News flash: according to Mandy Matney’s twitter:
“Judge Hall ordered an asset-freezing injunction and appointed receivers to manage and recover Alex Murdaugh's funds.”
I looked up to see how much it is to get 10 million dollar life insurance policy, it appears that you have to jump through hoops and it seems with his situation at that time he would have been denied.
Jmo It was a made up story.
A person being sued in wrongful death, insurance company is suing him, his wife and son, murdered. He’s in the rears for taxes not paid.
And he was able to secure 10 million dollar life insurance policy?
Jmo
It’s not uncommon for companies to provide life insurance policies at discounted price or, in some cases, wholly subsidized, especially to Apex employees. The firm may have had policies on all the partners and the partners may have had a firm funded base term life policy on themselves and their spouse (much cheaper than whole life). May companies will allow the employee to use pretax earnings to cover the cost delta between the firm provided coverage and max coverage offered by the carrier for themselves as well as for the spouse. For example, I know of someone whose employer automatically provides the employee term life coverage of 4 times the employee’s annual salary free, with the employee having the option to purchase additional term life of up to 8 times iirc the annual salary. The max you could up it on your spouse likely varies by state for the same reason that “insurance interest” requirements have been required most places and “dead peasant” policies a/k/a “dead janitor” policies are also disfavored, despite that they remain common. Assuming only for the sake of this thought experiment that AM’s earnings from the firm at the time of the boat crash were $2M/year, he could have had term life on himself as five times his annual, or if it was $1M a year it might be ten times his annual in terms of coverage, with the employee funding a good chunk of the premiums for the term policy (if not all) and with any contributions AM coming pretax and never showing up in his take home for him to squander. Most insurers require basic physical and medical history if you’re seeking insurance amounts way over the standard term life policy, but if you’re fortunate enough to be relatively healthy at the time of the physical and medical history, in my experience it’s not hard at all to qualify for loads of term life. Likewise for whole life policies, but those are much more expensive.
Insurance shell games and shenanigans of different types are woven throughout the tapestry of at minimum AM and possibly a much larger group of his associates’ M.O.s
After the double homicide and after AM got busted for the alleged “assisted suicide” and fingered for the alleged “conversion” of PMPED funds, one of his defense lawyers (DH as I recall) insisted that Alex had no insurance on Maggie or Paul. That seems at this point to be extremely likely to be misleading. Possibly the defense team would/will take the position that firm provided term life policies (even if AM chipped in pretax some each paycheck or distribution to secure increased coverage limits), on MM and/or PM don’t = AM having insurance policies on them or MM or PM having insurance policies on themselves.
It’s also possible that policies could have been taken out by any one or more of the many companies AM owned or co-owned and that the companies might have life insurance policies on one or more members of the family as well as P&O, A&O, premises liability, and/or umbrella policies. We’ve already seen how AM was able to utilize a blended model of insurance policies to monetize an innocent and dedicated loyal longtime worker for the family. It is very difficult to believe he would not have standard coverage/s in place even if just burial policies provided by the firm or covered by his own family estate planning. You can cash in a whole life policy but the only way I know of to cash out a term life policy is upon the death or other covered hazard to the insured/s.
Apologies if this has been mentioned previously, but did anyone else suspect that AM’s perp description provided to 911 of much younger than Alex and really short hair may have been an attempt by AM to evoke or imply CC?
The saga also has an odd history of accident locations changing. There were initial reports and possibly factual but possibly goal post shifting accounts of the accident location for GS alleged trip and fall. If one premises was insured for considerably more money than the other property, this might be circumstantial evidences that could bear on motive for deliberately switching the version of the story to make sure it was reported as having occurred at the property with higher policy limits available for such a potential claim (thus Moselle) especially seeing as the suit against himself re GS’s death appeared in retrospect to have been initiated by AM and motivated as a mechanism to liquidate or divert the maximum amounts of insurance proceeds to AM.
I’d be interested to see if an inspector, adjustor, investigator, or rep for any of the insurance carriers ever conducted a site inspection or completed an independent report to see if location and narrative checked out re the alleged trip-and-fall. Because AM seems none too sharp, if such reports exist and we’re not written by himself personally or based off a fake police report he provided to the carriers or produced by one of his own shell companies, a copy of that claim investigation file *might* help shed more light, if not on what actually happened to GS at wherever it occurred, but at least be some documentation of all the many ways that version of events kept/keeps changing and whether, as seems likely, gaming of multiple angles was involved.
