Cindy ‘CJ’ Lamprecht faces allegations from donors, nonprofits, state of SC
By Delayna Earley and Mike McCombs
The Island News
In just more than three years in Beaufort, Cindy “CJ” Lamprecht built a castle out of feel-good stories and charity generated by warm messages on a chalkboard in her front yard. On Friday night, June 2, that castle came crashing to the ground.
The subject of a cover story for Beaufort Lifestyle Magazine for the month of May, reaching the pinnacle of what passes for royalty here, Lamprecht deactivated her Facebook pages for The Beaufort Chalkboard and left home just two days into the month of June amid a web of allegations of lies, theft, and fraud.
“She’s in the wind,” Tom Lamprecht, Cindy’ husband, said late Friday night.
Lamprecht, known to the community as The Beaufort Chalkboard Lady, gained prominence due to her chalkboard messages on her front lawn during the COVID-19 lock-down.
But recently, allegations began to surface from members of the community that Lamprecht and the Beaufort Chalkboard’s message were not what they were drawn up to be.
Lamprecht moved to the Beaufort area in 2019 with her husband Tom, and they initially erected the large chalkboard in the front yard of their rental home on Parris Island Gateway in March 2020 to thank first responders and essential workers, according to media reports.
Since then, she has been writing funny or inspirational messages on the board and sharing photos of the chalkboard on her Instagram and Facebook accounts.
(As of late Friday night, the Instagram account – @beaufortchalkboard – and the accounts for her personal page and business page – both called Beaufort Chalkboard – were inactive. Beaufort Chalkboard Facebook pages for Motivational Speaking, Real Estate and Gift Shop remain active but boast just 28 followers between the three.)
It did not take long before Lamprecht was a well-known figure in Beaufort because of her chalkboard, but about 18 months after they first put it up, she became viral after several celebrities, such as Katie Couric, Jennifer Garner and Mariska Hargitay, began sharing her social media posts.
At the time her pages were deactivated, Lamprecht had almost 8,000 followers on Facebook and just more than 6,000 followers on Instagram.
Taking advantage of her reach on social media, Lamprecht began to make posts asking people to donate goods or money to various causes she was claiming to support. She would include her Venmo, Cash App, Zelle and PayPal information as ways for people to send money.
The initial spark
Even a brief look at her social media accounts was enough to know that she had become a beloved member of the Beaufort community. That is until recently, when an article was published about her and her husband in the May 2023 edition of Beaufort Lifestyle Magazine.
Information in the article raised several red flags that caught the attention of members of the community.
In the article, Lamprecht claimed to have formed a new 501(c)(3) with help from her good friend and United Way employee, Amber Hewitt, despite having advertised herself as having a 501(c)(3) many times before the article.
Being named in the article caught Hewitt off-guard, especially because of the nature of her job.
“I have not helped CJ ‘Beaufort Chalkboard’ to form a nonprofit,” Hewitt told The Island News. “Furthermore, I am in no way a part of a nonprofit with her. The articles that have been published as well as any other statements that have been made where she states otherwise are just not true.”
Dale Douthat, CEO and President of United Way of the Lowcountry, said he reached out to Lamprecht to confirm that Hewitt had, in fact, not helped her to form a 501(c)(3), because as an employee of The United Way she cannot do that.
Lamprecht sent a signed statement to Douthat saying that what was said in the article was not factual, and that the author, Karen Snyder, misrepresented what she said.
But after talking with Naomi Forrestall, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Beaufort Lifestyle Magazine, this does not seem to be the case.
“When we do an article on someone, they get final approval of the article before it is published,” Forrestall said. “We do this so that we can avoid misrepresenting people that we write about.”
After Lamprecht was confronted with this information, she said that she never saw the article before print because she was unable to open the file.
Forrestall provided The Island News with an e-mail showing that Lamprecht signed off on the article and said that it was “OK” for publication. She also stated that Lamprecht was adamant that the information about her newly formed 501(c)(3) be included.
Since the article was published on May 1, some members of the community began to ask questions on social media and in interviews with The Island News if Lamprecht is being truthful about having a 501(c)(3) and what she did with the donations that she has previously solicited.
An official investigation
One such concerned citizen contacted the Secretary of State’s office – in South Carolina, the Secretary of State’s office is responsible for the registration of nonprofits – through email to file a complaint with the charities division that Lamprecht was soliciting money and donations as a 501(c)(3) without being registered as one.
