Feud involving lawyer Lin Wood raises ethics questions about Yemassee police chief
The police chief of Yemassee is once again facing questions about his actions, this time in regard to whether he overstepped his bounds in an investigation to curry favor with the town’s newest celebrity resident, prominent lawyer Lin Wood.
Dave Hancock, who says he was responsible for security, surveillance and internet at Wood’s Beaufort County plantations before having a falling out with the attorney, says Yemassee Police Chief Gregory Alexander made several questionable decisions after Wood leveled computer hacking accusations at Hancock.
Hancock’s allegations against police chief Alexander include:
▪ The chief inappropriately obtained a warrant to charge Hancock with felony computer crimes by relying too heavily on information provided by a team of investigators hired by Wood.
▪ The chief waited four months to turn the case over to the S.C. Law Enforcement Division, where cyber crime investigations are often handled.
▪ The chief wrote Wood a letter confirming an active warrant against Hancock. Wood then posted the letter online for his more than 600,000 social media followers.
Hancock has not filed a complaint against Alexander. His lawyer said they want to see the criminal matter resolved before exploring their options.
SLED took over the investigation in July 2021, and it is believed to be ongoing. The agency did not comment beyond confirming it had received the case.
While Alexander secured a warrant signed by a municipal judge, he never used it to charge Hancock. Hancock maintains his innocence
Alexander, citing the ongoing investigation, refused to answer a reporter’s questions about the case, including why he took so long to turn the case over to SLED.
First Circuit Solicitor David Pascoe, speaking generally about computer crime investigations, said a reliance on evidence gathered by a team hired by Wood was not a problem in and of itself as long as someone with computer crimes expertise from police agencies such as SLED or the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office were consulted. “You wouldn’t rely solely on the purported victim’s expert analysis,” Pascoe said.
A spokesperson for SLED, however, said the agency was not involved in the case before Alexander obtained the warrant. And spokespeople for the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, and the S.C. Attorney General’s Office said Alexander never reached out to them.
“The question is whether or not the police chief did a sufficient and independent investigation before he filed the warrant,” said John Crangle, a Columbia lawyer and longtime S.C. government watchdog.
“It’s sort of abnormal for this type of crime to be handled by a police chief and a municipal judge,” Crangle said.
Yemassee resident: Lin Wood
The town of Yemassee, nestled between Hampton and Beaufort counties, began as a 2-mile circle around a historic train station in 1886 and has since grown to around 11 square miles, the town clerk estimated.
About 2.2 of those square miles are Lin Wood’s land.
Wood, a lawyer from Georgia who made a name for himself with high-profile defamation cases, moved to Beaufort County over a year ago after snapping up three historic plantations.
In 2020, he gained a renewed notoriety following unsuccessful lawsuits he filed challenging the 2020 election results in Georgia. He also represented Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse early on in his criminal case.
Wood’s annexation into small town Yemassee seemed to be a win-win for Wood and the town. According to town council member David Paul Murray, there was a “significant” increase in the town’s tax base after Wood was annexed. Beaufort County land records indicate two of his plantations brought in around $74,000 in property taxes last year.
Wood’s plantations have since become a site for political rallies, bed-and-breakfast customers, and weddings. It was also allegedly a spot for a brain trust of conservatives seeking to challenge the 2020 election results, according to a recent ProPublica/PBS documentary.
“Whatever brought him to South Carolina has been a benefit so far for the town and local employment,” Murray said.
For his part, Wood said he did not get any favorable treatment from Alexander. His role was on behalf of his organization #FightBack, which hired a forensic team that found Hancock had intruded into Wood’s computer system, he alleges.
“We gave [the chief] an independent investigation and I’m told by the people that did that investigation that they put a bow on it [finding] that David Hancock was guilty,” Wood said.
Wood maintains that Hancock is an operative hired by the CIA to smear him.
He also stated that Yemassee town officials were the ones to request he become annexed into the town, not the other way around.
“I didn’t get any favorable treatment from Yemassee. [At] the request of Yemassee officials, I allowed them to annex two of my properties into the city of Yemassee to help the city of Yemassee,” Wood said. “The chief of police had nothing to do with that.”
