Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters tells the judge we are getting to the point where the state’s witnesses are going to need to be asked about financial crimes. The previous 18, with the possible exception of the last two, have had no knowledge of them and no reason to be asked.
The state calls its 19th witness, Heidi Galore of Snap Corp. Her job is to respond to law enforcement issues for Snapchat, including responding to subpoenas and appearing in trials like this one to verify evidence from Snapchat.
The state has prioritized Galore's testimony because she has a flight to catch out of SC, Waters said earlier.
Galore testifies the Snapchat video Paul captured of Alex Murdaugh next to a flimsy tree was taken 6/7/21 (day of slayings) at 7:39 p.m. Paul sent it to his friends at 7:56 p.m. Again, the Snapchat video is separate from the 8:44 p.m. dog kennels video.
Defense attorney Phillip Barber is up now crossing Galore. He notes the metadata shows the video was actually recorded 7:38 p.m.
Barbera establishes SLED didn’t ask Snapchat for a list of Paul’s friends. Nor did they request Paul’s geolocation data from Snapchat. Galore steps down.
The state calls Jeanne Seckinger, chief financial officer of the Parker Law Group and former CFO of PMPED. Judge Newman excuses the jury. Looks like we're about to get into some financial stuff.
Seckinger testifies that law partners at PMPED were paid $125K base salaries, paid biweekly. Their legal fees went into a shared pot that was split up at the end of the year in bonuses based on the ratio of fees each brought in.
Seckinger testifies partners got most of their pay in the last week of the year in the form of bonuses. Partners got a huge lump sum and had to make that last over the next year until the next bonus. (In addition to their $125K salaries).
Seckinger testifies she has known Alex for 40 years and had worked with him since 1999. She testifies he made good money, sometimes getting 7-figure payouts when bonuses went out at the end of the year.
Seckinger testifies she had a conversation with Alex Murdaugh in late May 2021 when she saw he was trying to structure legal fees he had received from a case. Murdaugh told her he was “trying to put some money in Maggie’s name” to shield it from the 2019 boat crash lawsuit.
Seckinger testifies she didn’t think Alex was trying to steal money - just hide it. “That would be wrong, and we did not want any part of that.”
“At that point, it had been done, and I was trying to figure out how we were going to account for it on our books," Seckinger testifies.
Seckinger testifies about pestering Alex Murdaugh in early June about $792K in missing legal fees from a case that Murdaugh worked with Bamberg attorney Chris Wilson. The firm got the "expenses" check from that case but not the attorneys' fees. That was odd.
Seckinger testifies she went into Alex's second-floor PMPED office on the morning of 6/7/21 and demanded to see proof he or Chris Wilson still had that $792K and that it was accessible, as Alex claimed. She said she had reason to believe Alex had received that money directly.
Seckinger: Midway through that conversation, Alex got a phone call that his dad was in the hospital with a terminal diagnosis.
“That changed the mood of that conversation. We quit talking about business,” Seckinger said.
Seckinger testified the 6/7/21 murders stopped her inquiry in its tracks.
Reminder: All of this is happening with the jury excused from the room.
Seckinger testifies about PMPED's investigation. All the partners met on 9/3/21 and reviewed the documentation. It looked like Alex had stolen. His brother Randy, a law partner, agreed. They confronted Alex about it. He confessed, Seckinger says. "We made him resign.”
Seckinger testifies PMPED kept digging and found some strange payments to Palmetto State Bank. Funds were directed to the bank as if they were going to be held for the beneficiary. But then those checks were converted to Alex’s personal use, she says.
This deception was actually meant to mislead lawyers/accountants, etc. Not to mislead clients. The clients didn’t even know they had the money before Alex allegedly stole it.
Seckinger testifies Alex in one case reduced his normal 30-40% fee so more $ would go to his client. But then he stole that $ from his client via the fake Forge account. So he was actually cutting the amount that would go to the law firm and boosting what he could steal himself.
I am becoming concerned about the volume of financial evidence that might have to be admitted and double-testified about, if this process continues beyond just Seckinger.
Dick Harpootlian turned 74 on the first day of the trial. I just hope he is still 74 when it ends.
Seckinger testifies PMPED found a series of 2011-12 thefts Alex Murdaugh perpetrated from the Badger family after their mother, Donna Badger, was killed in a crash with a UPS truck. The recovery was $3.1M. Murdaugh took $1.24M in legal fees and then stole $1.325M more, she says.
Seckinger has verified a parade of disbursement sheets and other financial documents that prosecutor Waters has shown her. She testifies PMPED had to find clients Murdaugh had stolen from and pay them back.
Seckinger was in an unenviable position there. Ex-Palmetto State Bank CEO Russell Laffitte is Seckinger’s brother-in-law, married to her husband’s sister. She testified in his November federal trial, after which Laffitte was convicted of six charges tied to this saga.
10 min break time around 12:00 pm ET.
