South Carolina banking scion Russell Laffitte indicted for helping Alex Murdaugh steal from clients
July 20, 2022
An associate of former South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was indicted on charges that he helped the accused murderer launder and misappropriate millions of dollars.
A federal grand jury charged former Palmetto State Bank CEO Russell Laffitte with conspiracy, wire fraud, and bank fraud on Wednesday.
Laffitte served as a conservator for Alania Spohn and Hannah Plyler, two young sisters represented by Murdaugh. The sisters were awarded settlement money in connection with a 2005 accident that killed their mother and brother, according to the indictment.
Laffitte allegedly schemed with the disgraced lawyer to pillage the girls’ accounts and steal $355,000 for himself and $990,000 for Murdaugh, court documents said.
He also misused bank funds to give Murdaugh an unauthorized $750,000 loan for “beach house renovations and expenses” and sent $680,000 of the bank’s money to pay back a debt Murdaugh had illegally transferred to him, according to the grand jury.
In addition, Laffitte earned nearly $400,000 for supposedly safeguarding the Plyler sister’s money, according to the document. He had allegedly been in cahoots with Murdaugh to steal from the
Laffitte allegedly stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients that Murdaugh represented.
Laffitte was fired from his role as the bank’s CEO in January, according to The Greenfield News. His family reportedly launched the institution in 1907, just three years before Murdaugh’s great-grandfather founded the law firm that bore his name.
Murdaugh, 54, who pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in connection with the brutal murders of his wife and son, was identified in the document only as “The Bank Customer,” but was outed by lawyers for the now-grown Plyler sisters.
“The girls viewed Russ Laffitte as a father figure and trusted him to navigate the waters ahead for them and to guide them,” lawyers Eric Bland and Ronald Richter wrote in a statement.
“It is difficult to express the emotions and disappointment of learning years later that those who had sworn to protect the Plylers chose instead to prey upon them. Russ Laffitte and Alex Murdaugh plundered their conservator accounts and treated it like their own personal slush fund,” the statement continued.
Murdaugh, a once-powerful legal scion in Hampton County, faces 71 charges in connection with his alleged theft of a combined $8.5 million from clients.
The children of his housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, who died at the Murdaugh home under suspicious circumstances in 2018, recovered $4.3 million last year that he allegedly pilfered from them by suing himself to collect personal liability insurance.
Sauce: https://nypost.com/2022/07/20/south-carolina-banker-indicted-for-helping-alex-murdaugh-steal-from-clients/
Low country South Carolina swamp getting drained.
Russell Laffitte on lobbying etc, influence peddling- seems to have lost his magic touch…
https://independentbanker.org/2021/04/icbas-2021-22-executive-committee-close-the-distance-part-2/