Alex Murdaugh pleads the fifth, refuses to incriminate himself in law firm embezzlement case

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Alex Murdaugh's attorney admits disgraced lawyer knows he's going to jail

Criminal defense attorney Brian Claypool reacts to the latest development in the Murdaugh family murder mystery saga

Alex Murdaugh, a disgraced attorney and former volunteer prosecutor from a powerful Democratic South Carolina legal family, pleaded the fifth last week, refusing to incriminate himself in a lawsuit alleging he embezzled millions from a prominent law firm founded by his great-grandfather. 

The motion filed Friday in Colleton County says Murdaugh admits to the allegations contained in the first three paragraphs of the complaint, which essentially just establish Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick, P.A., or PMPED, as a law firm with offices in Hampton, Colleton, and Jasper counties. Murdaugh is a citizen and resident of Colleton County, and Murdaugh was an employee and shareholder of PMPED prior to Sept. 3. 

But as for paragraphs 4 through 36, Murdaugh "asserts his privilege against self-incrimination guaranteed by the United States and South Carolina constitutions and respectfully refuses not to answer," his lawyers, Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian, wrote. The decision to plead the fifth means Murdaugh will not immediately have to answer to the details surrounding his disgraced departure from the law firm – as well as its timing, as Murdaugh resigned a day before allegedly orchestrating his own botched suicide over Labor Day weekend so his son could collection $10 million in life insurance. 

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The complaint filed on behalf of PMPED alleges Murdaugh was converting client and law firm money to his own personal use via a fraudulent Bank of America account without authorization. The name of the account was "Alexander Murdaugh d/b/a Forge," which is a fictitious entity that provides no services and makes no products for sale, according to the filing. 

Murdaugh named the account to resemble Forge Consulting, LLC in Columbia, a respected company that had provided services to PMPED in the past, including brokering structured settlements and annuities, creating specialized trusts to protect client assets and giving attorneys financial advice. 

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Murdaugh was able to covertly steal funds by disguising disbursements from settlements as payments to an annuity company, trust account or structured settlement for clients or as structured attorney’s fees that he had earned when in fact they were deposited into the fictitious account at Bank of America, the complaint says. He allegedly took advantage of the business relationship with Forge and his fictitious and misleading business name to draft checks from PMPED’s client trust account made payable to "Forge" or "Forge Consulting, LLC" and deposit those checks into his personal account. 

The complaint says PMPED was unaware of Murdaugh’s scheme until Sept. 2 when a check was found on his desk made payable to his name, instead of the law firm, and had a notation showing it had been deposited into Murdaugh’s personal account. 

The firm then conducted a review into past settlements of cases handled by Murdaugh and found several checks made payable to Forge. PMPED contacted the consulting firm, which said it was not assisting Murdaugh and had no knowledge of the improper use of its name.  

On the morning of Sept. 3, Murdaugh was confronted with the information PMPED discovered through its review and conversations with Forge. The complaint says Murdaugh allegedly admitted to converting monies owed to the law firm and its clients for his own personal use. The firm demanded Murdaugh’s immediate resignation, which it received later that afternoon. 

PMPED notified the Hampton County Sheriff’s Office and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) of Murdaugh’s suspected criminal activity on Sept. 4. That’s the same day as an alleged botched suicide shooting for which Murdaugh was recently indicted by a Hampton County grand jury on counts of conspiracy, false claim or payment in the amount of $10,000 or more and filing a false police report. 

Murdaugh allegedly admitted to hiring a hitman, Curtis Smith, to shoot him on the side of the road in Hampton County so that his surviving son, Buster, could collect a $10 million life insurance policy. But Smith allegedly missed, only grazing Murdaugh in the head, and a judge later released Murdaugh on his own recognizance, allowing him to travel back to out-of-state rehabilitation facilities to treat an alleged 20-year-long opioid addiction. 

Murdaugh’s lawyers have claimed his addiction worsened after the June 7 unsolved murders of his wife, Maggie, and their 22-year-old son, Paul, at their estate in Colleton County. State police have started several investigations into the family since the double homicide. 

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Murdaugh was arrested again in October and denied bond on new charges alleging he pocketed $3.4 million in settlement money following the 2018 death of his longtime nanny and housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield. Last week, a judge upheld his decision to deny bond for Murdaugh after receiving the results of his psychiatric evaluation, ruling the disgraced lawyer is a danger to himself and the community.

A different judge, siding with the family of 19-year-old boat crash victim Mallory Beach, also recently moved to freeze assets belonging to Alex and Buster Murdaugh to protect future potential settlements in their wrongful death lawsuit. Prosecutors had said the now deceased Paul Murdaugh was underage and intoxicated when he crashed his father’s boat, killing Beach and injuring other passengers.