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Alex Murdaugh, the disbarred South Carolina lawyer convicted of murdering his wife and son, was indicted Wednesday on more than 20 counts of orchestrating financial schemes that allegedly stole millions of dollars from his clients over 16 years.

Among the charges is that Murdaugh defrauded the estate of Gloria Satterfield, the housekeeper who died at his property in 2018, out of almost $3.5 million, prosecutors say.

The 22-count indictment unsealed by the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of South Carolina says that Murdaugh, 54, “engaged in three different schemes to obtain money and property from his personal injury clients” while he was a practicing attorney in Hampton, S.C.

Murdaugh, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in March for the 2021 murders of his wife, Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, has been charged with counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and committing bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, according to prosecutors.

Murdaugh admitted during his murder trial that he had created a web of financial crimes that bilked millions from vulnerable clients of his law practice, saying: “I believe the people I had stole money from for all of those years trusted me.” Murdaugh, the patriarch of a South Carolina legal dynasty whose case drew international attention, apologized several times during his testimony for swindling clients among whom were teenage girls and a quadriplegic man.

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“Trust in our legal system begins with trust in its lawyers,” U.S. Attorney Adair F. Boroughs said in a news release announcing the charges. “South Carolinians turn to lawyers when they are at their most vulnerable, and in our state, those who abuse the public’s trust and enrich themselves by fraud, theft and self-dealing will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, Murdaugh’s attorneys, said in a statement to The Washington Post that their client “has been cooperating with the United States Attorneys’ Office and federal agencies in their investigation of a broad range of activities.”

“We anticipate that the charges brought today will be quickly resolved without a trial,” the attorneys said.

If convicted of all of the federal charges, Murdaugh faces up to 150 years added on to his life sentence and fines up to $4.75 million.

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Meanwhile, Murdaugh is expected to be deposed in the wrongful-death lawsuit brought against him by the family of Mallory Beach, a 19-year-old who was killed in a 2019 drunken-boating accident involving Murdaugh’s boat and his late son, Paul Murdaugh. A South Carolina judge filed a consent order Monday “granting leave for parties to conduct the deposition” of Alex Murdaugh, which could take place virtually or in person. The lawsuit names other parties, including Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster.

Prosecutors in South Carolina say Murdaugh engaged in three separate schemes to bilk his clients of money and property.

In the first, Murdaugh devised “a scheme to defraud and to obtain money by means of false pretenses” between at least September 2005 and September 2021, according to the indictment. He allegedly routed and redirected his clients’ settlement funds to personally enrich himself in several ways, including by sending settlement funds to his accounts without proper disclosure, and collecting attorney’s fees on fake or nonexistent annuities.

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In the second alleged scheme, from around July 2011 until at least October 2021, Murdaugh conspired with his banker, Russell Laffitte, to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, prosecutors say. Laffitte collected more than $350,000 in fees in his role as personal representative or conservator for numerous personal injury clients of Murdaugh’s.

“As part of the scheme, the indictment alleges Murdaugh directed law firm employees to make settlement checks payable to ‘Palmetto State Bank.’ The checks were then delivered to Laffitte, whom Murdaugh directed to use the settlement funds for Murdaugh’s benefit,” prosecutors wrote. “The funds were used to pay off Murdaugh’s personal loans and for personal expenses and cash withdrawals.”

Lafitte was convicted in November on six federal charges, including conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud, and committing bank fraud and wire fraud. He is awaiting sentencing.

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In the third alleged scheme, prosecutors say Murdaugh set up a bank account presented as a legitimate corporation for structuring insurance settlements between May 2017 and July 2021. The indictment says Murdaugh funneled stolen personal injury settlements through an account named “fake Forge” to conceal his fraud efforts.

It was during this scheme, prosecutors say, that Murdaugh defrauded Satterfield’s estate and his insurance carriers after she died. Murdaugh recommended that the housekeeper’s estate hire an attorney to represent the estate and file a claim against Murdaugh to collect from his homeowner’s insurance policies. Murdaugh’s insurance companies settled the estate’s claim for $505,000 and $3.8 million, the indictment says. Then, Murdaugh and the attorney allegedly “conspired to siphon settlement funds, disguised as ‘prosecution expenses,’ for their own personal enrichment.”

“The indictment further alleges that Murdaugh directed the Beaufort attorney to draft checks totaling $3,483,431.95 made payable to ‘Forge,’” prosecutors say. “Murdaugh then deposited the checks into his ‘fake Forge’ account and used the funds for his own personal enrichment. The estate did not receive any of the settlement funds.”

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Eric S. Bland, the Satterfield family’s attorney, tweeted that the federal charges against Murdaugh amounted to “a great day for justice in South Carolina.”

“While it is said that Lady Justice is blind, she is not a sucker,” he wrote. “Bottom Line — Cant run or hide from justice.”

Murdaugh claimed during his trial that bad land deals and an addiction to opiate pills fueled a decade-long cycle of borrowing and spending by him that battered his family’s finances. His attorneys have framed his alleged financial shadiness in recent court filings as being representative of “a bleak and dispiriting story of a man brought to his knees by a crippling drug addiction, who also had the financial means and knowledge to effect great financial harm upon others to feed that addiction.”

That description of Murdaugh months after his murder conviction has been rejected by critics, including Mandy Matney, the co-host of “Murdaugh Murders,” a popular podcast that helped introduce audiences to the South Carolina legal dynasty and its alleged crimes.

“This is how you enable a monster,” she tweeted.

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