Alex Murdaugh to plead guilty to federal fraud charges, court records show

Convicted killer Alex Murdaugh will plead guilty to federal fraud charges on Sept. 21, according to federal court records.

Although Murdaugh, 55, faces more than 90 state fraud charges in addition to the federal charges, he now will apparently plead guilty to the federal charges first.

The federal plea will take place at 10 a.m. before U.S. Judge Richard Gergel at the Charleston federal courthouse.

In a 28-page May indictment, a federal grand jury alleged that Murdaugh stole some $7 million from 2011 to 2021 from former clients and others.

The federal indictment’s allegations include Murdaugh’s highly-publicized alleged theft of $4.3 million from his dead housekeeper’s estate and his unlawful collusion with former Hampton banker Russell Laffitte to plunder accounts in Laffitte’s bank.

A federal jury found Laffitte guilty last November of bank and wire fraud for his illegal actions committed with Murdaugh, who was an unindicted co-conspirator in that case.

Murdaugh has already been indicted by a state grand jury for most, if not all, of the alleged illegal acts that the federal grand jury indicted him on.

However, while the state grand jury alleged violations of state law, the federal grand jury named violations of federal law, including national laws regulating banks, their deposits and transfers of money by wires.

Last March Murdaugh was found guilty of the 2021 killings of his wife, Maggie, and son Paul at the family’s secluded 1,770-acre estate in Colleton County. He is now serving two consecutive life sentences in state prison for those crimes..

Dozens of state charges including fraud and embezzlement against Murdaugh were first filed in fall 2021 and continued through 2022.