“I don’t know the chief personally,” he said. “I’ve only met with him three or four times.”
Chief Alexander has been campaigning for months in his bid for Hampton County sheriff and will be on the primary ballot June 14.
Wood donated $1,000 to Alexander’s campaign on Christmas Eve last year, according to campaign disclosure reports. It wasn’t included in Alexander’s original campaign filing and was retroactively added in on April 14.
Details of the confrontation
In the spring of 2020, Wood hired Hancock, a former member of the famed Navy Seal Team 6 before sustaining an injury, to work for him. Hancock ran a security consulting firm out of Puerto Rico.
Discontent started brewing between the two men in the fall, according to Hancock. Wood’s organization #FightBack had been raising money for the bail fund of Kyle Rittenhouse. In August 2020, Rittenhouse was jailed and accused of fatally shooting two men in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during street protests over a fatal police shooting of a Black man.
Hancock, who was also executive director of #FightBack at the time, said he became critical of Wood using the raised money for other causes while Rittenhouse remained in jail for 87 days. Wood has disputed the allegation repeatedly online and in news stories.
The tension boiled over on Oct. 21, 2020, when a fight broke out between the men. Hancock alleges Wood punched him twice in the face. Then, Wood briefly took a gun out of Hancock’s holster, according to both men in a police report. Wood denied in the report hitting Hancock.
Hancock said he left the property and was in the process of quitting. Wood maintains he fired Hancock and he was “thrown off” the property.
What would become the central issue between the men was who controlled Wood’s security and internet capabilities on his plantations after the fight. That ultimately led to Wood hiring a forensic team to do an investigation and produce a report and then accusations of hacking against Hancock in March 2021.
About a month later, on the same day Alexander obtained a warrant against Hancock, the chief wrote a three-sentence report with several spelling errors. In it, he justified a criminal charge against Hancock.
“I Chief Alexander after reviewing all the documents that was presented to me it was overwhelmingly more than enough evidence to prove that Mr. David Hancock commited a crime,” he wrote in the report.
“Also that it was proof that Mr Wood was of a loss of more than 20,000 thousand dollars in [sic] resucurring his network and regaining access. On 4-15-21 I obtained a warrant for Mr Hancock arrest for Computer crime first degree. He met every element of the crime and could prove he was there committing it,” he wrote.
Hancock said he didn’t know there was a warrant out for his arrest until June 2021, after Wood posted a letter online that had been written by Chief Alexander.
The letter is dated June 8, 2021, about two months after Alexander obtained the warrant. Hancock said Alexander never made contact with him or interviewed him.
“What chief in any police station gives a personal letter that this person has an active arrest warrant so they could post it all over their social media?” Hancock said.
Wood said he asked for a copy of the warrant for #FightBack’s records. Alexander told him they couldn’t send warrants but wrote him a letter instead, Wood said.
Crangle, the S.C. government watchdog, said the letter isn’t abnormal unless some missing facts or fabrication were later found in Alexander’s investigation.
Alexander’s history
This is not the first time Alexander’s actions have been in question.
As recently as last month, a report from SC news website FITSnews said Alex Murdaugh, the embattled patriarch of the Hampton legal dynasty, wrote a $5,000 check to Chief Alexander around a month after Murdaugh’s wife and son were murdered in June 2021.
The $5,000 check was merely a loan to Alexander’s parents, Alexander told the news outlet. He said he was merely a pass-through for the money. Alexander described Murdaugh as a longtime friend.
Murdaugh is considered a person-of-interest in the double homicide. He is also facing dozens of financial charges for allegedly defrauding clients using checks, loans and different bank accounts.
In 2012, Alexander was found not guilty by a Hampton County jury after he was accused of pocketing more than $10,000 during traffic stops. The money in question was never accounted for.
As to the current case involving Wood and started by Alexander, both Crangle and Pascoe said it’s a good thing SLED has taken over. The agency will be able to definitively find out whether there was any computer tampering and whether the police chief acted properly in bringing a charge, they said.
“The SLED investigation is going to make or break this case,” Crangle said.
This story was originally published April 28, 2022 at 1:21 PM.
