As of 12/28
www.nbcnews.com
———————-
older Post
Latest Murdaugh news
Biggest bomb shell yet reported from The State this afternoon. Alex Murdaugh gave his cousin Eddie Lee Curtis $155,000.0 from October 2020 to May 28, 2021 which was just 10 days before the double homicide. Double homicide solved? C&P below to get details.
A man accused of helping suspended lawyer Alex Murdaugh set up a botched suicide attempt was given $155,970 from Murdaugh in 17 cashier’s checks from October 2020 through May 2021, according to copies of those checks and other bank documents. The $155,970 in cashier’s checks went to Curtis “Eddie” Smith, of Walterboro, and were cashed at various banks around Hampton and Beaufort counties, according to notations on checks viewed by The State and Island Packet newspapers. All but one of the cashier’s checks were endorsed with the signature, “Curtis E. Smith.”
Smith, 61, is the man arrested in September on charges of helping Murdaugh stage a suicide so Murdaugh’s son, Buster, could collect $10 million on a life insurance company. The alleged plot failed, and Murdaugh — in addition to Smith — now faces criminal charges in that Sept. 4 incident. The cashier’s checks are significant because they appear to show a financial relationship between the two men that began months before the botched suicide attempt. The checks alone do not explain why Murdaugh gave them to Smith nor what Smith did with the money.
The cashier’s checks represent only eight months’ worth of payments from one account. Murdaugh had more than one checking account, according to sources familiar with his financial situation. A cashier’s check is a check bought from a bank by one person made out to another person in an amount to be redeemed to cash. It is different from a personal check in that the money in a cashier’s check is guaranteed by the bank. In previous interviews with the media, Smith’s lawyers denied he got any money from Murdaugh but acknowledged Smith was a longstanding friend and associate of Murdaugh’s. In an Oct. 14 television interview with NBC’s Craig Melvin, Jonny McCoy, a Smith attorney, denied that Smith ever received any significant money from Murdaugh. Was your client paid any large sum of money by Alex Murdaugh?” Melvin asked McCoy.
“No,” said McCoy. This week, McCoy and another attorney representing Smith, Jarrett Bouchette, said they knew nothing about Smith receiving any cashier’s checks from Murdaugh.
“Nobody has questioned us or asked us about any checks from Mr. Murdaugh,” Bouchette said. “This is the first we’re hearing about it. Given the background of this case, I really find any check or other financial instrument or legal instrument that comes from Mr. Murdaugh to be highly suspect.” A reporter emailed questions to Smith’s lawyers Wednesday morning asking why Smith received these checks and what he did with the money. On a call Wednesday evening, the lawyers said they had not yet spoken with Smith about the checks.
Bouchette said law enforcement has not questioned them about the referenced checks. Dick Harpootlian, one of Murdaugh’s lawyers, declined comment Thursday on any cashier’s checks that Murdaugh may have given Smith. FRAUDULENT “FORGE” ACCOUNT CHECKS The last cashier’s check written by Murdaugh to Smith, for $22,109, was the largest of all 17 checks in the October 2020-May 2021 time period that The State and Island Packet viewed. That check was purchased on May 28, just 10 days before Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and their son Paul were found shot to death on the grounds of the Murdaugh family home. The cashier’s checks were:
▪ Four checks totaling $35,686 in October 2020. ▪ One check of $9,049 in November 2020. ▪ Four checks totaling $29,784 in December 2020. ▪ Four checks totaling $39,236 in January of this year. ▪ Three checks totaling $20,106 in February of this year.
▪ One check of $22,109 in May of this year. All but two of the checks were written in amounts of $8,000 and $9,000. Checks over $10,000 can attract scrutiny by bank officials and law enforcement. It’s not known what the money was used for. In recent months, Murdaugh’s lawyers have said their client’s financial actions have been largely to support a serious opioid addiction Murdaugh has faced for 20 years. In a Sept. 15 TODAY show interview with Craig Melvin, Harpootlian said “it was uncovered that (Murdaugh) had ... converted some client and law firm money to his own use and spent most of that on opioids.” In denying Murdaugh bond on Oct. 19, Judge Clifton Newman said “the defense has filed a memorandum in support of bail in which they acknowledged and indicated that Mr. Murdaugh is a recovering opioid addict of approximately twenty years, and since then he has spent millions of dollars supporting this insidious addiction.”