The Secretary of State’s office officially opened an investigation into Cindy Linn Lamprecht, aka “Beaufort Chalkboard Lady,” on May 4. It sent her a notice of violation for failure to register as a charitable organization, which she received on May 10 by certified mail, according to Shannon Wiley, General Counsel and Public Information Director for the Secretary of State’s office.
Per the South Carolina Solicitation of Charitable Funds Act, once a notice of violation is issued, an organization has 15 days after receipt of the notice of violation to file a registration statement or any filing that is outstanding, said Wiley.
After receiving the notification on May 10, Lamprecht took to her Facebook page, claiming that the letter was simply pointing out an error in her application. She disparaged any who questioned her.
She repeated this sentiment during an interview with The Island News on Friday, June 2, claiming that she submitted her application for a 501(c)(3) in March of this year and that she submitted the paperwork to correct the error on May 13.
“I sent one in [to the Secretary of State’s office] in March, too,” Lamprecht claimed in the interview. “I never heard back from them.”
Lamprecht never stated what the error was, nor did she supply The Island News with any paperwork or evidence that she had to substantiate her claims.
As of Wednesday, May 31, Lamprecht has never filed an application online or by paper for a 501(c)(3), nor has she responded to the notice of violation from the Secretary of State’s office, according to Wiley.
Additionally, Wiley said that no 501(c)(3) organizations are listed with the IRS or the Secretary of State’s office in South Carolina under the name Beaufort Chalkboard or under TCL Helping Hands of the Lowcountry, which is a name she claims to have used to register her new 501(c)(3) in a May 10 post on Facebook.
According to Wiley, since Lamprecht never responded to the notice of violation, the Secretary of State’s office will be issuing a $2,000 fine to Lamprecht.
“That is the next step in the violation process,” Wiley said, “Once someone gets the fine, they have 30 days to pay the fine and get in compliance, and if not, they will be suspended.”
After the suspension, there is a 30-day right of appeal, but Wiley said if they keep soliciting and they are not in compliance, a court can issue an injunction to make them stop.
To be clear, at this point, Lamprecht had already broken the law. It is illegal to solicit any donations while representing yourself as a charity in South Carolina without having a 501(c)(3).
Follow the money
In the course of researching this story, The Island News has spoken with numerous donors and people involved with area nonprofits who did not want their names published for fear of retaliation from Lamprecht because of her perceived connections with people who wield power and influence in Beaufort County.
Allegations have been made by some of these people that money and donations collected by Lamprecht have not ended up where they were supposed to in a timely manner, and in some cases, not at all.
“But I dropped everything off. Everything,” Lamprecht said when confronted with the allegations. “I have taken boxes, and boxes, and boxes up to Help of Beaufort, Salvation Army, and like I said, I was running stuff up to Amber [Hewitt’s] truck every day.”
While Lamprecht talked about having properly distributed any goods she received, she initially evaded any questions asking about monetary donations.
According to some who gave money to Lamprecht, questions arose when they tried to acquire Beaufort Chalkboard’s employer identification number (EIN) for the purpose of filing her taxes.
When contacted through social media and in direct messages and asked about her EIN number, Lamprecht followed a pattern of making an excuse why she didn’t have it readily available, responding with hostility, then eventually blocking the person on social media.
While it is hard to prove how much she has collected and from whom, The Island News has been able to verify two specific instances when Lamprecht used her social media to solicit donations for a cause and the donations were never delivered.
Missing donations and no answers
In May 2022, Lamprecht posted on her social media accounts asking people to donate money for a large shipment of baby formula that she claimed she could get from a church in Ohio to be distributed between three separate nonprofit organizations in Beaufort – The Salvation Army of the Lowcountry, Help of Beaufort and Erin the Elf.
The nation was suffering from a formula shortage, and local parents were having a hard time finding formula, especially if they needed a specific formula.
In messages to the nonprofit organizations, Lamprecht claimed to have collected nearly $1,500 in monetary donations that would be used to purchase the formula, and they were told that her son, Michael Bear, would be driving the formula down from Ohio to Beaufort.
Spokespeople for Erin the Elf, Salvation Army of the Lowcountry and Help of Beaufort all confirmed that they never received any formula from Lamprecht and there is no evidence that she distributed the formula herself.
That was the last that any of the nonprofits heard about the formula.
Bucyrus Nazarene Church in Bucryus, Ohio is the church that she claimed to get the formula from, and is the same church that members of her family, including her son Michael, attend.
Lead Pastor Ray LaSalle said that he has no knowledge of her purchasing baby formula, and he said that while Bear is a good man, “she is a crook.”
