Alex Murdaugh convicted of fraud

On Monday, American Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to 40 years in prison, after he pleaded guilty last year to more than 20 charges of criminal conspiracy, fraud and money laundering, reports CNN.

Prosecutors secured new evidence that the now-ousted attorney defrauded his clients and the law firm out of millions of dollars.

Gets 150 million: – A warning

The judgment states that the 55-year-old must pay more than 8.7 million dollars in restitution to his victims. This corresponds to NOK 95 million.

The judge in the trial, Richard Gergel, sentenced Murdaugh to a harsher sentence than had been suggested, as he stole from “the most needy and vulnerable people,” reports AP News.

Among other things, he is said to have defrauded a client who was paralyzed after an accident, an American soldier who was injured on the job, and a fund intended for children who had lost their parents in a car crash.

Prosecutors asked the judge to give Murdaugh a stiffer sentence because FBI agents do not believe he is telling the whole truth about what happened to the six million dollars he stole. The FBI believes the 55-year-old is still keeping the name of a co-conspirator hidden.

Double homicide and Netflix series

The sentence from Easter Monday comes in addition to the two subsequent life sentences he received a year ago.

Alex Murdaugh has previously been convicted of the murders of his wife, Margareth, and 22-year-old son Paul, back in June 2021.

Murdaugh insists he is innocent of the murders, but he has admitted to the financial crimes.

Netflix has created a true crime series called “The Murdaugh Murders”. It deals with the many scandals involving the various family members.

Crazy scandals

For over a century, the Murdaugh name was among the most wealthy and influential in the state of South Carolina in the United States.

From 1920 to 2006, three generations of the family were state attorneys in a district covering five counties in the state. Thanks to the family’s law firm, the Murdaugh name has been linked to several high-profile cases.

But none of the legal disputes have been able to compare with the southern scandal which in recent years has revealed more and more of the Murdaugh family’s shocking secrets.

One of the most talked about incidents was precisely that Alex Murdaugh killed his wife and youngest son.

Called in tears

The June day in 2021 began with Alex Murdaugh calling the police choked with tears, saying that he had found Paul and Margaret.

Alex Murdaugh promised a reward of 100,000 dollars (a little over one million Norwegian kroner) to those who could help solve the murder of the family.

Three months after his wife and son were found dead, Alex Murdaugh himself was shot in the head by a man while changing a tire.

Murdaugh survived the assassination attempt and the news was widely reported. But the police were remarkably tight-lipped about the incident.

It would turn out to be a contract killing of himself – so that the surviving son, Buster Murdaugh, could be paid his father’s life insurance of NOK 10 million.

New twist – killed his wife and son

However, Alex Murdaugh survived the shooting, and acknowledged in 2021 that he had collaborated with Curtis Edward Smith who fired the shots, reported several American media, including the New York Times and CNN.

Then the already insane story of the Murdaugh murders took another turn. On 15 July 2022, Alex Murdaugh was charged with shooting his wife with a rifle and his son with a shotgun.

The prosecution believed he killed his own family to gain sympathy and at the same time divert attention from the other offenses for which he was being investigated.

In March 2023, he was convicted of the murders – and was sentenced to two life sentences.