Murdaugh Murders Podcast - MMP #47 - Overdrawn and Under The Radar - What Happened To The Money? Part Four

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

A motion filed last week by John T. Lay and Peter M. McCoy Jr. — the two attorneys who were appointed as co-receivers in November 2021 to tally Murdaugh’s assets — revealed even more shocking and unheard of banking practices at Palmetto State Bank. It’s yet another layer of this story that shows us how powerful institutions treated Alex Murdaugh differently and therefore, potentially played a role in his alleged crimes.  In this episode, Mandy, Liz, and fan favorite attorney Eric Bland explain the new information uncovered by the receivers and what we know about what happened to the money.  Also this week, the State newspaper published an interesting piece about Chris Wilson — the third attorney on the infamous Omaha flight. Will Wilson be a witness IF murder charges arise? *episode edited 11-30-2022 to correct error - Cory Fleming was alleged to be on the flight to Omaha, not Russell Laffitte. Stay Tuned, Stay Pesky and Stay in the Sunlight...☀️ Please consider donating to the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Justice For Stephen Go Fund Me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Premium Members ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠also get access to ad-free listening, searchable case files, written articles with documents, case photos, episode videos and exclusive live experiences with our hosts on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lunasharkmedia.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ all in one place. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠CLICK HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3BdUtOE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Check out our LUNASHARK Merch 👕⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ What We're Buying... ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/4cJ0eVn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Advertising is curated by the talented team at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AdLarge Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. *** ALERT: If you ever notice audio errors in the pod, email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and we'll send fun merch to the first listener that finds something that needs to be adjusted! *** For current & accurate updates: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bsky.app/profile/mandy-matney.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bsky.app/profile/elizfarrell.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TrueSunlight.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/mandy_matney⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠facebook.com/TrueSunlightPodcast/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram.com/TrueSunlightPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/elizfarrell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/@LunaSharkMedia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/@lunasharkmedia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0% alcohol and a source of vitamin D. Corona Ciro, the official non-alcoholic beer of Milano Cortina, 2026. I don't know how deep the corruption in this case goes, but we now have a much clearer picture of Palmetto State Bank's involvement in Ehrlich Murdoch's crimes. And like everything else in this case, what we've found is heinous and further deepens the mystery of the money. My name is Mandy Matney. I have been investigating the Murdoch family for more than three years now. This is the Murdoch Murdoch's podcast with David Moses and Lerner. Liz Farrell. So today is Wednesday, June 1st.

Next Tuesday will mark the one-year anniversary of the double homicide of Maggie and Paul Murdoch. The wheels of justice turn slowly, but we hope to get more answers soon. We all feel like we keep finding more pieces of this crazy puzzle, and we hope that an arrest in the double homicide will reveal the full picture. Maggie and Paul are victims, and they deserve justice. just like Stephen Smith, Mallory Beach, Gloria Satterfield, and Hakeem Pinckney. We're frustrated by how long all of this has taken to come out,

but we truly appreciate you for sticking with us through all the twist and turns in this case. And we promise we will not stop until we get answers. In speaking of twist and turns, we have another big one. Emotion filed last week by John T. Lay and Peter M. McCoy, Jr., the two attorneys who are appointed as co-receivers in November number 2021 to tally all of Murdoch's assets revealed even more shocking and unheard of banking practices at Palmetto State Bank. The court filings show us five things. Number one, the bank allowed Elyke Murdoch to carry unusually large negative balances on his accounts for years, sometimes

in the six-figure range. Yet they continued to give him large loans, which he in turn did not pay back on time. Number two, considering all of this strange banking activity, Elyke Murdoch's name should have come up regularly in anti-fraud reports. Number three, Elyke's financial schemes, whatever they were, could not have happened without Palmetto State Bank and Russell Lefeet, the former CEO who is currently on house arrest. Number four, Palmetto State Bank clearly isn't cooperating with investigators and it is holding back critical information that could help the receivers further understand where ELEC's assets are and how he might have used the bank to hide them. And finally, number five, these filings show yet another layer of how the systems in place, systems that are meant to regulate

the behavior of everyone else and keep people honest, treated ELEC Murdoch drastically different, and basically aided him in his allegedly criminal acts. Russell Lafitte has maintained that he is yet another victim of Ehrlich, and that he, a person who has known Ehrlich Murdoch his entire life, who grew up next door to him, in fact, was tricked into participating in what he now understands to be theft and crimes. From the beginning, or since he lawyered up anyway, Russell has made a lot of effort to have it known

