Murdaugh Murders Podcast - ‘A Golden Day For Justice’: Cory Fleming Indicted On 18 Charges (S01E36)

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

Suspended attorney Cory Fleming was indicted on 18 charges related to the Gloria Satterfield case. While we wait for his bond hearing, Mandy Matney, Liz Farrell and attorney Eric Bland unpack the latest indictments and what it means for the justice system.  While Fleming was finally indicted, so many others who allegedly participated in this scheme have escaped accountability so far.  Fleming’s arrest is a big deal — we will tell you why.  And a special thank you to our sponsors: Cerebral, Hunt-A-Killer, Priceline, Embark Vet, VOURI, Hello Fresh, Babbel, Article, and others. The Murdaugh Murders Podcast is created by Mandy Matney and produced by Luna Shark Productions. Our Executive Editor is Liz Farrell. Advertising is curated by the talented team at AdLarge Media. Find us on social media: https://www.facebook.com/MurdaughPod/ https://www.instagram.com/murdaughmurderspod/ For current and accurate updates:  Twitter.com/mandymatney Support Our Podcast at: https://murdaughmurderspodcast.com/support-the-show Please consider sharing your support by leaving a review on Apple at the following link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murdaugh-murders-podcast/id1573560247 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I don't know how many powerful people will go down with Ellick Murdock, but this week suspended attorney Corey Fleming was indicted on multiple charges, and that is a big deal. My name is Mandy Matney. I've been investigating the Murdock family for more than three years now. This is the Murdock Murders podcast with David Moses and Liz Farrell. So big news today about Corey Fleming, but before we get into all of that, I want to say thank you for your patience this week. Being a weekly investigative podcast based on breaking news is not easy, but while we

had some technical difficulties this week that delayed this podcast, we have exciting news to share. Nine months into our engagement, David and I finally found a perfect venue and we decided on our wedding date, and that is also a big deal. I honestly haven't had the mental space all of this time to think about my own wedding and it really felt great to push everything else to the side this month and focus on what really matters. We can't tell you how much we appreciate our fans love and support during this journey.

A Murdock Murders podcast fan helped us find our wedding venue, and a Murdock Murders podcast fan owns the venue that we are using. We love you, we appreciate you, and trust me when I say that we are thinking of ways to include our fans in our big day because y'all mean the world to us. And now back to the big news, the indictments. Corey Howard and Fleming, Ellick Murdock's best friend and the godfather to his oldest son Buster, was indicted on 18 charges last week by the state grand jury. South Carolina Attorney General Allen Wilson announced this on Wednesday.

The new indictment that also charges Ellick is superseding, meaning it replaces the previous indictment in the Satterfield case and added new charges. It paints a clear but not complete picture as to how the $4.3 million was stolen from Gloria Satterfield's family. As a reminder, Gloria was the Murdock family's housekeeper for more than two decades, up until 2018 when she died after sustaining injuries in an alleged trip and fall accident on the Moselle property. In the 44-page joint superseding indictment, Fleming and Murdock were charged with conspiring

to surreptitiously give Murdock a share of Fleming's fee from the multi-million dollar settlement of civil claims against Murdock, resulting from the death of Gloria Satterfield. In addition to the conspiracy charge, Fleming was charged with three counts of false statement or misrepresentation in connection with an insurance transaction of $50,000 or more, four counts of breach of trust with fraudulent intent of $10,000 or more, three counts of breach of trust with fraudulent intent between $2,000 and $10,000, three counts of money laundering more than $100,000, three counts of money laundering between $300 and $20,000 and one count of computer crime of more than $10,000.

Murdock also was charged with three counts of false statement or misrepresentation in connection with an insurance transaction over $50,000 in the superseding indictment. The new charges arise out of the alleged scheme to defraud multiple insurance companies in the course of surreptitiously delivering to Murdock a share of the proceeds resulting from the settlement of the claims against him, the Attorney General's office said in its release. Fleming's indictment is the first time we're seeing one of Murdock's alleged co-conspirators getting charged in his alleged financial schemes.

In total, Fleming has been indicted on 18 charges for defrauding victims of $3.6 million, while LA Murdock has been indicted on a total of 75 charges for defrauding victims of nearly $8.5 million, according to Wilson's latest release. As Fitzsnews exclusively reported earlier this year, these indictments were just a matter of time for the alleged co-conspirators in Murdock's financial schemes. However, in January and February, the state grand jury faced delays caused by COVID, weather events and scheduling conflicts. To many of us following the case closely, Corey's indictment was a long time coming.

While it's a great day for justice to many of the victims, it's also a bad day for lawyers in South Carolina as Corey's role in the heist appears to be purposeful. Yet at the same time, it is a sad day because, again, even though we are weeding out these bad lawyers, the public is going to look at it again and it's another slate on our profession. Here it is, a lawyer committing conspiracy, insurance fraud, and it's just a kind of cumulative effect that has on the public and the feelings they have and the opinions they have of lawyers. Overall, I've been pushing not so much that Corey be indicted, but that Corey be held accountable.

For me, it was reporting him to the state bar as well as to the Georgia bar because we're a self-policing profession and I left it up to others to determine whether they felt that his conduct that we were reporting was criminal. Corey was indicted last Thursday in Richland County, South Carolina. He is being represented by former federal prosecutor and current defense attorney Deborah Barbier. Listeners in South Carolina might recognize Barbier's name. She represented the influential publicist and political strategist Richard Quinn in a

massive pay-to-play scheme that happened a few years ago involving Richard and his son Rick, who was a longtime state representative. We talked briefly about this case during our Judge Mullen episode because Mullen was widely criticized for sentencing Rick to public service. Barbier was also appointed as a member of Trunk's legal team during his 2021 impeachment. She joined Butch Bowers, who you might remember as The Butch, who allegedly got paid $60,000 for doing something related to Buster's readmittance into law school, which we're still checking into by the way.

Barbier is a top lawyer in South Carolina, which means she's whip-smart, highly connected and expensive, very expensive from what we understand, which obviously raises questions about how Corey is going to afford this given what we've heard about his finances. Several sources in Buford have told us over the last few months that Corey has been selling off his assets, including a car alleged to be worth six figures. I say alleged and apparent because we've not seen record of that sale. Suffice to say that the talk of the town is that he, like Ellick, is supposedly broke. Corey's arrest is a big deal because he's the first good ol' boy in the high-powered

money circles that Ellick Murdock ran in to be put in handcuffs for these crimes. This is promising news because it means that no one who helped Ellick Murdock is safe from the long arm of the law. It means that the excuse I was duped by Ellick is not working in this case. And it means that every good ol' boy who has become accustomed to a system in which everyone else gets held accountable except them and their friends, those guys should be scared. We'll be right back.

To understand who Corey Fleming is, it's easiest if you start with the image you have of Ellick Murdock and put that image on a treadmill, feed it vegetables, groom it, and then give it a tide stick to clean up any messy moments that might occur. Maybe even give that image a book or two. Now you have Corey. Bottom line, Corey gives off healthy, suburban dad vibes. He is generally seen as smart, or at least remarkably smarter than Ellick, and like Ellick he is also genuinely like.

There are several people in Buford County who have had a really rough time reconciling the Corey they know with the Corey that allegedly took part in the Satterfield scheme. In some cases, it wasn't until last week when they read about and saw Chad Westendorff's deposition for themselves that they truly accepted another narrative other than bad Ellick tricked good Corey. A friend of mine who worked closely with Corey in the past described him as a really nice guy but I guess he's actually a really dirty nice guy. There are many others in Buford County who told us that Corey could blur the lines and

that he operated in the gray areas. Corey went to University of South Carolina for undergrad and the University of South Carolina School of Law. He graduated with Ellick Murdoch and they both passed the bar in the fall of 1994. From there, both Ellick and Corey, who are lifelong friends, went on to work at the 14th Judicial Circuit Solicitor's Office where Ellick's father was a solicitor. As you guys already know, Ellick's grandfather and great grandfather were solicitors before that.

