Alex Murdaugh, disgraced S.C. attorney, hit with 21 new charges connected to stolen millions

Disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh is facing 21 new charges in connection to his alleged scheme to defraud victims he represented of more than $6.2 million.

A state grand jury hit the 53-year-old with a handful of new indictments on Thursday including charges like money laundering, computer crimes, and forgery connected to an amount that exceeds $1 million dollars of theft. 

In addition to facing a slew of charges for attempting to stage his own murder in order to leave his son with a $10 million life insurance policy, he was also already facing 28 counts in connection with the alleged theft of $5 million. 

In September, Murdaugh resigned from the Hampton County law firm founded by his grandfather more than a century ago. He also checked into rehab for a decades-long opioid addiction. 

The most recent charges allege that Murdaugh established a bank account in which he deposited funds that had been stolen from clients. An indictment reads, "He created this account for the purpose of misappropriating funds belonging to others with the illusion that the money was being paid to the legitimate settlement planning company Forge Consulting, LLC."

The new charges arrived on the same day that the family of the Murdaugh's late housekeeper Gloria Satterfield sued the gunman who Murdaugh allegedly hired to kill him. 

Satterfield, 57, died after she tripped and fell in the Murdaugh's home, though no autopsy was ever conducted. A criminal investigation was opened into her death this summer.

Initially, Murdaugh had promised the children of Satterfield a $500,000 insurance payout, but they never saw the money. 

Murdaugh's legal misdeeds began speedily catching up to him in June, when his wife and son, Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, were founded shot to death on the family's property. No suspects or motives have publicly been identified in the case, but Paul was awaiting trial at the time on charges that he drunkenly crashed the family's boat into a bridge in 2019, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach.