Convicted killer Alex Murdaugh indicted on another 22 fraud-related charges

Double-murderer and disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh has been indicted by a federal grand jury on another 22 fraud-related charges, including that he cheated his late housekeeper’s estate and insurance carriers out of millions, prosecutors announced on Wednesday.

The ex-lawyer is currently serving back-to-back life sentences for the murders of his son, Paul, 22, and his wife, Maggie, 52. They were found fatally shot on June 7, 2021 near a kennel area on the family’s sweeping “Moselle” hunting estate. He’s also facing another 100 counts stemming from a series of financial crimes, including fraud and money laundering.

The 22 counts returned by a grand jury Wednesday morning are new and mark that latest round of charges against Murdaugh. They include counts of bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, and money laundering, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina.

“Trust in our legal system begins with trust in its lawyers,” U.S. Attorney Adair F. Boroughs said in a statement. “South Carolinians turn to lawyers when they are at their most vulnerable, and in our state, those who abuse the public’s trust and enrich themselves by fraud, theft, and self-dealing will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The latest indictment alleges that Murdaugh “engaged in three different schemes to obtain money and property” from his clients while working as a personal injury attorney at his Hampton law firm. The misconduct occurred from 2005 to 2021 and involved redirecting his clients’ settlement funds to his own accounts as well conspiring with banker Russell Laffitte to commit wire and bank fraud.

Among the alleged victims was Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield and her estate. She died in 2018 after what was initially described as a “trip and fall accident” due to stumbling over some dogs at the family home.

Earlier this month, Murdaugh confessed “he invented the critical facts” about what happened in a bid to collect millions of dollars in a settlement from Nautilus Insurance Co. “No dogs were involved in the fall of Gloria Satterfield,” Murdaugh’s lawyers wrote in response to a lawsuit recently filed by the insurance company. “After Ms. Satterfield’s death, defendant invented Ms. Satterfield’s purported statement that dogs caused her fall to force his insurers to make a settlement payment.”

According to the new indictment, Murdaugh conspired with another personal injury attorney to defraud Satterfield’s estate and redirected millions from the settlement for “his own personal enrichment,” prosecutors said.

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