Alex Murdaugh is sentenced to 40 years in prison for stealing money from law ... trends now
Alex Murdaugh has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for stealing money from his law firm - on top of the life sentence he's already serving for killing his son and wife.
The 40-year sentence will be insurance on top of insurance - Along with the life sentence, Murdaugh pleaded guilty and was ordered to spend 27 years in prison in state court on financial crime charges. The federal sentence will run at the same time as his state prison term and he likely will have to serve all 40 years if his murder convictions are overturned on appeal. Murdaugh will also have to pay nearly $9 million in restitution.
Murdaugh again apologized to his victims at his sentencing Monday, saying he felt 'guilt, sorrow, shame, embarrassment, humiliation.' Just like at his state sentencing, he offered to meet with his victims so they can say what they want to say and 'more closely inspect my sincerity.'
'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 said.
A report by federal agents recommended a prison sentence between 17 1/2 and just under 22 years.
Convicted killer Alex Murdaugh (pictured) has been accused of failing a polygraph test that was part of his plea deal with prosecutors for the multiple financial crimes he's charged with
Murdaugh, 55, is already serving life without parole in state prison after a jury found him guilty of murder in the shootings of his wife and younger son
The 22 federal counts are the final charges outstanding for Murdaugh, who three years ago was an established lawyer negotiating multimillion-dollar settlements in tiny where members of his family served as elected prosecutors and ran the area’s premier law firm for nearly a century.
It comes after the disgraced lawyer, 55, was accused of failing a polygraph test that was part of his plea deal with prosecutors for multiple financial crimes.
Prosecutors had asked a court on Tuesday to release the federal government of their deal with the disgraced lawyer - who they say wasn’t truthful about where more than $6 million he stole ended up, and whether another attorney helped him steal from clients and his law firm.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel said he sentenced Murdaugh to a harsher punishment than suggested because Murdaugh stole from 'the most needy, vulnerable people' like a client who became a quadriplegic after a crash, a state trooper who was injured on the job, and a trust fund meant for children whose parents were killed in a wreck.
'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,' Gergel said.
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 on a scheme to steal $4 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 from them.
Murdaugh's lawyers claim the FBI agent conducting the test threw the murderer off by asking odd
