A federal grand jury indicted convicted murderer and former South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh on 22 financial fraud-related charges, including that he cheated his late housekeeper’s estate and insurance carriers out of millions of dollars, prosecutors said Wednesday.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Carolina said Murdaugh, 54, conspired with a personal injury attorney in Beaufort to siphon settlement funds in the death of Gloria Satterfield. The Murdaughs’ longtime housekeeper died in 2018 following what had been described as a “trip and fall accident” at the family home.
Murdaugh is accused of directing the Beaufort attorney to draft checks totaling almost $3.5 million to a bank account that he used “for his own personal enrichment.” Meanwhile, Satterfield’s estate received none of the settlement funds, prosecutors said.
A timeline of Murdaugh’s legal troubles
“Trust in our legal system begins with trust in its lawyers,” U.S. Attorney Adair 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.”
This month, Murdaugh’s lawyers revealed as part of a lawsuit accusing him of life insurance fraud in the death of Satterfield, 57, that he “invented the critical facts” surrounding her initial “trip and fall accident” in order to receive millions of dollars in the settlement.
Nautilus Insurance Co. had filed a suit alleging it was defrauded.
“No dogs were involved in the fall of Gloria Satterfield on February 2, 2018,” Murdaugh’s attorneys said in the legal filing. After her death, Murdaugh “invented Ms. Satterfield’s purported statement that dogs caused her to fall to force his insurers to make a settlement payment.”
Murdaugh’s lawyers, Jim Griffin and Richard “Dick” Harpootlian, said Wednesday that he is cooperating with the federal investigation and “anticipate that the charges brought today will be quickly resolved without a trial.”
Murdaugh was convicted in March in the June 2021 slayings of his wife, Margaret, and younger son, Paul, in a case that grabbed national attention and shattered the immaculate image of the well-connected legal family in South Carolina’s Lowcountry.
The prosecution built a sprawling case based on circumstantial evidence to convince jurors that Murdaugh was guilty, using electronic data and video extracted from the victims’ cellphones to suggest that only he had the motive, means and opportunity to kill his wife and son.
He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
