Alex Murdaugh sentenced to 27 years for stealing money from friends and clients

Convicted killer and disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh was sentenced on Tuesday to 27 years for financial crimes he committed against his clients over the course of a decade.

Prosecutors initially charged Murdaugh, a now-disbarred personal injury attorney, with 101 financial crimes, including tax evasion, money laundering, and breach of trust. Under a plea deal, they reduced the number of charges to 22 against each of his 18 victims.

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The sentence is independent of the two life sentences he is currently serving for killing his wife and son.

“You lied, you cheated, you stole,” Michael Satterfield, the adult son of the Murdaughs’ late housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, said. “You betrayed me and my family and everybody else.”

Murdaugh is accused of stealing from the estate of Gloria Satterfield as part of a life insurance scheme after a suspicious trip and fall accident at Murdaugh’s home in 2018.

During the victim impact statements, Murdaugh, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, stared straight ahead. According to news outlets in the Beaufort County courtroom, none of his influential friends or family were in attendance.

Chief prosecutor Creighton Waters told the court how Murdaugh used his “power, influence, and trust” to steal more than $8.8 million from clients as well as his family’s law firm with the help of two co-conspirators.

He also praised the victims for coming forward, telling the court they overcame “palpable fear” due to the Murdaugh family’s influence in the community.

“I heard over and over again, ‘Mr. Waters, I have to live there. You don’t know what they are capable of.'”

Andrew J. Whitaker/AP

Waters told the court how Murdaugh would win large settlements for his clients who desperately needed the money for medical bills or in some cases just to survive, but instead of handing it over, he would steal most, if not all, of it for himself. He would take the money to pay off large personal loans, feed his opioid addiction, and live a lavish life.

In one case, Murdaugh started off taking legitimate lawyer’s fees but needed money, so he began “to steal from those large recoveries,” Waters said.

One of the people he stole from was Hakeem Pinckney, a deaf 19-year-old football player who became a quadriplegic after being thrown from a car during an automobile accident.

Pinckney’s mother, Pamela, had been driving the SUV when it swerved uncontrollably on Interstate 95 in South Carolina’s coastal Lowcountry. The SUV flipped multiple times, injuring the passengers inside. Murdaugh helped the family successfully sue the tiremaker and the local business that sold them the tires.

Andrew J. Whitaker/AP

Pamela Pinckney said she wanted to use the money she got from the settlement to transfer Hakeem out of the nursing facility and into a handicap-accessible home with a ventilator, but before that could happen, he slipped into a coma and had to be rushed from the North Augusta nursing home to the hospital after suffering back-to-back seizures. Pamela Pinckney was told her son was clinically brain dead and needed to be removed from the ventilator. His heart stopped beating soon thereafter. The family received the tire settlement offer four days after Hakeem Pinckney died.

Murdaugh represented Pamela Pinckney again when she sued the nursing home and once again received an undisclosed settlement, only this time she was contacted by members of Murdaugh’s law firm to tell her that her case had been flagged and that it looked like Murdaugh and his cohorts had stolen $1 million from her account.

In another case, Murdaugh stole money from a friend who had been set to receive $150,000 in a settlement stemming from a 2016 car crash.

“I’m not crying because of what you stole from me,” Jordan Jinks said. “I’m crying for what he did to everybody. These kids. These people dying. I didn’t want to come up here and bash you, but I got to ask you, what kind of animal are you?”

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Tuesday marked another chapter in the Murdaugh family’s spectacular fall from grace in a story that has continued to dominate headlines and been the subject of numerous podcasts, documentaries, and books.

Murdaugh separately pleaded guilty in September to nearly two dozen federal charges that alleged he stole millions of dollars from clients. Murdaugh has not been sentenced on those charges.