Harpootlian has also said Murdaugh bought drugs from Smith, his drug dealer of a decade. Smith’s lawyer McCoy denied that his client’s relationship with Murdaugh involved drugs. The $160,000-plus in cashier’s checks to Smith were all bought with checks written on Murdaugh’s Bank of America “Forge” account — an account that has been described in legal actions against Murdaugh as being a Bank of America checking account.
Law enforcement knows about Murdaugh’s Forge account and has records concerning it. Murdaugh established his “Forge” account at the Bank of America in 2015 in the name of “Richard Alexander Murdaugh DBA (doing business as) Forge,” State Attorney General top prosecutor Creighton Waters told a judge in an Oct. 19 bond hearing for Murdaugh in Richland County.
Over time, Murdaugh’s Forge account was used as a destination to deposit millions of dollars that he embezzled from others, Waters told Judge Newman. “It appears that this account was nothing more than a — an illusion, a fabrication in order to create the illusion that these checks that he was getting in various settlements were going to a legitimate settlement consultant when in reality they were going into an account that he controlled, and that’s how this scheme was, was — took place in this particular case,” Waters said. The case that Waters referred to was the alleged embezzlement of more than $3 million that Murdaugh has been accused of stealing by the S.C. Law Enforcement Division. Murdaugh diverted that money from the estate of his deceased housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, and put it in his Forge account, Waters told the judge. “He had all that money. He absconded with that money. He transferred it into his personal accounts, and he used it for his own personal use,” Waters said. In a lawsuit filed by his family law firm PMPED, Murdaugh is accused of using a Bank of America account with the same DBA “Forge” name to embezzle money.
“PMPED has determined that Alex Murdaugh was able to covertly steal these funds by disguising disbursements from settlements as payments to an annuity company, trust account or structured settlement for clients or as structured attorney’s fees that he had earned when in fact they were deposited into the [sic]fictious account at Bank of America,” the firm’s lawsuit stated. Although Murdaugh’s “Forge” account was said by Waters to be the destination for millions of dollars, by October 2020, it had only $839 in it, according to a Bank of America statement for that month. Murdaugh’s “Forge” account in the Bank of America had already attracted attention from law enforcement and people suing Murdaugh. The account was unusual in that it used a legitimate name — Forge — that would suggest that it was the same as Forge Consulting LLC, a well known financial services company often used by South Carolina lawyers to handle millions of dollars each year in legal settlements. But Murdaugh’s Forge account had nothing to do with the actual Forge Consulting LLC, as the company made clear in a Sept. 22 statement.
“We had no knowledge of nor anything to do with the reported inappropriate bank account that included ‘Forge’ in its name, which Alex Murdaugh purportedly used, “ said Forge top officials Spooner Phillips and Michael Gunn. “ When we learned of the possible existence of such an account, law enforcement officials were immediately contacted—along with others who are investigating—to offer our assistance.”
“We had no knowledge of nor anything to do with the reported inappropriate bank account that included ‘Forge’ in its name, which Alex Murdaugh purportedly used, “ said Forge top officials Spooner Phillips and Michael Gunn. “ When we learned of the possible existence of such an account, law enforcement officials were immediately contacted—along with others who are investigating—to offer our assistance.”
Murdaugh told police that Smith was the person he primarily bought oxycodone from, a New York Times story said. To Smith, Murdaugh was like family. Smith is a distant cousin of Murdaugh’s, his lawyer Bouchette said. They used to play softball together, and Smith did odd jobs for Murdaugh. “I consider him one of my best friends. He’s like a brother to me,” Smith told a local TV news station on Sept. 29.
Murdaugh, his late father, and his brother represented Smith in a 2010 injury lawsuit in Hampton County centering on a 2007 workplace accident, according to records. On Sept. 4, Smith was called out to meet Murdaugh on the side of Old Salkehatchie Road in Hampton County. He’s said in interviews that he saw Murdaugh was suicidal and waving around a gun. Smith said he tried to wrestle it away from Murdaugh, and it went off. He’s said he ended up with the gun and disposed of it while in an emotional state. The person who was like a brother to him would later tell SLED that Smith was part of a scheme to shoot Murdaugh in the head for an insurance payout. To Smith’s lawyers, Smith is a victim, and Murdaugh is using him.
