Alex Murdaugh (Screen cap via CNN)
Cory Fleming, a disgraced former South Carolina attorney who worked alongside convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh, has pleaded guilty to state charges that involve helping Murdaugh embezzle millions from clients at their law firm, The State reported on Wednesday.
According to the report, prosecutor Creighton Waters is pushing to throw the book at Fleming, although no sentencing recommendations have yet been released.
"Waters spent nearly an hour citing minute details of Fleming’s crimes, the largest of which involved a complex $4.3 million white collar theft orchestrated by Murdaugh to steer funds from an insurance settlement to Fleming and Murdaugh. Normally, at guilty pleas, prosecutors keep their summations of evidence brief," said the report, which noted that another Murdaugh accomplice, Russell Laffitte, was also present in the courtroom. "Laffitte, a former banker who was convicted in federal court last November, also faces state charges for those schemes. He was in court so his lawyers could discuss various pre-trial technical matters with Newman and Waters. Laffitte is appealing his federal sentence."
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Murdaugh, a former powerful and well-connected attorney from a wealthy Lowcountry family, was convicted earlier this year of shooting his wife and son at the dog kennel on his sprawling family estate, in a dramatic trial watched by the whole nation.
Prosecutors painted a dramatic picture of a man in deep with millions of dollars in embezzlement from his law firm and clients, and a $50,000-a-week drug habit, who killed his family members when they confronted him about his wrongdoing. Murdaugh, who also committed insurance fraud and tried to fake his death following the killings, maintained his innocence at trial, but admitted openly to the embezzlement and drug use. His defense was blown wide open when, upon taking the stand, he admitted that the voice on a tape taken near the time and place of the killings was his, contradicting his lawyers and surviving family members who testified he was nowhere near there at the time.
The conviction was not the end of investigations into the Murdaugh family; his surviving son, Buster, has been implicated in a recently reopened homicide investigation into the death of a teenage classmate whose body was found miles from the Murdaughs' home. Buster has denied any involvement in that incident.
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