Russell Laffitte, the former Hampton bank executive and accomplice in some of convicted killer Alex Murdaugh’s fraud schemes, will be sentenced on Tuesday, Aug. 1, in federal court in Charleston.
A federal jury in Charleston found Laffitte guilty last November of six counts of bank-related fraud that he carried out with Murdaugh at Laffitte’s bank for years.
Laffitte faces up to 30 years in prison, but as a first time offender in a non-violent series of crimes, he will likely get far less.
Evidence at Laffitte’s November trial alleged he had illegally spent or extended more than $1.8 million in bank money on Murdaugh’s behalf and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars himself from trust funds he was supposed to oversee.
Judge Richard Gergel announced the sentencing date Sunday in a notice on the federal court database. Gergel’s notice ended months of speculation about when a date for Laffitte’s sentencing would be set.
Part of the delay in scheduling a sentencing hearing was two successive appeals that Laffitte filed with Gergel seeking a new trial. Gergel denied them both. Laffitte had also fired his two trial lawyers and hired new lawyers.
Murdaugh was found guilty in March of murdering his wife, Maggie, and son Paul in 2021 at the family’s rural Colleton County estate, called Moselle. During the trial, Murdaugh took the witness stand and confessed to various financial crimes, including some in which he used Laffitte’s bank to help him steal money by diverting money he had gained for clients in settlements into accounts controlled by him.
Murdaugh was the prime mover in the frauds, “but none of it could have happened without (Laffitte),” federal prosecutor Emily Limehouse told the jury in a 70-minute closing argument at the trial.
Laffitte contended he had been manipulated by Murdaugh and was ignorant of the thefts Murdaugh was carrying out.
Evidence showed that Murdaugh and Laffitte were childhood friends, both descendants of wealthy and prominent families in the southeastern South Carolina Lowcountry. Murdaugh was part of a family of lawyers whose law firm was one of the most prominent in the state. The law firm, which until recently always included the Murdaugh name, was a top customer at Laffitte’s bank, Palmetto State, the most prominent regional bank in that part of the state.
A federal indictment handed down in May alleges that Murdaugh and Laffitte employed various schemes using Laffitte’s bank to divert money from Murdaugh’s personal injury legal clients to themselves.
Murdaugh was disbarred last year by the S.C. Supreme Court. He is now serving two consecutive life sentences in the S.C. Department of Corrections.
That May indictment against Murdaugh repeatedly named Laffitte as a co-conspirator.
In all, Murdaugh stole more than $6 million while committing his alleged financial crimes over the years, the indictment charges.
No total amount of Murdaugh’s thefts from clients, his law firm and other parties has been made by either state or federal officials. However, a top lawyer at Murdaugh’s firm told the jury at Murdaugh’s murder trial in February that Murdaugh stole at least $10 million from the firm, its clients and lawyers over the years.
Murdaugh and Laffitte evaded financial safeguards and exploited the trust with the bank that Murdaugh’s family and the law firm had built up over the decades with the bank, according to evidence at Laffitte’s trial.
Although Murdaugh has been indicted by both state and federal grand juries in connection with thefts carried out at Laffitte’s bank, those charges are pending. Murdaugh’s lawyers, Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian, have said he intends to plead guilty to the federal charges.