So if you think about it, Corey was kind of the chosen one of Ellick's friends to enter that world with him. After a short stint as prosecutors, the two then joined Moss and Coon law firm in Buford. Corey, whose mom is from Buford, would go on to become a named partner and Ellick would end up moving to Hampton County to work for his family's firm PMPD. In 1998, Corey married Eve Majors at St. Helena Episcopal Church in Buford. They honeymooned in Paris. At the time of their wedding, Corey was working at Moss and Coon and Eve, also a lawyer, was

working as a public defender. Today, Eve, who also graduated from the USC School of Law, is listed on the South Carolina Public Defender's website as being an assistant public defender in the juvenile circuit for Buford County. The couple has two kids and they are active in the community. Eve is listed as the registered agent for a Low Country Montessori School in Buford, which is a state-funded charter school. Corey is a marathon runner and a swimmer, and he and his family are frequently seen at

the YMCA working out. The thing that is most stunning when you think about all of this, Corey was ultimately done in by his closest friend. It is literally his relationship with Ellick Murdock that set off alarm bells three years ago. We had no way of knowing back then just how bad this would all end up being. When we think back to 2019, when our investigation was first beginning, I remember when I was searching through court records, Liz told me to look for Corey Fleming Connections,

who was Ellick's best friend and former coworker. And then one day I found a single document in a settlement case that just didn't sit right with me. It was the Gloria Satterfield case, who we knew was the Murdock's housekeeper. I remember Liz set across from me at the time and I blurred it out a few curse words as I read the document. We thought it was strange and highly unethical that Murdock would have his best friend representing plaintiffs in a settlement against him.

Something was off with the settlement, but we weren't really sure what. So I wrote about the case and Fleming's odd involvement in 2019 and in 2020. And Gloria Satterfield's sister read the story I wrote in 2020 and realized something was wrong with the settlement too. But remember, the Murdock's ran Hanson County for over 100 years and the idea of going up against him wasn't heard of, especially for people like the Satterfields. It wasn't until after the double homicide of Maggie and Paul when Gloria's sons had the courage to go to a lawyer.

And this time, they picked the right guy for the job. Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter, who specialized in legal malpractice, busted the case wide open. On the same day, they filed a lawsuit, slid open an investigation into Gloria's death and settlement. One month after filing a lawsuit, Ellick was arrested in the case. Then discovered that the family was not only deceived in hiring Fleming, the settlement was actually for $4.3 million, not $505,000, which is what Fleming filed with the court.

And the family received $0.00 and 0 cents from it all. According to the new indictment, Fleming held a portion of the settlement in his trust and wrote himself an $8,500 check, which he apparently used to pay his large credit card debt, debts to the IRS, video game entertainment, iTunes purchases, and mortgages. And from that same $505,000 settlement, he wrote himself another check for $8,000 and used it for expenses including payment to his mortgage and large credit card debt. Three times in these indictments, Fleming's large debt is mentioned. Which leads us to another huge question in this case.

Where is all of this money going? And why does a lawyer like Corey Fleming have so much debt? According to Eric Bland, Fleming did almost everything wrong in his role as the attorney representing Gloria Satterfield Sons. It's an endless list. Do you have about 10 hours? No, in all seriousness. It was from start to finish, he did everything wrong except what he settled the amount for.

He does brag a lot about that to a lot of people that I'm told that he did get $4.3 million and he did do a great job getting that. And I do commend him for being the first to the table with the Satterfields and paying a lot of money and saying that he was sorry and that he should have represented them better. I do commend him for that. But in the interim, he didn't explain himself to Tony Satterfield on what he should do. An interesting thing that we should point out, Corey faces more charges than Eric in the Satterfield case.

Corey's accused of writing three large checks to the fake forge account, which eventually went to Eric Murdoch, while allegedly knowing it was fraudulent. According to the indictments, Fleming held on to more than $100,000 of the $3.8 million from the Satterfield settlement in his trust account. Fleming allegedly wrote a check for $9,700 to himself and used it for, quote, various personal debts among other transactions. And he never told his clients, the Satterfield family, where this money was. Up until the point Bland discovered this last September.

And think about that for one minute. Corey should have known that the ivory towers protecting Eric Murdoch from his crimes were crumbling long before September. From early on in the investigation, Eric was the only named person of interest in the double homicide of Maggie and Paul Murdoch. Everyone close to the investigation knew that police would be looking closely at Murdoch and his finances. And the Satterfield case was widely talked about in the media last summer.