that he has been cooperating with law enforcement in the multiple ongoing investigations into Murdoch's complex network of alleged crimes. The notion that he has been cooperating was disputed by Prosecutor Creighton Waters at Lafitte's bond hearing, where Waters clarified for the record that, quote, providing documents and, quote, cooperating with law enforcement aren't necessarily the same thing. Obviously, I think we can safely assume that Lafitte's been helping only insofar as it helps himself. One problem, though, no matter which way Russell tries to run, in this maze of rats, he's always going to have to contend with the fact that nothing with Elex banking behavior or the bank's apparent endorsement of his behavior can be explained by the word tricked.

This latest revelation is even more evidence that these men have never had to explain themselves or justify their actions in any consequential way before now. They are terrible at it. With Russell the feet, Corey Fleming, Chad Westendorf, and now Chris Wilson, all using the same defense that they were, quote, tricked by Ehrlich, I'm wondering when one of them is going to switch it up and say something that all of us might actually believe, which is, I was scared to say no.

The latest filings are another reminder of how important the receiver's duties have become in this case. Remember, the receivership is still in place, in part because of Morgan Dowdy's affidavit, as we discussed in the previous episode. The receivership is helping ensure no stones are left on turn in finding Elex assets and tracing what money came in and where it went after that. The receivership is keeping people honest, especially those who have trouble with the truth right now. For a recap, Corey Howardton Fleming now stands accused of 23 felony charges, including money laundering, breach of trust, criminal conspiracy, and others in the theft of settlement money from the pink. and the Satterfields. He faces over 200 years in prison in nearly $2 million in fines.

Newly implicated Russell Lucius Lafitte faces 21 various counts of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, computer crimes, and aiding in Elex breach of trust charges, totaling 180 years in potential prison time in over $1 million in fines. Elix charges continue to grow with over 80 felony charges carrying an absurd penalty potential of over 750 years in prison and millions in fines. But let's talk about these explosive filings. According to this motion, on March 2nd, John T. Lay and Peter M. McCoy Jr., the co-receivers filed a subpoena seeking any and all documents related to accounts open for Hannah and Elena Plyler. And before we get any further into those documents, we need to tell you about the Pliler case, a case that Liz has been looking into for months.

For the first time since indictments began rolling out for Murdoch and his alleged co-conspirators, Thursday's filings put the names Hannah and Elena Pliler to former clients of Elyke Murdoch on the public record. On July 16, 2005, the Plilers, who were 8 and 12 at the time, were injured in a car wreck that killed their mother, Angela Pliler, and their 14-year-old brother, Justin. Angela Plyler was driving a 1999 Ford Explorer on Interstate 95, when the tread of her left rear tire separated, and the SUV veered off the road and struck several trees.

On November 16, 2006, Russell Lafitte was enlisted to serve as a conservator to the two girls and oversee the millions they received in their case. To be clear, neither Ehrlich nor Russell have been accused. accused of stealing from the plilers. But Russell appears to have used the girls' accounts as a personal reserve from which he and Ehrlich gave themselves generous loans, according to sources with knowledge of their case. Though Russell was careful to charge himself and Ehrlich interest, the rates were around 2.5% and 3.25%, respectively. Far lower than the bank was charging clients of Peters, Murdoch, Parker, Elts Roth, and Dietrich for the quote-unquote lawyer loans that I reported on back in April.

Ehrlich and Russell are accused of working together to steal money from Ehrlich's clients, specifically Hakeem Pinckney and Arthur Badger, whose case will tell you more about in a future episode, and using it to pay back those secret loans taken from the pliler's money. We don't know yet whether those loans were fully paid off. The subpoena also asked the bank to produce any and all documents, related to all accounts open for Arthur Badger and produce any and all documents related to any account where Russell Lafitte served as the conservator

and or power of attorney. Right now, we know that Russell served as conservator for Hakeem Pinckney and as a conservator for the plilers and as personal representative for their mothers and brothers' estate and personal representative for the estate of Arthur Badger's wife who was killed in a catastrophic

car crash. That arrangement resembles the one in the Satterfield case in which the plaintiff's family is convinced to sign over the PR duties to a bank employee not realizing that this removes them from the case altogether. Lastly, the subpoena asked for the bank to produce all meeting minutes from board meetings held from 2005 to present. It is not clear to us what the significance of 2005 is. But that is the year that Randolph Murdoch announced his retirement as solicitor, ending an unprecedented, nearly 19-decade reign of Murdoch's over prosecution in the 14th Circuit. Direct reign anyway.