Moreover, Bear said that he has not had any contact with his mother in a decade and he has no desire to be involved with anything including her.
Despite what she had said to involved parties at the time, in the June 2 interview, Lamprecht offered up a different series of events to The Island News.
She claims that she used money she raised to buy the formula from a friend, who she would not name, who works for a formula company and attends a church in Ohio, of which she could not provide the name.
She then said that she that she ended up distributing the formula to low-income families through social workers that she met through her job at Stokes Toyota of Beaufort.
When asked for records and names of social workers that she worked with she responded, “I can look,” but again, never provided any evidence to substantiate her claims.
‘She’s got to be exposed’
More recently, in March 2023, Lamprecht solocited donations on her social media for Sandy Smith of Hampton, S.C., to aid in the exhumation of her son Stephen Smith’s body.
Stephen Smith was a 19-year-old who was found dead on Sandy Run Road in Hampton, S.C. on June 8, 2015, and eight years later authorities re-opened his case in June 2021 and are investigating it as a homicide.
His case was reopened following the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh, for which the patriarch of the family, Alex Murdaugh, was found guilty on March 2, 2023.
Alex’s oldest son Buster has been mentioned in connection to Smith in 2015 case files first unearthed by FITSnews, but Buster has since spoke out against the speculation that he was involved with Smith’s death. Buster has never been named as a suspect or charged with a crime and the investigation into Smith’s death is ongoing.
Screenshots of conversations with Lamprecht that were sent to The Island News, show that she claims to have met with Smith for coffee and had a Zoom meeting with Smith and Mandy Matney, host of the podcast Murdaugh Murders. They allegedly discussed ways to raise money for the exhumation, such as Smith forming a Go Fund Me page.
Additionally, Lamprecht claims to have delivered $900 in donations that she collected directly to Smith three days after meeting with her for coffee.
Not only did Smith say that she has not received any donations from Beaufort Chalkboard, but she has never had any face-to-face contact with Lamprecht outside of a brief meeting at the ceremony for the unveiling of her son’s headstone.
“She did send me a message through messenger and said that a lot of people had wanted to help with Stephen’s exhumation and that she was going to get the money together and that she would pay me,” Smith said. “But then I’ve never heard anything about it.”
Smith said that she does know that her aunt who lives in Alabama did donate through Beaufort Chalkboard because she was hoping to donate before the Go Fund Me page collecting money for the exhumation had been created.
Lamprecht responded to the claim about Smith by saying that she actually donated the money to Smith through her Go Fund Me Page as anonymous and the amount that she donated was actually $600, but there are no anonymous donations for that amount of money and she has not responded to requests for receipts from her donation to the page.
“If she’s doing wrong, she’s got to be exposed,” Smith said.
So, the question then is, what has happened to all the money that Lamprecht has allegedly raised?
Could anyone have seen this coming?
Lamprecht’s life has been on display through social media since she began Beaufort Chalkboard shortly after moving to Beaufort, but how much do people really know about her life before moving here.
Lamprecht grew up in Ohio and, according to court records obtained by The Island News, has an extensive criminal history of financial fraud and theft that began in the early 1990s.
Born as Cindy Linn Lambert in on May 28, 1968, Lamprecht has been married five times.
In addition to Lamprecht, she has gone by the surnames Pitt, Jones, Pollock and Bear.
She has three children, a daughter who goes by the surname Pitt and two sons who go by the surname Bear.
She also uses the pseudonym C.J. Samuels for her series of historical Christian fiction novels.
Under her various aliases, Lamprecht has been convicted of at least 14 felonies for financial crimes and was sentenced to more than three years of jail time, in addition to thousands of dollars in fines and restitution.
According to a court document from an appeal that she filed in 2002, Lamprecht, who went by the name Cindy L. Pitt at the time, was found guilty in Wyndot, Ohio on seven felony counts in March 2001 for stealing, forgery and cashing checks made payable to Bender Communications for $10,247.
For these crimes, she was sentenced to 11 months for the six 5th degree felony convictions and 16 months for one 4th degree felony conviction to be served concurrently, but that sentence was suspended a month later in May 2001 by judicial review and she was released on community control.
Community control is when the freedom of an offender is restricted within the community, home, or noninstitutional residential placement and sanctions are imposed and enforced. It is a punishment typically designed for more serious offenses such as felonies or repeat offenders.
During this time, Lambrecht got a job working for OK Auto Mall in Upper Sandusky, Ohio and by September 2001 she had been arrested again for stealing, forgery and cashing two checks amounting to $1000.