Corey had a lot of time to come forward. And he didn't. Bland wonders how long it would have taken for Corey to cough up that missing money if it wasn't for him agreeing to represent the Satterfields. He then didn't disperse all the money out of his trust account. And there was $113,800 remaining in his trust account that he let sit there all the way up to October of 2021. And remember, I'm the one that discovered that there was still $113,800 in his trust

account. He didn't discover that. So if I never discovered that, when actually would that money have been distributed out of his trust account to my clients? In early September, when Bland first began representing the Satterfields, he contacted Corey Fleming and asked him for something simple, a file on the case that would show all the financials and give a clear explanation as to why the boys had not gotten their money yet.

He maintained that his client was still Chad Westendorf because Chad was still the PR for the estate of Gloria Satterfield, the personal representative. And I told him that we represent the heirs. The heirs haven't gotten any money. He now was advised by Mark Ball on September 3rd of 2021 that Alex had stolen the money and there was no such thing as forge. That was just a ruse for Alice to steal money. And he did not give us our file, the file that belonged to my client for almost two

and a half weeks because he maintained that he owes no duty to Tony and Brian, that his duties are only owed to Chad Westendorf. So when I finally was able to get Chad, hey Chad, do you think you can go file some paperwork at the probate court and terminate yourself as personal representative because my clients don't want you to represent them anymore as a PR because you were asleep at the wheel while everybody around you stole my client's money? Finally I got Chad to file the final accounting, which was the same accounting that Tony Satterfield had filed when his mother died of $26,000 of assets.

And Chad renounced being the personal representative. It was accepted by the probate court and only then did Corey Fleming turn over his file dust. According to the indictments, Fleming played a key role in the heist by agreeing to represent the Satterfield family, convincing Westendorf to take over the role as PR and essentially shutting out his own clients from having any knowledge as to what was going on up until the point that Bland began representing Tony Satterfield and Brian Harriott last fall. He played a fundamentally important, material, absolutely imperative role.

Could not have happened if you had an attorney who did their duties according to the rules of professional conduct. If they said to Alex, don't you talk to my client, that's my client. Don't you do disbursement sheets, that's my job. Don't you talk to the structure insurance company, that's my job. Don't you pick the personal representative for my client, that's my job. And he's one of the last clear chances, Alex could have been like he is the biggest thief in the world, but it could have been stopped by Corey.

And like I told you before, if Corey's asleep at the wheel or he wants to say he's ignorant or willfully blind or too trusting, huh, I'm not sure I believe that. And Chad Westendorf, all he had to do was say, the check made out to me, I want to see all these documents because that's what I'm supposed to do as a PR, show me the structured settlement documents from the insurance company, the annuity company and Forge. Chad could have put an end to this. And then when Chad, if you want to say they picked it done, like Chad is, well then Judge Mullen, she could have stopped all this.

She could have simply asked, how is it possible that there's $11,500 in expenses in December of 2018 when there's no lawsuit? And we'll be right back. According to Bland, Fleming doesn't have much of a defense for what he's done. In fact, it appears he's dug himself into a deeper hole while trying to cover for himself. Bland compared Fleming to Anna Delvy in the new Netflix series, Inventing Anna, which tells the true story of a super scammer who posed as a German heiress while she frotted New York City's high society out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

You know, she was going to be this big social 8 and she just lied to everybody and stole from everybody and when she'd be confronted, she would never own up to it. She could spin out of it. Well, that's exactly what Corey's trying to do here, and that if the check hits the attorney's hand, you can never have a structure. So when he got those checks, he should have known immediately, oh my God, can't have a structure because I just cashed these checks and deposited them in my escrow account. And he admits he lied about the expenses.

But what he says is, well, I saved the client $750,000 off the scheduled fee even though there was no signed fee agreement. He said, but everybody knows you get 33% or 40%. So I only really took $600,000 instead of $1.3 million. So I had $750,000 that I could play with and steal. So far, even after Wessendorf's damning testimony, Judge Carmen Mullen and Chad Wessendorf have evaded accountability for their alleged roles in the Satterfield case. Mullen is still ruling from the bench, and the South Carolina Supreme Court's Commission

on Judicial Conduct has been silent about the shocking accusations made about the powerful judge's status. Now what's going to happen with the grievance that David Pasco and I filed against Judge Mullen? God only knows. It's up to journalists like you guys to constantly point out to the public. This is what's happening in this state. There's no sunlight.

