Alex Murdaugh co-conspirator sentenced to seven years and $3.5m fine for financial fraud

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Russell Laffitte, formerly the highly regarded CEO of South Carolina’s Palmetto State Bank, was sentenced on Tuesday to seven years in federal prison and millions in restitution payments for his role helping disgraced legal scion steal Alex Murdaugh large sums of money from his clients and law firm.

It’s the latest set of charges against Murdaugh and his inner circle, after the former attorney was convicted of murdering his wife and son in March.

Prosecutors said the banker helped Murdaugh steal from his law firm PMPED and its clients through elaborate forms of financial misconduct, including setting up conservatorships for former clients then allowing Murdaugh to plunder them.

“Today just goes to show that nobody is above the law,” Justin Bamberg, a lawyer representing some of Laffitte’s victims, told South Carolina’s The State newspaper on Tuesday.

The former banker, the heir of a prominent local family, allegedly pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars himself in payments and untaxable fees managing clients’ settlement money.

Laffite was also ordered to pay $3.5m in restitution. He was convicted of six charges related to wire and bank fraud in November.

During the sentencing, Judge Richard Gergel said Laffite “engaged in a nearly decades long fraud and deception” of “extremely vulnerable people,” including victims who were “minors, injured persons, grieving persons.”

Laffitte has said he was unwittingly manipulated into assisting Murdaugh’s financial crimes, and the former banker will appeal the sentence, the Associated Press reports.

During Murdaugh’s murder trial, the former attorney said Laffitte wasn’t in on the schemes

“Russell Laffitte never conspired with me to do anything, whatever was done was done by me,” Murdaugh said in March.

“This is stuff that I did,” he added. “I did these things wrong. Russell Laffitte didn’t do anything… You keep talking about stuff I did with Russell Laffitte, but what I want to let you know is that I did this and I am the one that took people’s money that I shouldn’t have taken and that Russell Laffitte was not involved in helping me do that knowingly.”

Earlier this year, Laffite sought a new trial.

Murdaugh is serving life without parole on charges of killing his wife and son on June 2021 at the family’s rural South Carolina hunting estate.

The disgraced legal heir is still facing more than 100 charges related to alleged financial misconduct.