Alex Murdaugh's wife left him all of her property in will before mysterious murder
The South Carolina legal scion, 53, who has been in jail since October, has been charged with a slew of counts, most of them financial crimes.
www.nbcnews.com
———————-
older Post
Latest Murdaugh news
Biggest bomb shell yet reported from The State this afternoon. Alex Murdaugh gave his cousin Eddie Lee Curtis $155,000.0 from October 2020 to May 28, 2021 which was just 10 days before the double homicide. Double homicide solved? C&P below to get details.
A man accused of helping suspended lawyer Alex Murdaugh set up a botched suicide attempt was given $155,970 from Murdaugh in 17 cashier’s checks from October 2020 through May 2021, according to copies of those checks and other bank documents. The $155,970 in cashier’s checks went to Curtis “Eddie” Smith, of Walterboro, and were cashed at various banks around Hampton and Beaufort counties, according to notations on checks viewed by The State and Island Packet newspapers. All but one of the cashier’s checks were endorsed with the signature, “Curtis E. Smith.”
Smith, 61, is the man arrested in September on charges of helping Murdaugh stage a suicide so Murdaugh’s son, Buster, could collect $10 million on a life insurance company. The alleged plot failed, and Murdaugh — in addition to Smith — now faces criminal charges in that Sept. 4 incident. The cashier’s checks are significant because they appear to show a financial relationship between the two men that began months before the botched suicide attempt. The checks alone do not explain why Murdaugh gave them to Smith nor what Smith did with the money.
The cashier’s checks represent only eight months’ worth of payments from one account. Murdaugh had more than one checking account, according to sources familiar with his financial situation. A cashier’s check is a check bought from a bank by one person made out to another person in an amount to be redeemed to cash. It is different from a personal check in that the money in a cashier’s check is guaranteed by the bank. In previous interviews with the media, Smith’s lawyers denied he got any money from Murdaugh but acknowledged Smith was a longstanding friend and associate of Murdaugh’s. In an Oct. 14 television interview with NBC’s Craig Melvin, Jonny McCoy, a Smith attorney, denied that Smith ever received any significant money from Murdaugh. Was your client paid any large sum of money by Alex Murdaugh?” Melvin asked McCoy.
“No,” said McCoy. This week, McCoy and another attorney representing Smith, Jarrett Bouchette, said they knew nothing about Smith receiving any cashier’s checks from Murdaugh.
“Nobody has questioned us or asked us about any checks from Mr. Murdaugh,” Bouchette said. “This is the first we’re hearing about it. Given the background of this case, I really find any check or other financial instrument or legal instrument that comes from Mr. Murdaugh to be highly suspect.” A reporter emailed questions to Smith’s lawyers Wednesday morning asking why Smith received these checks and what he did with the money. On a call Wednesday evening, the lawyers said they had not yet spoken with Smith about the checks.
Bouchette said law enforcement has not questioned them about the referenced checks. Dick Harpootlian, one of Murdaugh’s lawyers, declined comment Thursday on any cashier’s checks that Murdaugh may have given Smith. FRAUDULENT “FORGE” ACCOUNT CHECKS The last cashier’s check written by Murdaugh to Smith, for $22,109, was the largest of all 17 checks in the October 2020-May 2021 time period that The State and Island Packet viewed. That check was purchased on May 28, just 10 days before Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and their son Paul were found shot to death on the grounds of the Murdaugh family home. The cashier’s checks were:
▪ Four checks totaling $35,686 in October 2020. ▪ One check of $9,049 in November 2020. ▪ Four checks totaling $29,784 in December 2020. ▪ Four checks totaling $39,236 in January of this year. ▪ Three checks totaling $20,106 in February of this year.
▪ One check of $22,109 in May of this year. All but two of the checks were written in amounts of $8,000 and $9,000. Checks over $10,000 can attract scrutiny by bank officials and law enforcement. It’s not known what the money was used for. In recent months, Murdaugh’s lawyers have said their client’s financial actions have been largely to support a serious opioid addiction Murdaugh has faced for 20 years. In a Sept. 15 TODAY show interview with Craig Melvin, Harpootlian said “it was uncovered that (Murdaugh) had ... converted some client and law firm money to his own use and spent most of that on opioids.” In denying Murdaugh bond on Oct. 19, Judge Clifton Newman said “the defense has filed a memorandum in support of bail in which they acknowledged and indicated that Mr. Murdaugh is a recovering opioid addict of approximately twenty years, and since then he has spent millions of dollars supporting this insidious addiction.”