After being arrested, she was charged and convicted with three additional 5th degree felonies, for which she received two 11-month sentences to be served concurrently and a third 11-month sentence to be served consecutively with the 11-month sentence and the previously suspended 16-month sentence.
She appealed the verdict in both cases in 2002, asserting to have a bipolar disorder which she claimed, “constitutes substantial grounds mitigating her criminal conduct,” according to the court document.
Lamprecht argued that the trial court had failed to consider the fact that she suffers from manic episodes brought on by her disorder, but the appellate court upheld the verdict stating that “she was aware of the illness for several years and her criminal activity escalated despite her treatment, therefore causing significant financial harm and jeopardizing other individual careers.”
The appellate court document then states that “her deceptive and dishonest conduct illustrated reflected deliberation and design, was not the impulsive, irrational acts characteristic of manic episodes, and did not appear to be related to her disorder,” and continued to say that Lamprecht was using her mental health disorder as a crutch and excuse for her criminal acts.
When asked for comment about her criminal history, Lamprecht responded by saying, “I haven’t had anything for so many years and I don’t understand why I’m being attacked for that now.”
The gig is up
Until Friday night, Tom Lamprecht was in the dark about his wife’s criminal record, her marriage history and what just what she may have been doing.
But just hours after The Island News spoke with Cindy Lamprecht on Friday afternoon, and shortly after Tom Lamprecht apparently became aware of improprieties on his wife’s part, things began to develop quickly in the unraveling of the Beaufort Chalkboard story.
Just before 7 p.m., Tom Lamprecht called the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) with an escort request.
According to Maj. Angela Viens, Public Information Officer for the BCSO, people typically call for an escort when they feel unsafe or insecure or just want a witness for a variety of reasons, including domestic situations, child custody exchanges and disagreements.
Tom Lamprecht, who spoke to The Island News late Friday night, called the Sheriff’s Office because he had made a decision.
“I literally called the sheriff’s department to get them to come to my house and help me get her out of the house, and she’s on the run,” Tom Lamprecht said.
Tom Lamprecht wanted to make it clear he talked to The Island News because he needed people in Beaufort to know he had known as little about his wife’s enterprises as they had.
“I had nothing to do with it. Did I support my wife and her cause? I did, because I thought that she was doing good things,” Tom Lamprecht said. “And some stuff that she did was good, so yeah, I supported my wife with that. But I had nothing to do with any fraud or any money.”
Because Cindy Lamprecht did not respond to the notification of violation that was sent to her by the Secretary of State’s office, she will now have 30 days to pay a $2,000 fine for soliciting money without a 501(c)(3). The $2,000 fine might be just the beginning of Cindy Lamprecht’s troubles.
She will also be asked to cease and desist the collection of any donations until she has a registered 501(c)(3). That may be a moot point since the biggest Beaufort Chalkboard social media pages were deactivated just before 9 p.m., Friday.
And Tom Lamprecht said he intended to remove the physical chalkboard itself on Saturday, June 3.
According to the Secretary of State’s office, she may also face criminal and civil legal troubles if the allegations are founded and she has been pocketing money she has collected as donations.
“If we receive a report of theft or fraud that occurred within the jurisdiction of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, we will certainly investigate the claim,” Viens said. “If the investigation determines that a criminal act was committed and probable cause exists for an arrest, then we will pursue a warrant(s) for the appropriate statutory violation according to the South Carolina Code of Conduct.”
Dale Douthat with the United Way said that Cindy Lamprecht’s actions affect all nonprofit organizations in the area, of which there are more than 1,600, because people are less likely to donate for fear of fraud.
Amber Hewitt said she considered Lambrecht to be a close friend and trusted her when she said she had a registered nonprofit. And she hopes this is a lesson to everyone to remember to trust, but always verify, something she wishes she had done.
But she was in awe over all that Lamprecht appeared to be doing for the Beaufort community.
“I’m hurt, but more than for myself, I am hurt by what this has done to our community,” Hewitt said. “In the end, I hope that those who trusted in her will recover.”
An emotional Tom Lamprecht, who must now pick up the pieces of his personal life, said, “What bothers me is that people’s trust has been damaged.”
Delayna Earley lives in Beaufort with her husband, two children and Jack Russell. She spent six years as a videographer and photographer for The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette before leaving the Lowcountry in 2018. After freelancing in Myrtle Beach and Virginia, she joined The Island News when she moved back to Beaufort in 2022. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
Mike McCombs is the editor of The Island News and can be reached at TheIslandNews@gmail.com.
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