Cory Fleming in the Murdaugh Case: Pleas, Sentence, Disbarment

The Cory Fleming Murdaugh case is the criminal and civil reckoning of a South Carolina attorney who conspired with his college roommate Alex Murdaugh to steal millions of dollars from two vulnerable client families. Fleming pleaded guilty to federal and state charges, was disbarred, and is serving a combined sentence of 13 years and 10 months with a projected release from state custody in October 2032.¹

Who Cory Fleming Is

Fleming earned his law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1994 and spent nearly 25 years as a partner at the Beaufort firm Moss, Kuhn & Fleming.²³ He and Alex Murdaugh were college roommates and remained close friends for decades. Fleming served as godfather to Murdaugh’s youngest son, Paul.⁴ Early in his career, he worked as an assistant solicitor under Alex Murdaugh’s father, Randolph Murdaugh III. That friendship is the through-line of everything that followed. Murdaugh steered clients to Fleming; Fleming then helped route settlement money away from them.

The Satterfield Settlement Theft

Gloria Satterfield had been the Murdaugh family’s housekeeper and nanny for more than two decades when she died on February 26, 2018, following a fall at the Murdaugh home. She was 57.⁵ Murdaugh later acknowledged in a 2023 filing that he fabricated a claim blaming the family’s dogs for the fall in order to trigger a payout from his insurer, Nautilus Insurance Co. As he put it, “no dogs were involved in the fall.”⁶

Murdaugh persuaded Satterfield’s two sons, Michael “Tony” Satterfield and Brian Harriott, to hire Fleming for the wrongful death claim.⁷ Fleming secured $4.3 million: $3.8 million from Nautilus and $505,000 from a second carrier.⁸ Satterfield’s sons never saw any of it.⁶

Fleming admitted labeling payments as “prosecution expenses,” cutting checks from his trust account to his own personal bank account under the pretense that the funds covered legal costs, and getting phony disbursement sheets approved before a circuit court judge.⁸ Money was funneled through a fake account Murdaugh had opened to mimic the legitimate structured settlement firm Forge Consulting.⁹¹⁰³

In October 2021, attorneys Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter reached a civil settlement on the estate’s behalf. Fleming and his firm agreed to repay all fees and expenses collected on the $4.3 million settlement, and the firm’s malpractice carrier agreed to pay its full policy limits.⁵

The Pinckney Family Theft

Hakeem Pinckney was 19 when a defective tire caused a 2009 crash in Hampton County that left him quadriplegic and dependent on a ventilator. His mother, Pamela Pinckney, was also severely injured. Hakeem died in October 2011 after his ventilator was unplugged.¹¹

Murdaugh directed Pamela Pinckney to hire Fleming.¹² After the lawsuit settled, Fleming’s firm held $350,000 in trust to cover a Medicaid lien. The lien resolved for roughly $220,000, leaving about $130,000 that belonged to Pamela Pinckney. She never got it.¹¹

Fleming stole approximately $101,772 from Pinckney funds in three moves:

In August 2012, he took $8,078 from the trust to charter a private plane to fly himself, Murdaugh, and another attorney to the College World Series in Omaha. He booked the expense in the client file as “medical expenses.”¹¹
In March 2017, he wrote a $4,500 trust-account check to Murdaugh labeled a “case expense” for Pamela Pinckney, which Murdaugh converted to personal use.¹³
In May 2017, he disbursed the remaining $89,133 to Murdaugh’s law firm; Murdaugh deposited it into the fake “Richard A Murdaugh Sole Prop DBA Forge” account.¹¹

Charges and Guilty Pleas

In March 2022, a South Carolina state grand jury indicted Fleming on 18 counts tied to the Satterfield scheme, including criminal conspiracy, false statements in insurance transactions, breach of trust with fraudulent intent, money laundering, and computer crime, with the fraud attributed to him totaling $3,623,432.¹⁰ A superseding indictment added five Pinckney-related counts, bringing the state total to 23 charges alleging $3,725,204 in combined losses.¹⁴

On May 25, 2023, Fleming pleaded guilty in federal court before U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, admitting the Satterfield conspiracy ran from about March 2018 through at least October 2020.⁸ The plea required him to cooperate with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office, submit to polygraphs, and surrender his South Carolina and Georgia law licenses.¹⁵ On August 23, 2023, he pleaded guilty to all 23 state charges.¹⁶

Prison Sentence and Release Date

Fleming was sentenced twice. On August 15, 2023, Judge Gergel imposed 46 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release, plus $102,221.90 in restitution and a $20,000 fine.¹⁷

On September 14, 2023, state Judge Clifton Newman handed down two 10-year sentences. One, covering 22 of the 23 state charges and centered on the Satterfield crimes, runs concurrently with the federal term. The second, for the leading breach of trust charge in the Pinckney case, runs consecutively to the federal sentence. The combined maximum exposure is 13 years and 10 months.¹⁸¹⁹

Newman told Fleming his victims were “vulnerable people” who had trusted him as their attorney, and called the case “the greatest crime for a lawyer in South Carolina history.”²⁰ He also said he could not “imagine anyone going to a lawyer in South Carolina at this moment in time and having complete trust” in what that lawyer tells them.¹⁸