We all know they had significant influence in that office up until at least September 2021. Also, in 2005, South Carolina passed the Tort Reform Act, which completely changed the face of how partners at PMPED had operated for generations. It meant that they had to pivot, which likely, given what we know now about the firm's relationship with Palmetto State Bank, meant that bank was likely affected by this reform too. As of the filing of that motion last week, Palmetto State Bank had not complied with the co-receiver's subpoena. And we'll be right back. Murdoch, I need police and an ambulance immediately.

Murdoch, Death in the Family Official Podcast, is here. I'm joining Patricia Arquette, Jason Clark, and the cast to uncover all things Murdoch. Family first. To unravel the story piece by piece was really surprising because you don't want to believe it. Murdoch, Death in the Family Official Podcast, Wednesdays. And stream Murdoch, Death in the Family on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. As the receivers have been pouring through Ellick Murdox Bank records, the motion states that, quote, questions arose regarding the bank's involvement and knowledge of Murdoch's banking activities.

Especially in light of the loans, the bank claims it is owed and specifically the legitimacy of mortgages, the bank claims it holds a security for those loans. The motion says it appeared that, quote, at least in some instances, money's, that may have been misappropriated from the bank from the other bank customer funds were used to pay down loans made to Murdoch by the bank. The receivers listed several instances that should have been red flags for the bank. The first example was in February 2015. So 2015 is a significant year for both Ehrlich and Russell. In February 2015, Palmetto State Bank gave Ehrlich a revolving line of credit for $500,000, which he secured with all seven tracks of Moselle. By May, that line of credit was already depleted and he had a negative balance of almost $52,000. Yet the bank gave him another

$500,000 later that same year. Here's some important history on this. As you know, Ellick had acquired Moselle in two transactions. One in April 2013 when he got six of the tracks and the other in September 2014 when he got the last track. What's weird here is that two days after the 2013 transaction, so two days after ELEC took the land from suspected drug trafficker Barrett Bowler as collateral for a supposedly unpaid mortgage owed to Ehrlich. Palmetto State Bank gave Ehrlich a $1.3 million mortgage secured by the six tracks he had just acquired. So in 2015, when the bank gave him the $500,000 and then another $500,000 later that year, while he was already in a five-digit negative balance on his Palmetto State bank account, they were basically agreeing to give him a second mortgage

for property that they already had a claim to because the collateral was already fully leveraged. You might wonder how Elek was about making his monthly payments on these mortgages? Well, he was terrible. It appears that he was allowed to make limited payments whenever he felt like it, which as all of you know is simply not the way it works for 99.99% of us. The 2013 mortgage was due in full by 2018, and the 2015 mortgage was due and full by 2020. But according to Maggie's estate, Ehrlich not only didn't abide by the terms of his mortgages with Palmetto State Bank, he had only paid down those loans by about $330,000. Those loans have been a source of contention among those representatives,

the long line of creditors forming at Elex's door. Last fall, Mark Tinsley, the attorney representing the Beach family and two of the boat crash victims, and Eric Bland, the attorney representing the Satterfield family, put liens on Moselle as well as the Murdox-Edisto Beach home. Though Eric Bland canceled his liens' earlier this year, Mark Tinsley waited until April to release the properties because he continued to question the legitimacy of the Palmetto State Bank loans, and can you blame him? When you look at this now, after seeing in black and white how permissive and easy-going Palmetto State Bank seemed to be with Ellick that entire time. It actually does call into question the legitimacy of John Marvin Murdoch's claim in February that Atinsley didn't remove the liens.

