image of the case is likely to remain the simplest one — a man at work, lending his phone to a stranger, without knowing how much damage could begin in that moment.
As of Friday, March 13, Cullon and Stone had been sentenced and remained in federal custody awaiting transfer to prison, while Tsoulos’ family continued to measure justice against a loss the court could not reverse. With sentencing complete, the next formal step is their designation to Bureau of Prisons facilities and the start of their supervised-release terms after incarceration.