Beattie B Ashmore - Greenville, SC

Mr. Ashmore has been practicing law in South Carolina for over fifteen years. He was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1959. He graduated from the College of Charleston in 1977. After graduating from the University of South Carolina Law School in 1986, he clerked for J. Bratton Davis, the Chief Judge of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of South Carolina. He then clerked for three years for William Thurmond Bishop, the present Chief Judge of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of South Carolina. From 1990 through 1996, Mr. Ashmore was an Assistant United States Attorney in South Carolina. He spent three years in the civil division and three years in the criminal division. His civil division areas of practice included bankruptcy, asset forfeiture, torts, and all areas of litigation. His civil trial experience included wrongful death, medical malpractice, and the forfeiture of drug proceeds.

Mr. Ashmore's trial experience includes dozens of criminal trials as a Federal prosecutor. These cases include bankruptcy fraud, bank fraud and numerous drug offenses including multi-defendant conspiracy cases. Mr. Ashmore submitted numerous briefs to the Fourth Circuit and he has argued before the Fourth Circuit panel on three occasions. He has also argued before the South Carolina Supreme Court and obtained a reversal of a voluntary manslaughter conviction.

Mr. Ashmore has been in private practice since 1996 and has focused on criminal defense, personal injury, and bankruptcy. He has defended an international mining company against nine hundred and seventy-five individual federal lawsuits; an oil company that discharged one million gallons of diesel fuel into the Reedy River in a class action and related criminal case; and a trucking company in an eighteen million dollar settlement of three Federal wrongful death lawsuits. He has defended corporate defendants and their employees in criminal cases ranging from environmental crimes to obstruction of justice charges. He has also represented hundreds of individuals in State and Federal criminal courts. Mr. Ashmore's trial experience in the State criminal courts ranges from driving under the influence to murder. He handled over four hundred State criminal cases in 1997 after being awarded a one year indigent defense contract for Greenville County.

In January of 2000, United States District Judge G. Ross Anderson, Jr., appointed Mr. Ashmore as the Receiver in a $50 million dollar federal criminal case. With the help of the FBI, the Department of Justice and numerous other agencies and individuals, Mr. Ashmore was able to recover $22 million dollars from around the world, including London, Switzerland, and the Bahamas. This money has been disbursed to over nine hundred victims making it the most significant recovery ever achieved in South Carolina.

While in the criminal division of the United States Attorney's Office, Mr. Ashmore prosecuted a number of cases including bank fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, weapons charges, bankruptcy fraud, securities fraud, bank robbery, money laundering, and drug offenses. At the time Mr. Ashmore left in 1996, he was the head of the Upstate Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force. In Mr. Ashmore's last year as an Assistant United States Attorney, he had the highest number of convictions in the State.