Alex Murdaugh handed 40 more years in jail for stealing from ’needy’ clients including quadriplegic
Alex Murdaugh has been sentenced in federal court to 40 years in federal prison for stealing from clients and his law firm on top of his sentences for murder and financial crimes
Convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh, once a respected lawyer, has been sentenced to 40 years in federal prison in what’s expected to be his final sentencing for fraud which a judge said saw him steal from "the most needy, vulnerable people".
Murdaugh, who shuffled into court shackled in a prison jumpsuit, was sentenced today for stealing from clients and his own law firm. The 55-year-old disbarred lawyer is already serving a life sentence without parole for murdering his wife and son.
Federal agents recommended that Murdaugh should be jailed for between 17 1/2 and just under 22 years. This is like an extra safety net. On top of his two consecutive life sentences for murder, Murdaugh has also been ordered to spend 27 years in jail for financial crimes. He’ll have to serve this if his murder convictions are overturned on appeal.
U. S. District Judge Richard Gergel said on Monday that the federal sentence would run at the same time as the state one. He also hinted he was leaning toward a tougher sentence than suggested because Murdaugh stole from "the most needy, vulnerable people".
This includes a client who became a quadriplegic after a crash, a state trooper injured on duty, and a trust fund for kids whose parents died in a car accident. Judge Gergel said: "They placed all their problems and all their hopes on Mr. Murdaugh and it is from those people he abused and stole. It is a difficult set of actions to understand."
The 22 federal counts are the final charges outstanding for Murdaugh, who three years ago was a successful lawyer negotiating multimillion-dollar settlements in tiny Hampton County, where members of his family served as elected prosecutors and ran the area’s top law firm for nearly a century. Murdaugh will also have to pay nearly $9 million (£7.2 million) in restitution.
Prosecutors asked to give Murdaugh a harsher sentence because FBI agents don’t believe he is telling the truth about what happened to $6 million (£4.8 million) he stole and whether a so-far unnamed attorney helped his criminal schemes. Murdaugh’s largest scheme involved the sons of his longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield. She died in a fall at the family home.
Murdaugh promised to take care of Satterfield’s family, then worked with a lawyer friend who pleaded guilty to a scheme to steal $4 million (£3.2 million) in a wrongful death settlement with the family’s insurer. In all, Murdaugh took settlement money from or inflated fees or expenses for more than two dozen clients.
Prosecutors said the FBI found 11 more victims than the state investigation found and that Murdaugh stole nearly $1.3 million (£1 million) from them. Murdaugh again apologized to his victims at his sentencing Monday, saying he felt "guilt, sorrow, shame, embarrassment, humiliation."
Just like at his previous sentencing, Murdaugh offered to meet with his victims so they can say what they want to say and "more closely inspect my sincerity." He said: "There’s not enough time and I don’t possess a sufficient vocabulary to adequately portray to you in words the magnitude of how I feel about the things I did."
Murdaugh blamed nearly two decades of addiction to opioids for his crimes and said he was proud he has been clean for 937 days. But Judge Gergel scoffed at him blaming drugs.
"No truly impaired person could pull off these complex transactions," the judge said of the maze of fake accounts, juggled checks and money passed from one place to another to hide the thefts for nearly 20 years. Murdaugh was convicted a year ago of killing his younger son Paul with a shotgun and his wife, Maggie, with a rifle.
While he has pleaded guilty to dozens of financial crimes, he adamantly denies he killed them and testified in his own defense. There will be years of appeals in the murder cases.
Convicted killer Alex Murdaugh pleaded guilty to financial crimes in September
Murdaugh has already been sentenced to life for the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul, who were shot dead at the family’s hunting lodge in June 2021
The case has captivated true crime fans, spawning dozens of podcast episodes and thousands of social media posts. It continued its odd twists in the days before Monday’s sentencing hearing.
Lawyers for Murdaugh said an FBI agent who conducted a polygraph test asked Murdaugh if he could keep a secret, then confided he had just examined notorious Dutch killer Joran van der Sloot. Murdaugh failed his lie detector test, say prosecutors who are pushing for a tougher sentence.
He’s pleaded guilty to 22 charges in federal court, each one carrying a maximum of 20 years in prison, with some even having a 30-year maximum. His defence team argues that strange behaviour and odd questions from an FBI agent led to Murdaugh failing the test.
Prosecutors want to keep many of the FBI statements under wraps, as they continue to investigate the missing money and who might have helped Murdaugh steal it. They argue that revealing this information would risk harming an ongoing grand jury investigation.
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