Alex Murdaugh charged with stealing settlement money in housekeeper’s death
Alex Murdaugh’s criminal charges keep stacking up.
The South Carolina lawyer, who has gone from grieving father and husband to alleged criminal mastermind, was taken into police custody again Thursday morning, according to the State Law Enforcement Division.
Murdaugh, who was at a rehabilitation facility in Orange County, Fla., was charged with two felony counts of obtaining property by false pretenses related to the missing insurance payout that was supposed to go to the sons of his family’s housekeeper, who died after falling at the Murdaugh house in 2018.
“Today is merely one more step in a long process for justice for the many victims in these investigations,” State Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel said in a statement Thursday.
Murdaugh has been in the headlines since June, when he arrived home to his Hampton County property to find wife Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, fatally shot.
Since then, according to police and his lawyers, he fell into a drug-fueled depression, eventually trying to stage his own death in order to direct his $10 million life insurance payout to his remaining son, Buster.
The Murdaugh family mysteries: a timeline of murders, cryptic deaths, scandals and power
But the plot failed and South Carolina officials have uncovered more scandals tied to the family, including the death of Gloria Satterfield, who worked as a housekeeper and nanny for the Murdaughs for decades.
According to a lawsuit filed by Satterfield’s son, Murdaugh had the insurance payouts for her death diverted to himself, aided by a longtime friend who he suggested to the children to represent them legally.
The lawyer, Cory Fleming, filed two separate insurance claims, the first for $505,000 and the second for $3.8 million, according to The State. Her sons were supposed to get $2.7 million of that but claim they never saw a penny.
Murdaugh was taken to Orange County Corrections and is expected to be extradited back to South Carolina.
The legal scion’s own law firm, started by his great-grandfather in 1910, sued him last week, accusing him of stealing money by “disguising disbursements from settlements as payments” to a fraudulent Bank of America account.
The lawsuit did not say how much money Murdaugh allegedly stole, but claimed the scheme had been going on for “several years,” despite Harpootlian’s previous claims that Murdaugh only stole money to buy drugs after Maggie and Paul died.
The checks that were allegedly deposited into Murdaugh’s account were written out to “Forge,” the same name written on the insurance payouts that were supposed to go to Satterfield’s sons.
Murdaugh, who is undergoing rehab for opiate addiction, had his law license temporarily suspended.
