Alex Murdaugh indicted on tax evasion charges ahead of SC murder trial [The State]

State (Columbia, SC)

Alex Murdaugh, who earned millions of dollars from his Hampton law practice over a nine-year period and at the same time stole millions more from his firm and clients, has been indicted on tax evasion, the South Carolina Attorney General’s office announced Friday.

Murdaugh was indicted by a state grand jury on nine counts of willful attempt to evade or defeat a tax, the Attorney General’s office said.

Between 2011 and 2019, the 11-page indictment alleged Murdaugh failed to report more than $6.9 million of income “earned through illegal acts,” causing his state taxable income to be underreported to the state.

The stolen money was diverted to Murdaugh’s personal use and, as such, is considered earned income eligible to be taxed, the indictment said.

Each count carries up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000, plus the cost of prosecution.

South Carolina’s tax agency, the Department of Revenue, participated in the investigation of Murdaugh’s charges. Others who investigated were the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Murdaugh’s attorneys, Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, declined to comment on their client’s latest charges when reached by phone Friday.

Indictment says Murdaugh earned $14M in 9 years

The indictment announced Friday also reveals how much Murdaugh earned as a lawyer for each of the nine years, 2011 to 2019.

The indictment alleges that Murdaugh’s reported annual income as a lawyer for his former law firm, Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth & Detrict, began to drop as the years passed and asserts he supplemented his income as a lawyer by alleged thefts he did not report on his tax forms.

In 2011, Murdaugh earned $2.3 million as an attorney, then $5.2 million in 2012. By 2013, Murdaugh’s annual pay dropped to $733,967, but rose again to $1 million and $2 million in 2014 and 2015, respectively. He earned $962,000 in 2016, then $270,600 in 2017, and earned $823,000 in 2018. In 2019, the final year, he earned $722,035, the indictment said.

In all, Murdaugh earned a total of $14 million in nine years, and stole nearly $7 million, according to the indictment.

The attorney general’s office also said Murdaugh, a disbarred attorney, owes $486,819 in unpaid state taxes.

Murdaugh faces bevy of charges

Murdaugh currently remains jailed in Richland County, now facing 99 charges in 19 indictments, most of them financial related — from money laundering to forgery and insurance fraud — to defraud victims of nearly $9 million.

Murdaugh was an unindicted co-conspirator in last month’s federal fraud trial of former Hampton bank official Russell Laffitte. A jury found Laffitte guilty of six counts of conspiracy, bank and wire fraud and misapplication of bank funds.

Murdaugh has pleaded innocent to all financial- and drug-related charges, and has not been tried on any of them.

He did, however, earlier this year admit responsibility for a scheme that resulted in the theft of approximately $4 million in insurance proceeds from the estate of his former family housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, who died on the family’s property in 2018.

Murdaugh also remains jailed on double murder charges in the June 7, 2021, deaths of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, on his family’s 1,700-acre estate.

On those charges, he has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial on Jan. 23 in Colleton County.

The state Attorney General’s office has said it is seeking to put Murdaugh in prison for life without a chance of parole.