Alex Murdaugh now facing more than 80 charges, $8.5M stolen: prosecutors
A state grand jury added 23 charges in the case against South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh, who now faces 81 counts and is accused of stealing $8.5 million from wrongful-death and injury suits.
Murdaugh is accused of negotiating settlements on behalf of his clients, then using that money for his own purposes. The new charges against the 53-year-old lawyer include new victims, though the accusations are in the same vein. His alleged crimes date back more than a decade.
Prosecutors contend that Murdaugh gave money orders to an unidentified family members, who turned them into cash.
The once-prominent attorney saw his fortunes change in June when his wife Maggie and 22-year-old son Paul were fatally shot in the family’s home. Murdaugh’s attorneys insist there is no connection between their client’s dealings and those unsolved killings. Paul had previously been charged in connection with the boating death of a 19-year-old woman.
Alex Murdaugh was shot on Sept 4, 2021, an incident he admitted to setting up himself. Investigators believe Murdaugh tried to have himself killed so his surviving son, Robert, would inherit $10 million in life insurance.
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Charges against him include forgery, money laundering and computer crimes.
The Murdaugh family has run a powerful law firm dating back more than a century in the Savannah, Ga., area. Murdaugh’s great-grandfather, grandfather and father were all elected prosecutors.
One indictment filed Friday claims that in 2013, Murdaugh collected more than a dozen checks totaling more than $1.3 million for a man whose wife died in a car crash, then kept the money. He is also accused of collecting nearly $400,000 on behalf of a Black client named Hakeem Pinckney, who was injured in a car accident and died in a rehabilitation center. A lawyer for Pinckney’s family says Murdaugh — who allegedly targets minorities and people with few resources — used those funds to pay down his own debts and enrich himself.
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“Alex gave (his victims) just enough money so they would drop on their knees and say ‘thank you, Jesus’ and took the rest,” Justin Bamberg said.
Previous indictments against Murdaugh list his victims to include a state trooper and immigrants living in the country illegally. Murdaugh’s lawyers say their client’s opioid problems contributed to his actions and that it’s his intention to make things right. He has been fired by the law firm bearing his family name and his law license was suspended.
With News Wire Services
