South Carolina grand juries have slapped seven new indictments on embattled attorney Alex Murdaugh, adding 21 more counts to the 27 he’s already facing.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced the indictments — in three counties — on Thursday, WCIV reported.
The indictments include nine counts of breach of trust, seven counts of computer crimes, four counts of money laundering, and a single count of forgery. They are connected with schemes to defraud victims of more than $1.365 million dollars — bringing the total in both sets of indictments to more than $6.2 million.
Murdaugh is expected in court on Friday for a bond hearing on the first 27 counts, which come from five indictments in five separate counties.
The new indictments charge Murdaugh with
- a scheme to defraud victims of $122,500 in Hampton County,
- a scheme to defraud a victim of $9,569.30 in Colleton County,
- a scheme to defraud a victim of $152,886 in Colleton County,
- a scheme to defraud a victim of $95,000 in Hampton County,
- a scheme to defraud a victim of $150,000 in Beaufort County,
- a scheme to defraud a victim of $750,000 in Hampton County, and
- a scheme to defraud a victim of $95,504.95.
The other five indictments cover schemes to steal money from settlements for four clients and a fifth case in which Murdaugh is accused of conning a friend from law school out of almost $200,000.
Murdaugh also faces criminal charges in a “suicide for hire” scheme, in which he allegedly hired a former client to kill him so his son Buster could claim a $10 million insurance payout, as CrimeOnline previously reported.
Murdaugh’s law license was suspended earlier this year in the midst of multiple investigations and several lawsuits, and he was forced from his lawfirm — founded by his great-grandfather — over financial improprieties.
Some of the lawsuits filed against him are over the alleged fraud schemes and others are over his son Paul’s 2019 boat crash, which killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach. Those lawsuits claim that Murdaugh knew or should have known that Paul regularly used his older brother’s identification to illegally buy alcohol. Paul was awaiting trial on boating while drunk charges related to the crash in June when he and his mother were shot to death at the Murdaughs’ hunting lodge.
Investigators have made no arrests in the murders or identified a suspect, but they have named Alex Murdaugh a person of interest.
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