It's not fair. The public is kept in the dark, and there's resolutions, and there's decisions made, and there's things that are dismissed. Public doesn't know if they're dismissed. There's private letters of caution. Public doesn't know that. The only time the public would know anything regarding a lawyer is if there's a public reprimand, a suspension for a disbarment.

As far as we know, Westendorf is still Vice President of Palmetto State Bank and the President of the Independent Banks of South Carolina. Despite the fact he said on record that he doesn't understand what the word fiduciary meant. We all saw what a stunt he is when he was deposed. The guys, the President of the Independent Bankers Association, they should be embarrassed that that's the representative to the world, that all these independent banks of South Carolina have.

There was no need for a Chad Westendorf. They didn't want Tony Satterfield in this seat because Tony was asking questions and not getting answers. Tony was a problem for them. They wanted a mummy in that seat, and they got the perfect mummy in Chad Westendorf. He was Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes. I know nothing. I ask nothing.

I see nothing. I hear nothing. Corey Fleming is scheduled to appear at a virtual bond hearing on Thursday, March 17th at 9am before Judge Allison Lee. Stay tuned to fitsnews.com and follow me on Twitter at Mandy Matney for live updates on the case. We found out a lot about Corey Fleming's past and his odd connections to other Murdoch cases, but we're going to save those for another episode because it is a lot to unpack.

Before we go, we need to talk about the jailhouse phone call lawsuit, which really is an attack on the freedom of information act, something that all of us should be concerned about. On February 23rd, fitsnews and the Murdoch Murders podcast posted transcripts and parts from 11 of more than 100 phone calls that Alec Murdoch has made in jail since he was booked in October. Five days after we published that episode, Bulldog Attorneys Dick Harputlian and Jim Griffin filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop any further release and publication of Alec's recorded jailhouse phone calls.

Mind you, as mainstream media has failed to point out. The calls made by Alec Murdoch, who was a former public official and attorney, by the way, made his attorney, one of whom is a current state senator, look foolish because they directly contradict claims that have been made by the defense and court. Neither fitsnews nor the Murdoch Murders podcast were named as defendants in a lawsuit. Instead, Harputlian sued the jail and the jail director, who likely have no incentive to fight for FOIA laws. Also concerning, the federal judges have basically been playing hot potato with the case since

it was filed two weeks ago. Five judges have been assigned to this case in less than two weeks, which is highly unusual and shows yet again how far the Murdoch's tentacles stretch across our criminal justice system. We have asked a handful of attorneys for their opinions on this case and every attorney so far has told us that the law is clear. There was no expectation of privacy when the calls were being recorded and the recordings are public record under the law.

But oddly, some media outlets have seemed back. The idea that FOIA isn't ideal, opting for a hope that there is an injunction issued that prevents the jailhouse phone calls from getting out. Let me tell you this, no one should be arguing for less transparency in government, least of all journalists. If any journalist or podcaster ever argues for less transparency in government, their intentions in this case deserve to be questioned because clearly they are not here to expose the truth and they're not here for the victims.

Alec Murdoch is Alec Murdoch because he was able to operate without accountability for years. He did what he did, allegedly, because no one from the outside was watching. I've seen people claiming to be concerned with the release of Alec's jailhouse tapes because they taint a jury pool. You know what taints a jury pool? When your attorney admits on the Today Show that you committed crimes, when you leave a paper trail while stealing millions of dollars from vulnerable people, or when you try to

move assets away from victims while on a recorded jailhouse phone call, that taints a jury pool. If Alec Murdoch's jury pool is tainted, it's because of his own actions. Finally, transparency is the only way to fix this mess. Alec was a public official working for Solicitor Duffy Stone's office. He was in a position, a public trust, which is why we ask for the tapes. If the tapes showed us anything, it's that Alec keeps swindling even from behind bars and his lawyers want to continue to lie to the public about it without being called out. So they will attack a law that is very clear just because it is bending against them now.

All of this went on for so many years because no one was being exposed. That ends now. Vitz News and the Murdoch Murders podcast will continue to advocate and fight for every public record in this case until every victim gets the answers they deserve. Stay tuned. The Murdoch Murders podcast is created by me, Manny Matney, and my fiance, David Moses. Our executive editor is Liz Farrell, produced by Luna Shark Productions.