How far would a fraudster go to cover up a crime? As a business ethics speaker and business ethics consultant, I have long told audiences that there often are no limits. If a fraudster can scheme a plot to steal millions – or even tens of thousands, then clearly the groundwork is in place to rationalize many other behaviors. Often, the other behaviors are worse than the fraud itself.
The sewage
The sewage of fraud into which lawyer Alex Murdaugh has fallen seems to know no bounds. He has allegedly murdered to shift the fraud investigation away from himself. If that were not ugly enough, the murdered people were his wife and son.
The evening of June 7, 2021 might be called the turning point in this case. On that evening, he called police dispatch to tell them he found his wife and son shot-up (possibly dead) on his property in rural South Carolina.
When the police arrived, Murdaugh claimed the murders were somehow tied to a 2019 boat fire in which his son’s girlfriend was killed. There is a twisted logic here as his son was facing charges for driving the boat while drunk. Alex Murdaugh (and the older brother) were facing a lawsuit due to the younger brother’s negligence.
The prosecutors never found a shred of evidence linking the 2021 killings to the fatal boat party. Instead, they claim, “The only person with a true motive to kill his wife and son, was Murdaugh himself” and that “the clouds of Murdaugh’s past misdeeds’ were gathering into a perfect storm that was going to expose the real Alex Murdaugh.”
The prosecution claims that on the night of June 7, 2021, Murdaugh killed his family to prevent his crimes of financial fraud from being uncovered. In his most unethical life, Murdaugh had accumulated debts in the millions of dollars.
Cause a distraction
The prosecutor will argue that he killed his own wife and son for no other reason than to create a distraction because his fraud was about to be uncovered by his one-time law partner. He knew he could not provide the proper financial information that would have cleared him of fraud.
He is currently in jail, facing nearly 100 criminal charges. Part of his fraud was stealing nearly $9 million of client money. His alleged killing of his wife and younger son was supposedly motivated by insurance money. He insured them for $10 million. Depressing.
If he is convicted, Alex Murdaugh, former lawyer, social register kind-of-guy, high-living fraudster, will never leave jail.
When did his sense of right and wrong, his ethical sense, die? It most probably left him decades before. He had a need for something much bigger than living a righteous life. He was beyond help when he planned the killing of his family.
As 2022 closes and this horrific crime comes to light, it is apparent that fraud and violent crime have not left us. The firewall to such behaviors is ethical training. As an ethics keynote speaker and ethics consultant, I have been asked if the Alex Murdaugh case is the worst I have ever seen.
No, not really, for fraud always destroys something, sooner or later; a life, a reputation, wealth, a future itself. If there is any satisfaction to be had here, it is that this man who killed for fraud will himself die a long and depressing death. He will be forgotten and debased.
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