The Moselle and Edisto properties would be foreclosed on and taken over by Palmetto State Bank. Really? Wasn't the bank supposed to have done that in 2018 and again in 2020 when neither loan was paid back? and their star customer not only had no money in the bank, he was routinely in the hole for tens of thousands of dollars. How could they possibly say, Time's Up, give us the keys with a straight face? This bank has taken homes from working class people

for not paying their mortgages on time. I honestly don't know how the bank's board, the bank's officers, or the Lafitte family can look at themselves in the mirror knowing that this happened on their watch. The older couple who falls behind on their mortgage, yes, let's go after them. but the supposed millionaire who doesn't pay on time or at all and seems to always have a negative balance,

sometimes in the six-figure range, he's such a good customer. Give him time. He'll make good on it. 2015 is also significant for a few other reasons. The first is that the checks to Cousin Eddie appear to have started a few weeks after Ehrlich got the first $500,000 loan. We'll talk more about those checks in a bit. The second is that Stephen Smith was murdered in July. We don't yet know how this is connected to the Murdoch family, beyond the rumors mentioned in the original case file, or what implications this might have had for ELEC financially in the months and years after. The third is in September 2015, Ehrlich Murdoch opened his very first forge account at Bank of America. I hope they gave him a lollipop that day.

The fourth is that Hannah Plyler was turning 18 and therefore was going to be entitled to the money that Ehrlich and Russell had been helping themselves to. Finally, in 2015, Palmetto State Bank was still working with the FDIC on its takeover of Allendale County Bank, which it acquired in 2014 in, I want to say a fire sale, but that's actually not funny because of what happened with this bank. Allendale County Bank was among the state's weakest banks, which makes sense given that it was a banking institution in one of the poorest counties in the state. Hampton County is poor. Allendale is more poor. There's not a whole lot of money. circulating there. In 2012, a bank teller named April Adams pleaded guilty in federal court to allegedly embezzling more than $300,000 from the bank between May and June 2011 and for trying to burn down the bank in an effort to hide her alleged thefts. I say allegedly

and alleged here even though she pleaded guilty and was sentenced because as you guys are learning, nothing is ever as it seems at first glanced down here. The motion also cited November 27th, when Murdoch, quote, had a negative checking account balance every day for the entire month except for seven days. During that month, his account plummeted to negative $34,000. Just the next month in December 2017, Murdoch received $60,000 from two of his family members. But his bank account wasn't in the black for long. In February and March 2018, Murdoch had a negative balance for weeks. at a time, hitting a low of negative $33,000, according to the motion.

Remember how each of the indictments against ELEC seemed to end with the line? Murdoch then used the money to make credit card payments, payback loans, pay family members, as well as friends and associates. At least one of those credit card payments was six figures, so it seems like every financial avenue in ELEC's life was leveraged to within an inch of its life. Meanwhile, his friends and family say he seemed to be doing really well financially. This latest motion is one more piece of the puzzle, but it only creates more questions for us. What was Eleg doing with the money he earned? The money he allegedly stole. The money the bank kept giving him and the huge amounts of imaginary money he spent in overdrafts.

And the other shocking thing that the receivers have found while investigating Elyke's finances, what they call significant cash payments to third parties with the intent to discover additional assets. Specifically, they're talking about the so-called Cousin Eddie checks, which is yet another puzzling layer in the Murdoch money mystery. In total, the receivers say the Curtis Eddie Smith received more than $2.5 million from 2019 through 2021, in addition to other payments he received in previous years. Now remember how we first found out about Curtis Eddie Smith. Eddie is accused of conspiring with Murdoch

in the very strange roadside shooting over Labor Day weekend, the incident that changed everything for Ehrlich Murdoch. We can't forget the week that the walls seemed to fall down for Ehrlich, when he confessed that he wasn't actually an innocent victim who was randomly shot on the side of the road, which was the narrative, pushed out by his camp in nearly every South Carolina media outlet with the strong implication that Elyke was, like Maggie and Paul, being targeted by murderers, no.

He was not an innocent victim, but instead claimed to be a drug addict in distress. I think back to those nine days after the roadside shooting often, and the avalanche, a shocking information that was coming out at the time. Within a few days, Elyke Murdoch went for being a lawyer who happened, to be the only person of interest in the double homicide of his wife and son to a suspended attorney who was stealing millions of dollars from clients and who was now saying that he staged his own failed apparent suicide so that his son, Buster, could collect a $10 million insurance policy. Anyways, the Murdoch camp was really quick to label Curtis Smith as Elyke's drug dealer that week,

perhaps because maybe Elyke fessed up to the millions of dollars in checks given to Eddie, and they needed to find a quick excuse that could also generate public sympathy. So they dubbed him as an opioid addict and cousin Eddie as a drug dealer. There's a moment in the jailhouse calls when Ehrlich tells his older brother Randy about the ringing he's been experiencing in his ears, insinuating that, you know, maybe this is a result of him doing drugs. The first time I heard the recording, I knew that, the second he brought it up where he was going with it.

I pictured that he had read an old magazine article that was lying around in the jail common area about Rush Limbaugh's famous hearing problems allegedly caused by his opioid addiction. And I pictured Elyke talking to other inmates like, so you're an opioid addict? Uh, me too, me too, definitely. So what kind of effects are you feeling? Like, what are your symptoms? Interesting, me too, totally. And sure enough, in that phone call, Ely too, definitely.

And sure enough, in that phone call, Eelick was like, yeah, maybe I have that drug addict ear thing. But Randy was quick to be like, nah, Beau, it's probably from all the shooting you do. Which is literally the last thing Ehrlich would want anyone to be saying about him right now. I'm surprised he wasn't like shooting me. No, I haven't shot guns in a long time. Anyway, if Eleg were an actual opioid addict of 20 years, and this is what he did to keep his habit going, then his addiction is the most successful thing he's ever done in his life. During the summer of 2020, ELEC wrote more than $150,000 in checks to Eddie Smith from both his Bank

of America and his Palmetto State Bank accounts. From 2015 to February 2021, only one check that Ehrlich wrote to Eddie Smith was for more than $10,000. But from the end of February 2021 through June 2021, more than half of the checks he was writing to Eddie appear to have been for $30,000, and $50,000. This could be important because $10,000 is the threshold amount in which banks must report the transactions to the federal government. So this could mean that ELEC was getting sloppier as time went on and even more sloppy in the final four months of Maggie's and Paul's lives. Or he was getting more desperate. Was it because his secret world was about to be exposed because of the boat crash? Was he offloading money to hide from the Beach family

and the other boat victims? Is it that simple? Or did he know that investigators with the state grand jury were beginning to look into the obstruction of justice accusations in the boat crash investigation and were looking into his finances? Or is it something else altogether? And if it is, what in the heck could it be? The motion said that Murdoch's account routinely held a negative balance dipping to negative $53,000, despite depositing significant draws from the $1 million line of credit. The motion said, quote, as could be imagined, Murdoch's loans routinely were passed due with late charges assessed. As could be imagined, we are highly surprised that late charges were assessed. People read our story about the loans and the huge overdrafts ELEC was allowed to keep and

quickly pointed out that obviously their banks, including Palmetto State Bank, held them to different standards. One reader told us about how they got charged $35 for being 60 cents withdrawn on their account. Another told us about how Palmetto State Bank didn't hesitate to take a house away from a relative who had fallen behind them payments. Other readers picked up on how this apparent scheme between ELEC and the bank is actually a viable money laundering technique in which the money gets paid back with illegitimate money at the bank and then cashed out legitimately with another refinancing. But this is what bank officers and regulators are for to catch this stuff. Obviously, this didn't happen here.

So finally, the motion filed by the receivers last week reveals some perplexing details about Ellic Murdoch's finances around the time of the murders. It says, quote, inexplicably in July 2021, which is just a month after the murders, the bank provided Murdoch with a $750,000 line of credit at a time when Murdoch had a checking account balance of $162,000. During that same time, in the summer of 2021, Eddie Smith received more than $305,000

in multiple checks from Ellick Murdoch's Palmetto State Bank checking account in amounts of over $10,000. Now the big question after reading that motion, as well as pieces of Russell Lafitte's deposition with the receivers, is how did the bank let this happen? Or maybe the question should be why? What else was going on with some of the bank's board members? How much did Russell's father Charlie know about this? How much did Elex's father Randolph know about this?

Were these two sons carrying on an inherited arrangement? Anyone with just a touch of banking knowledge could see these numbers on Elex's account. and know that something was up. I asked a source who has more than 40 years of banking experience to look at the numbers on Elex account. I asked if it was unusual for the bank to allow a customer to routinely carry significant overdrafts. She said that she has never seen an overdraft approved for anywhere near those sums. She said those types of overdrafts specifically indicate a problem with the customer's finances and warranted and warrant significant scrutiny on behalf of the bank.

The question is, how many people knew and didn't stop it? And at what point do the feds decide that it is time to take over Palmetto State Bank? Why is there no receivership in place for the bank, or P&PED for that matter? There is so much unorthodox stuff happening here. Why are they trusted to sort it out on their own? without any oversight. So we spoke with Eric Bland about these recent revelations. Remember, Eric Bland filed a lawsuit against Eddie Smith late last year on his quest to find

answers to where the Satterfield money went. Eric has found out a lot about the money and where it was going and what was going on with Eddie Smith. And we're going to get into all of that in a later episode. But for starters, I asked Eric what he thought of a Pomerado State Bank's involvement in the scheme. He said that there absolutely were warning signs. You know, Alex telling Palmetta State Bank to deposit a trust account check for a particular client in his personal account or giving him access to those funds and then letting them

repay them at a later date. I just can't imagine that the federal regulators are not going to come in and do some kind of significant oversight on this bank, either put them on some kind of temporary watch list to see if there are going to be additional bank officers hired and new controls put in place. But, you know, you just can't say it's just only Russ Lafitte. You know, there are tellers, there are assistance, you know, unless Russ is typing up these notes himself and doing all the transferring of funds and reconciliation. Somebody should have picked this up. There should be some oversight that took place.

You know, the same questions that you'd ask of PMPED to say, where was the oversight? Alex certainly didn't type up letters. Alex certainly didn't type up checks. You know, other people had to help out. You know, certain people should have asked questions. It's just a tremendous failure from a corporate standpoint to protect clients and protect people's money. So Lafee was deposed by the receivers in this case in February

2020. In the motion, the receivers attached several pages of Lafitte's deposition. What's interesting is that two names were brought up specifically in that deposition, John Sulkah and John Peters, two bank officers who were responsible for monitoring and reporting suspicious behavior like Elyx. The important takeaway here is this. There is no way Elex banking behavior didn't constantly send up alerts within the bank. So this raises the question

of how was all of this handled? How did Palmetter State Bank report the weird transactions and liberal lending to regulators? And what was the work culture like at the bank where employees were probably best served by a see-nothing, say-nothing mentality? And we'll be right back.

A few episodes ago, when Russell Lafitte was indicted, we mentioned something that we told you we would circle back on. So in the indictment that said Corey Fleming, Elic Murdoch, and another attorney, who at the time we were working to find out who it was, went on a luxurious trip to Omaha, Nebraska, on a private plane to attend the 2012 College World Series. The problem was, according to that indictment, the trip was funded by the Pinkney family's stolen money.

Well, turns out the attorney was Chris Wilson. So Chris Wilson's name comes up a lot in this investigation. And as the state newspaper reported this week, he could be a key witness in this case. Who is Chris Wilson? Officially Chris Wilson's name first came up in November 2021 when Murdoch was indicted for convincing a quote, attorney from another firm to usurp the normal process and pay him directly for his share of the legal fees in a case they had worked on together. In March 2021, Murdoch allegedly told Wilson, who wasn't named in the indictment, that he was going to structure his fees, quote, in part because of the boat crash case, in which Murdoch is a defendant. According to the indictment, Murdoch told the attorney, Wilson, that his firm Peters, Murdoch, Merdoch, Eltsroth, and Dietrich already knew he was doing this and that he would put the fees, quote, on the books. Instead, Murdoch put the hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees into his bank account

and spent it, allegedly. Murdoch's apparent scheme was found out by PMPD in July 2021, according to the indictment. After it was discovered, Murdoch allegedly called the attorney, Wilson, and told him that he had not set up the structured fee correctly and needed to send it back. Murdoch wired $600,000 to Wilson and falsely claimed, according to the indictment, that he couldn't send the remaining $192,000 because of how the structured account had been set up. Chris Wilson's got his own problems that he's going to have to deal with. Every lawyer knows that if I'm co-counsel with somebody else that's a member of a law firm and we have a joint representation agreement on behalf of a client. If I'm the one who's distributing those settlement funds from an escrow account,