Fleming is serving his federal term at the Federal Correctional Institution in Jesup, Georgia, with a projected federal completion date of November 17, 2026. He is then scheduled to transfer to the South Carolina Department of Corrections to serve the consecutive 10-year Pinckney sentence. Under state truth-in-sentencing rules, he must serve at least 85% of the state term before he is eligible for parole. His projected release from state custody is October 2032.¹

Disbarment

The South Carolina Supreme Court first suspended Fleming’s law license on October 8, 2021, after reports of the Satterfield fraud surfaced.¹⁷ His firm dropped his name and became Moss & Kuhn.³

On November 30, 2023, the court formally disbarred him in an 11-page order that cited his “deplorable misconduct and shocking abuse of the legal system,” found his 24 guilty pleas sufficient to bypass further disciplinary hearings, and noted that Fleming had earlier submitted an “incomplete and untruthful” self-report to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel.²¹¹⁷ The Georgia Supreme Court accepted his voluntary surrender of his Georgia license on November 7, 2023, calling it “tantamount” to disbarment.

The Nautilus Civil Verdict

Nautilus Insurance Co. sued Fleming and his former firm in federal court (Case No. 2:22-cv-01307) to recover the $3.8 million it paid out in the fraudulent Satterfield settlement, alleging civil conspiracy, negligence, unfair trade practices, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of contract. The trial opened in January 2025 before Judge Gergel.²²

Fleming testified that although he had pleaded guilty to inflating fees and mismanaging funds, he trusted Murdaugh and did not know at the time that Murdaugh had invented the story about the dogs. A Nautilus adjuster testified the company had “gut feelings” the claim was fraudulent but could not disprove it because Murdaugh had sworn to the dog story under oath.²³

The jury found Fleming liable and awarded Nautilus $1.25 million in actual damages plus $50 in punitive damages. His former law firm was found not liable.²⁴ Judge Gergel then found Fleming’s conduct a “willful or knowing violation” of the South Carolina Unfair Trade Practices Act, which requires triple damages, and trebled the award to $3.75 million.²⁵

The Pending Appeal

Fleming’s attorneys filed a notice of appeal with the South Carolina Court of Appeals on September 21, 2023.²⁶ The appeal argues the state sentence is excessive and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, and it claims judicial bias, contending Judge Newman was unfairly influenced by having presided over Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial and that the sentence was “grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime.”²⁷

1
ABC News 4. Cory Fleming Prison Release Set for October 2032
2
Island Packet. Moss, Kuhn and Fleming Law Firm Background
3
The State. Cory Fleming Indicted by State Grand Jury
4
Courthouse News Service. Murdaugh Friend and Ex-Attorney Gets 4 Years in Federal Prison for Client Thefts
5
Bland Richter, LLP. Settlement Reached on Behalf of the Estate of Gloria Satterfield
6
NBC News. Alex Murdaugh Lied About Dogs Causing Longtime Housekeepers Fatal Fall
7
South Carolina Public Radio. Alex Murdaughs Longtime Friend Admits Helping to Steal $4 Million Wrongful Death Settlement
8
U.S. Department of Justice. Murdaugh Co-Conspirator Cory Fleming Plead Guilty to Federal Conspiracy Charge
9
WIS-TV. Murdaugh Friend Cory Fleming Pleads Guilty to Federal Charge in Connection With Satterfield Settlement Theft
10
South Carolina Attorney General. State Grand Jury Indicts Cory Fleming
11
Supreme Court of South Carolina. In the Matter of Cory Howerton Fleming, Disbarment Order
12
Island Packet. Pinckney Family Settlement Fraud
13
South Carolina Attorney General. Superseding Indictment 2022-GS-47-02
14
WJCL. Alex Murdaugh, Russell Laffitte, Cory Fleming Indictments
15
ABC News 4. Murdaugh Co-Conspirator Corey Fleming Pleads Guilty to Stealing Money From Satterfields
16
ABC News 4. Cory Fleming Pleads Guilty to Multi-Million Dollar Fraud Schemes With Alex Murdaugh
17
FindLaw. In the Matter of Fleming, South Carolina Supreme Court
18
Live 5 News. Fleming Sentenced, Murdaugh Trial Date Set in Beaufort County Court
19
Fox 28 Savannah. Cory Fleming Sentence Is 13 Years Plus 10 Months, Not 20 Years
20
Bland Richter, LLP. Statement Regarding the Sentencing of Murdaugh Co-Conspirator Cory Fleming
21
The State. Cory Fleming Disbarred by South Carolina Supreme Court
22
Live 5 News. Trial Begins in Fleming Insurance Accusation Civil Case
23
Live 5 News. Insurance Expert Testifies in Fleming Case
24
Live 5 News. Fleming Held Liable in Murdaugh Insurance Scheme, Law Firm Dismissed
25
Insurance Journal. Federal Judge Trebles Nautilus Damages in Murdaugh Insurance Case
26
ABC News 4. Ex-Lawyer Cory Fleming Files to Appeal Criminal Conviction and Sentence for Financial Crimes
27
The State. Cory Fleming Appeals State Sentence