COLUMBIA, S.C. (Transatlantic Today) – According to recently released court records, a close friend of South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh now faces 18 counts regarding the embezzlement of over $3 million in insurance payments from the family of Murdaugh’s deceased housekeeper.
According to ABC NEWS, an indictment released Wednesday accuses Cory Fleming of conspiring with Murdaugh to victimize Gloria Satterfield’s sons by suing Murdaugh on their behalf but siphoning the subsequent insurance payments to Murdaugh and himself. Gloria Satterfield died after a fall at the Murdaugh residence in 2018.
Prosecutors said Fleming used money from Satterfield’s inheritance to pay for his own taxes, mortgage, video games, credit card debt, and other expenditures.
In the lawsuit, the sons claimed they never received any of the payment. They claimed Murdaugh persuaded them to hire Fleming as their attorney and sue him for wrongful death at their mother’s funeral, despite the fact that Fleming was his college roommate and also godfather to at least one of Murdaugh’s boys.
According to the most recent charge, Fleming, 53, opted not to inform Satterfield’s sons about 2 insurance payouts he received. Authorities say Murdaugh willfully transferred funds from both settlements to a bogus bank account he named after a corporation that handles settlements.
According to a joint declaration issued by Fleming as well as the sons’ lawyers in October, he was assisting the sons’ new attorneys and asserted that he was not a voluntary participant in Mr. Murdaugh’s plot but was exploited.
According to Robert Kittle, a spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office, Fleming expects to surrender before a virtual bail hearing planned for Thursday.
Lawyers for the Satterfield sons, Ronnie Richter and Eric Bland, stated Wednesday that the grand jury obviously did not buy Fleming’s claim that he was one of Murdaugh’s victims.
Murdaugh was additionally charged with four extra counts by grand jurors. Murdaugh is presently facing 75 state counts, involving trust, embezzlement, forgery, computer fraud, including criminal conspiracy with Fleming, alleging that he stole approximately $8.5 million from wrongful death suits and insurance settlement victims. He’s also charged with attempting to stage his own death in order for his surviving son to get a $10 million insurance policy.
Murdaugh, who is 53 years old, has been in prison since October. Even though Murdaugh’s counsel noted that his bank accounts had been seized in civil litigation and he could hardly afford to purchase underpants at the Richland County jail, a judge set his bond at $7 million and rejected to lower it. He blames his difficulties on long-term drug addiction.
Once his son Paul, 22, and wife Maggie, 52, were murdered in a shootout at the family’s house in June, his legal difficulties became public. Murdaugh’s lawyers argued he had nothing to do with it, and urged detectives to work as hard as they are possible to uncover Murdaugh’s finances to identify their murders.
Murdaugh’s great-grandfather, grandfather, and father all served as prosecutors in Hampton County, where his family’s legal business was well known. The Supreme Court of South Carolina has barred Fleming and Murdaugh from practicing law in the state.