I am writing those checks to that law firm that that other lawyer is a member of. I'm not writing them to them individually. Because the law firm's going to come back to me and say, yeah, that's great. You sent those checks to Jerry. Now write me my checks that I'm entitled to because I'm the one on the fee agreement, the law firm. Remember that guy? Wilson's name came up again in Alex December bond hearing when he made a point to attempt to absolve both Wilson and Fleming,

his two close buddies, from his shenanigans. In court, Murdoch said that Wilson and Fleming are two of his oldest and dearest friends, who, quote, didn't know anything and didn't do anything wrong. However, outside of the official public record, Wilson's name has been whispered as one of Murdoch's closest confidants for years, as Liz and I have been peeling back all of the Murdoch family lairs since the boat crash. It could be said that Chris, Ehrlich, and Corey have been thickest thieves since their law school days. There are not many stories we've heard about Ehrlich's law school days that don't involve the names Chris and Corey. Neither of us know Chris, but right now I picture him to be like chunk in Goonies, the kid who did the truffle shuffle, who got caught by the Fratellis,

and when they told him to talk, he immediately confessed every little thing he had done in his life, including stealing his uncle Max's toupee, getting kicked out of Fat Camp, and cheating on his history exam. That's who I picture Chris to be, but maybe he's a Fratelli, hard to tell at this point. Wilson, like Fleming, was quick to throw Elyke Murdoch under the bus, The second, one finger pointed at him. Soon after the indictments, which vaguely identified him as a Bamberg County attorney dropped, Wilson basically outed himself, and he sent a statement to the media saying that he was deeply troubled, disappointed, and angry.

He said that he knew Ehrlich Murdoch for 30 years, but, quote, friendship doesn't replace facts. He said Eleg has to be held accountable for this situation, and seemingly others, end quote. Ah, he too was duped. Since I wrote this line, I've gotten a lot of feedback from people who like to say it to me when I see them in public. Did duped Fleming dupe Wilson? Was Murdoch such a super duper that he could dupe the duped into duping? I guess we'll find out someday. So Wilson claims he was duped by Ehrlich Murdoch. Remember that. Something else to know about Wilson, he is being represented by one of the most well-known attorneys in South Carolina. former state representative and CNN commoner Bacari Sellers.

Sellers grew up close to Hampton County, and he's in the same good old boy club with Dick Arputtlian, Elyke Murdoch, Jim Griffin, etc., etc. Sellers was quick to confirm that his client, Chris Wilson, was in fact on that plane, but also said that he had no knowledge of how that plane was paid for. He and Ehrlich were best friends, Sellers said, Quote, he was duped like everyone else. All of these super smart attorneys were duped by a guy who doesn't know what habeas corpus means. That makes sense. One of my best friends thought Egypt was in South America.

I love her, but she is the last person I'd let take me on a trip to see the Spinks, unless I'm trying to go to Argentina. The reason we use the word best in front of the word friend is to alert the rest of our circle that this person knows me really well. and I know this person really well. And we rely on each other and we trust each other based on the things we've learned about each other. Now, we also trust our best friends to the point that we don't always feel the need to vet them when they ask for a favor. But Ehrlich Murdoch is not like my best friend, who is a wonderful kind and honest person who wouldn't steal a penny from the ground. Why are there so many people from Ehrlich's law school days who saw the things he did, heard the things he bragged about, and determined he was a journey. jerk who will do you dirty. But the guys he was closest to are like, I need to hire a high-profile

lawyer immediately. And that lawyer needs to tell all the media that I'm innocent. Okay, so now you know the background on Wilson. Let's talk about this interesting story about this interesting story that was published in the state newspaper on Sunday. The state is one of several media outlets whose reporting has repeatedly favored the Murdox and the good old boys, especially in the past year. The story was written by likely their oldest reporter, John Monk, remember, the South Carolina reporter of the year who wrote a puff piece on Harputian and Griffin and labeled them as bulldog attorneys? I say this because it's important to know where the story came from when we're trying to figure out the why behind it. So this article told us a few key details. First of all,

Vakari Sellers was quick to say that his client, Chris Wilson, is, quote, helping the police and was, quote, completely blindsided. He had no knowledge or participation in these crimes. Second, the story emphasized that Wilson may play a role as a potential alibi if murder charges arise against ELEC. Look, behind the scenes, there has been a lot of talk that the Murdochs are preparing themselves for something, that Elex attorneys are preparing themselves for that same something, that everyone is waiting for something in a way they weren't waiting before.

