Convicted double murderer Alex Murdaugh has been charged with failing to pay $132,572 in taxes on the millions of dollars that he is accused of stealing.
It marks the second time in less than a year that the former attorney has been charged with tax crimes for failing to report, or pay taxes on, the millions he allegedly pilfered from his clients and the law firm his family founded over 100 years ago.
An indictment, filed Thursday in Hampton County, accuses Murdaugh of failing to pay taxes on more than $2 million in income earned through “illegal acts,” according to a statement released from the state Attorney General’s Office. In total, Murdaugh has now been charged with failing to pay $619,391 in state tax on a total of $9,067,706 in illegally obtained income.
The indictment, announced Tuesday, describes how “Murdaugh willfully did not file a tax return in order to evade the assessment.” This despite previously filing income tax returns and “earning sufficient income” to be required to file a return, according to the indictment.
Murdaugh, whose family once dominated the legal and political landscape of the the Lowcountry’s 14th Judicial Circuit through their control of the solicitor’s office and the family law firm, Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Elzroth and Detrick (PMPED), has now been charged with 101 crimes spread across 20 different indictments.
In March, a Colleton County jury found Murdaugh guilty of murdering his wife, Maggie, and son Paul, following a six week trial.
The latest indictment accuses Murdaugh of failing to report $1,112,734 in allegedly stolen funds on his 2020 taxes. The following year, he hid another $1,000,333 from tax authorities, according to the indictment.
The money came through “an ongoing scheme to defraud PMPED and PMPED clients of legal settlement proceeds.”
He intentionally failed to file a tax return on this money in order to evade assessment of $67,624 in taxes in 2020 and $64,948 in 2021, according to the indictment.
His illegally-obtained income for those two years came in addition to $1,147,342 he earned in 2020 as a personal injury attorney at PMPED, according to the indictment.
In 2021, Murdaugh made only $86,069 as an employee at PMPED. He was fired the weekend of Sept. 3, 2021, after it was discovered that he had been stealing from the firm.
Over the course of the year, lawyers at PMPED made just $125,000 each in salary. Murdaugh would have received the rest of his legitimate income in the form of an end-of-year “bonus,” based on the amount of money that he brought into the firm, according to testimony from senior PMPED employees and attorneys at his recent murder trial.
A similar indictment filed in December stated that Murdaugh earned over $15 million from his work between 2011 and 2021, when Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were murdered. But his income fluctuated significantly during those years.
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 $823,000 in 2018. In 2019 he earned $722,035, the indictment said.
During that same period, he was accused of failing to report $6.9 million of illegally earned income, according to the December indictment.
Last Thursday’s court filing states that funds derived from both Murdaugh’s regular employment and his “ongoing illegal activity” were converted to personal use. But the indictment provides no details about where the money went. At the time of the murders, the Murdaughs had overdrawn some of their bank accounts and had accumulated $4.2 million in debt.
In addition to mortgages on the family’s now-former 1,700-acre Moselle property and a beach house in Edisto, Murdaugh had nearly exhausted a $1 million line of credit from the Palmetto State Bank. Murdaugh testified that he paid tens of thousands of dollars a week to his distant cousin and drug dealer, Curtis “Fast Eddie” Smith, in order to sustain an addiction to opioid painkillers.
Murdaugh is currently incarcerated at the S.C. Department of Corrections serving two life sentences for the murders of his wife and son.
While taking the stand in his own defense, Murdaugh bluntly admitted to over a decade of financial crimes. However, he has not changed his plea of “not guilty” in any of the upcoming financial cases, that have swept up several people who were once close with Murdaugh.
Among them them is Hampton banker Russell Laffitte, who was found guilty in November of various counts of fraud related to Murdaugh. Laffitte, who ran Palmetto State Bank, appealed his conviction based on Murdaugh’s on-the-stand confessions during his murder trial.
“Russell Laffitte never conspired with me to do anything,” Murdaugh said at the time.
A federal judge ruled that Murdaugh’s statements were not credible.
Laffitte is just one of several individuals facing state charges for financial crimes connected to Murdaugh.
On Sept. 11, suspended Beaufort lawyer Cory Fleming will go on trial for his alleged role in helping Murdaugh steal a $4.3 million inheritance due to the sons of the Murdaugh family housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, who died following a fall on Moselle in 2018.