Harpootlian has also said Murdaugh bought drugs from Smith, his drug dealer of a decade. Smith’s lawyer McCoy denied that his client’s relationship with Murdaugh involved drugs. The $160,000-plus in cashier’s checks to Smith were all bought with checks written on Murdaugh’s Bank of America “Forge” account — an account that has been described in legal actions against Murdaugh as being a Bank of America checking account.
Law enforcement knows about Murdaugh’s Forge account and has records concerning it. Murdaugh established his “Forge” account at the Bank of America in 2015 in the name of “Richard Alexander Murdaugh DBA (doing business as) Forge,” State Attorney General top prosecutor Creighton Waters told a judge in an Oct. 19 bond hearing for Murdaugh in Richland County.
Over time, Murdaugh’s Forge account was used as a destination to deposit millions of dollars that he embezzled from others, Waters told Judge Newman. “It appears that this account was nothing more than a — an illusion, a fabrication in order to create the illusion that these checks that he was getting in various settlements were going to a legitimate settlement consultant when in reality they were going into an account that he controlled, and that’s how this scheme was, was — took place in this particular case,” Waters said. The case that Waters referred to was the alleged embezzlement of more than $3 million that Murdaugh has been accused of stealing by the S.C. Law Enforcement Division. Murdaugh diverted that money from the estate of his deceased housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, and put it in his Forge account, Waters told the judge. “He had all that money. He absconded with that money. He transferred it into his personal accounts, and he used it for his own personal use,” Waters said. In a lawsuit filed by his family law firm PMPED, Murdaugh is accused of using a Bank of America account with the same DBA “Forge” name to embezzle money.
“PMPED has determined that Alex Murdaugh was able to covertly steal these funds by disguising disbursements from settlements as payments to an annuity company, trust account or structured settlement for clients or as structured attorney’s fees that he had earned when in fact they were deposited into the [sic]fictious account at Bank of America,” the firm’s lawsuit stated. Although Murdaugh’s “Forge” account was said by Waters to be the destination for millions of dollars, by October 2020, it had only $839 in it, according to a Bank of America statement for that month. Murdaugh’s “Forge” account in the Bank of America had already attracted attention from law enforcement and people suing Murdaugh. The account was unusual in that it used a legitimate name — Forge — that would suggest that it was the same as Forge Consulting LLC, a well known financial services company often used by South Carolina lawyers to handle millions of dollars each year in legal settlements. But Murdaugh’s Forge account had nothing to do with the actual Forge Consulting LLC, as the company made clear in a Sept. 22 statement.
“We had no knowledge of nor anything to do with the reported inappropriate bank account that included ‘Forge’ in its name, which Alex Murdaugh purportedly used, “ said Forge top officials Spooner Phillips and Michael Gunn. “ When we learned of the possible existence of such an account, law enforcement officials were immediately contacted—along with others who are investigating—to offer our assistance.”
“We had no knowledge of nor anything to do with the reported inappropriate bank account that included ‘Forge’ in its name, which Alex Murdaugh purportedly used, “ said Forge top officials Spooner Phillips and Michael Gunn. “ When we learned of the possible existence of such an account, law enforcement officials were immediately contacted—along with others who are investigating—to offer our assistance.”
Murdaugh told police that Smith was the person he primarily bought oxycodone from, a New York Times story said. To Smith, Murdaugh was like family. Smith is a distant cousin of Murdaugh’s, his lawyer Bouchette said. They used to play softball together, and Smith did odd jobs for Murdaugh. “I consider him one of my best friends. He’s like a brother to me,” Smith told a local TV news station on Sept. 29.
Murdaugh, his late father, and his brother represented Smith in a 2010 injury lawsuit in Hampton County centering on a 2007 workplace accident, according to records. On Sept. 4, Smith was called out to meet Murdaugh on the side of Old Salkehatchie Road in Hampton County. He’s said in interviews that he saw Murdaugh was suicidal and waving around a gun. Smith said he tried to wrestle it away from Murdaugh, and it went off. He’s said he ended up with the gun and disposed of it while in an emotional state. The person who was like a brother to him would later tell SLED that Smith was part of a scheme to shoot Murdaugh in the head for an insurance payout. To Smith’s lawyers, Smith is a victim, and Murdaugh is using him.
Last edited:
