by Jesse O’Neill
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| Former legal scion Alex Murdaugh has been charged for money laundering, computer crimes, breach of trust and forgery. AP Photo/Lewis M. Levine, Pool |
Disgraced South Carolina legal scion Alex Murdaugh was hit with 21 new charges in connection to his massive alleged scam to defraud victims out of $6.2 million.
A state grand jury slapped the 53-year-old with seven new indictments Thursday that contained a slew of charges including money laundering, computer crimes, breach of trust and forgery connected to more than $1 million dollars of theft, according to court documents obtained by The Post.
Murdaugh — who is also facing charges for trying to stage his own shooting death to leave his son a $10 million life insurance payout — was already facing 28 counts in connection to an alleged $5 million theft.
The latest wave of charges allege that Murdaugh created a bank account under the name ” Richard A Murdaugh Sole Prop DBA Forge,” where he deposited money that he stole from clients.
“He created this account for the purpose of misappropriating funds belonging to others with the illusion that the money was being paid to the legitimate settlement planning company Forge Consulting, LLC,” the indictments read.
Murdaugh resigned from the prestigious and influential Hampton County law firm that his grandfather founded over 100 years ago in September and checked into rehab for a decades-long opioid addiction.
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The new indictments came on the same day that the family of Murdaugh’s late housekeeper Gloria Satterfield sued the gunman that the suspended lawyer allegedly hired to kill him.
Satterfield, 57, died after Murdaugh said she tripped over his dogs, but no autopsy was ever conducted and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division opened a criminal investigation into her death this summer after investigators said it was suspicious.
Murdaugh had promised her grown children that he would pay them
$500,000 after suing himself to collect on personal liability insurance,
but instead he collected $4 million and did not give Satterfield’s
family a dime, lawyers alleged.
“From approximately 2015 through 2021 Cousin Eddie received either personal checks from Alex Murdaugh’s individual account and cashier’s checks from the fake BOA two ‘Forge’ accounts totaling approximately $2,000,000.00,” lawyers Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter wrote in a statement to The Post.
Smith, 61, was charged in September after confessing to the botched Labor Day weekend shooting of Murdaugh,
in which the lawyer allegedly hired Smith to kill him so he could leave
his son Buster with $10 million in insurance cash. Smith’s bullet only
grazed him in the head.
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The disgraced attorney’s legal troubles started after Murdaugh’s wife Maggie, 52 and son Paul, 22, were found murdered on their property in June. No suspects or motive have been publicly identified in the case.
Paul had been waiting to stand trial on charges that he drunkenly crashed the family’s boat into a bridge, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach in 2019.
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“Greed, power, betrayal. All the bad things. It’s like a Grisham novel,” Bland told The Post in September. “He doesn’t have to write fiction, he can just come to South Carolina and write the truth.”
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