So first, I want to be clear that this isn't about the reporter as a person. This is about the institution, and some people out there look at our criticism of the institution and the people who are key parts of that institution as being unprofessional or petty on our part. If you think that, you are missing the point. You are missing the point, which is this. We want journalists to do their jobs. They are sorely needed and they are important. A single inquiry from a journalist can change the course of would-be corruption.

Remember, vampires don't like sunlight. It is a journalist's job to shine sunlight wherever they think the vampires are. That's one part of our job. The other part is to not provide them darkness in which to thrive. Good old boys need chumminess and darkness. Now, I'm not calling Jim Griffin a vampire, But everything Mandy's about to tell you should have warranted a follow-up question from the reporter or an explanation that accounts for Jim's contradictions of earlier statements.

Also, Mandy and I both believe that when it comes to Murdoch stories, every quote Jim is allowed to have in a publication or on TV should be accompanied by a sentence that reminds readers and viewers that his statements about Murdoch in the past were found to be inaccurate. It's called context and it's important. Attorney Jim Griffin claimed that basically Wilson is going to be a key part of Ehrlich's alibi. And that article really puts Wilson on the hook to be Ehrlich's alibi. What is Ehrlich's alibi, you might ask? As a reminder, Ehrlich has maintained his innocence from the beginning.

His attorneys claim that Ehrlich has accounted for every move that night and at the time that the coroners say Maggie and Paul were killed, Ehrlich was at his mother's house 20 minutes away watching a game show on television. But the problem is, is this directly contradicts what sources are saying the evidence in the case points to in terms of what Ehrlich had told investigators about his whereabouts that night. But now, Griffin is taking it a step further and saying that even more time was accounted for that evening. And supposedly, Chris Wilson can account for it.

Griffin claims that Chris and Ehrlich were talking on the phone at the time the murders allegedly happened, which really are the time the murders were guessed by a coroner, and I certainly do not trust that estimate. What's especially interesting is this. For the first time, Griffin seems to be putting it on the record that Ehrlich was at Moselle at 9 p.m. which means that Ehrlich would have seen Maggie and Paul shortly before they were killed. Griffin also says that Ehrlich drove to his mother's house at 9 o'clock. To get to our house at 9.20, stay for 20 minutes, and drove back to arrive at Moselle around 10 p.m.

In addition to this quick turnaround of a late-night drive, Jim told the state newspaper that Ehrlich spoke with Chris Wilson twice during his 20 minutes there and then twice on his 20-minute ride back to Moselle. So this obviously raises questions. Who drives 40 minutes to see their elderly mother with dementia for 20 minutes at 9 p.m. at night? How many 50-some-year-old male attorneys call up other 50-some-year-old male attorneys to chit-chat multiple times past 9 p.m. on a Monday? And why are we suddenly hearing this narrative now?

And then the totality of it all, the body count, the unsolved murders, the missing millions of dollars that were stolen from clients, the prominent attorneys who have been named in this case, and those unnamed, the institutions involved, the justice system, the banks, all of it is overwhelming when you take a step back and see what has been exposed since June 7, 2021. No, it's not blowing to me. To me, I've been doing this for 34 years. I've been suing lawyers for 28 of those 34 years. You can add up every single one of my legal malpractice cases, which almost total 200. And all the conduct doesn't even come close to this. It's conduct that you can't even write about in a law school ethics class because it's so preposterous. It's just so over the top. Nobody would do it. And when I said you, Well, I'm numb to it. That was the wrong thing to say.

I'm numb from it. It's made me absolutely numb. I hate what it's done to our profession. I hate what it's done to our state. And to think, there are still so many questions we don't have answers to. As always in this story, there is still so much waiting for us in the shadows as we pour sunlight on it all. As the light shines, the complicit will try to stay. hidden. But rest assured, our movement grows stronger every day in its determination to correct

these injustices, change the system, and hold every single bad actor accountable. Stay tuned. Hey everybody. Want to interrupt the podcast just for a brief moment to share some appreciation for that special dogged reporter that started us all on this journey. Mandy's immense drive and determination led to a ground swell of support for change and is making a huge, huge impact in our region and beyond. I don't know if you knew this, but it's her birthday this week. And if you're a fan like I am, and I'm a little biased, I'd like to suggest some ways you can help make it extra special for her.

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