As AM reportedly stipulated to his liability/culpability for the accident in pleadings or (possibly unfiled; forged) documents in the GS case, the carrier/s might have had a tougher time defending/denying/settling the claim, but this would seem to be a violation of the terms of most premises liability policies and could/would have been a good basis for failure to indemnify even in the presence of agreement to defend. I suspect most carriers would attempt to subrogate with that high a dollar amount on this type of claim.
I don’t recall attending any major mediations or binding settlement talks involving high dollar policies unless a rep of the carrier was present if not in person than at least via phone. Approval of a policy limits payout would require carrier approval and the whole thing is super sketchy. The hospital bill would need to be settled in full and/or all liens negotiated down or paid either from the proceeds or from the responsible party’s contribution or the lawyer’s agreement to lower their fees or commission in order to make sure the bills/liens were covered/released before the settlement proceeds from the insurer/s would be paid out to the plaintiff/s/heirs/rep of the decedent.
Re the 911 caller (one of the Samaritans presumably) from the AM “assisted suicide” incident mentioning the trunk of the SUV was open, this might be consistent with AM being a dim bulb and thinking this is consistent with his narrative of the “changing the flat tire” story originally trotted out.
It’s also interesting the lady AM asked to take him to the hospital in her car who said she couldn’t because she had a baby in the car seat and AM was all bloody. AM then asked her is she could take him in his car — right after telling the 911 operator earlier that he couldn’t drive his car because it has a flat.
It’s Keystone Copy as it sounds like the Samaritan transfers to AM’s car (MM’s Mercedes) and on the 911 call you can hear him directing the Samaritan about how to start the car and get it in gear and they seem to start driving, but then AM suddenly remembers they can’t take his car (that they are then in and driving) because it’s got a flat tire.
Also telling: one of the first things AM tells the 911 operator on the first call is that he is located on the “Colleton County side” of OSR. How likely would it be for that level of precise detail to be known and volunteered by someone who had allegedly just loss consciousness, experienced blindness, and sustained head/brain trauma from an unprovoked gunshot to the head?
In the morphing defense narrative, what in some versions AM’s lawyer/s claimed AM was with Mom sitting at her bedside and her caregiver watching TV — that “ironclad alibi” — at some point became one of AM’s lawyers claiming that AM was visiting with his mom and that there were housekeepers at the house at the time of the visit.
As other/s have pointed out, major difference between caregiver like a home health aide or CNA/LPN in the room with AM and his mom and a housekeeper or housekeepers (maids) working at the house at the time. They may or may not have actually seen AM or his car. It was evening and even if “help” had been present, he could have pressured them to leave early because they’d worked hard enough and he just wanted to visit with his mom in private and would be taking care of her that night.
Because of all the different versions of this story we have heard from AM’s lawyers, and how many times it appears he lied to them too, it’s unclear but will be important for prosecutors to try to nail down, exactly who was where when and who saw what (v. just assumed or was told) about what when as concerns the alleged matriarch alibi for AM the night of the double homicide.
Also: do we know the Beach family got anything from all the secret anonymized payments/settlements? I’ve heard numbers that add up to ~$1.7M from various unnamed defendants, but as it sounded like the Beach family never got paid to date from any of the claims arising out of the boat crash, I’m wondering whether that was just another fraudulent shuffle on the part of AM that resulted in money being funneled back to him. The fact that the estate of AM’s dad was reportedly or presumably involved in those documents via reps when the accident occurred prior to the dad’s death “from cancer” “natural causes” but I haven’t heard any indication he was sued or served before his death, nor would his estate have legally yet existed prior to his death, but just his potential estate, just seems like more reason to suspect AM is likely involved in it and it’s quite possibly not authentic but in there somewhere may be a Forge nexus or an attempt to pierce the estate before it’s settled and to circumvent necessary and relevant parties (such as AM’s mom) in any financial assets or liabilities that might implicate or relate to her husband, AM’s dad, as presumably a lot of that property/assets and some liabilities of the estate would or may be hers and she would be entitled to her own attorney as well as ad litem to represent her interests in connection with actions against the estate as the surviving spouse.
Dependent on what kind of homestead and asset protection laws there are in S.C., I can guess that part of the fire sale efforts to date would have been attempts to asset protection, tax avoidance, and evidence destruction/manipulation.
IMO/MOO
