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Tom Girardi found guilty of stealing $15million from clients in legal Ponzi scheme
Once-powerful attorney Tom Girardi was found guilty Tuesday on four charges of swindling his horribly injured or grieving clients out of around $15 million in settlement fees.
The 85-year-old disgraced lawyer and estranged husband of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne was stone-faced, showing little emotion as Judge Josephine Staton announced the verdicts, which carry sentences of up to 20 years prison on each count.
Dressed in wrinkled khaki pants, an open-neck checked blue-and-white shirt and the same shabby gray jacket with blue lining hanging out that he’s worn for most of the three-week trial, Girardi was virtually unrecognizable as the super-lawyer whose $2,000-plus designer suits once put him on best-dressed lists and whose success winning huge settlements in personal injury cases landed him on magazine covers.
It took the jury of seven men and five women only four and a half hours of deliberation to reach their guilty verdicts - two hours Tuesday and two-and-a-half hours yesterday.
Girardi must return to court for sentencing on December 6.
Disgraced lawyer Tom Girardi has been found guilty of stealing more than $15million from his clients. He is seen before the verdict on Tuesday
Girardi, who built the prestigious LA law firm Girardi & Keese after his fight against a California utility giant inspired the Oscar-winning movie Erin Brockovich, was charged with four counts of wire fraud, all of which he pleaded not guilty to.
His high-rolling career came tumbling down in 2020 when he was accused of stealing millions in settlements he’d won for the victims of the 2018 Lion Air plane crash in Indonesia.
Claims from that crash - in which 189 people died - are the basis of separate criminal charges against Girardi that are still pending in Chicago. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges as well.
During the trial, the jury heard that between 2010 and 2020 the shamed attorney used his clients’ settlement funds 'like a personal piggy bank.'
‘Girardi Keese was a den of thieves and Tom Girardi was the thief-in-chief,’ Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Paetty told the court Monday.
‘Girardi Keese was a house of cards built on the lies of Tom Girardi.’
The one-time super lawyer - looking tired and somber Monday and wearing a blue and white striped shirt, khaki pants and the same rumpled gray jacket he’s worn for much of the trial
The former attorney and estranged husband of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne was charged with four counts of wire fraud
Girardi ran a massive 'Ponzi scheme,' lying to clients and using their misappropriated millions to pay for his own lavish lifestyle of private jets, luxury cars, exclusive club memberships, expensive jewelry for his third wife, ex-go-go dancer Jayne, 52, plus $20 million to fund her acting career.
The couple were together for 21 years but their divorce - filed by Jayne soon after the Lion Air allegations - has been held up since Girardi Keese filed bankruptcy in 2021 with more than $100 million in debts. Jayne never showed up at her soon-to-be- ex husband’s trial.
Girardi - who was disbarred in 2022 following the allegations against him - was portrayed by his defense team as suffering from dementia.
‘He got old, he got sick, he lost his mind,’ his attorney Charles Snyder told the court.
‘All the lights were on but there was nobody home. He lost touch with reality.'
Girardi's defense team had consistently argued that he is mentally unfit to stand trial due to cognitive decline. However, a federal judge ruled earlier this year that he is competent to proceed with the case
Girady and his legal team also pointed the finger of blame at another man, Christopher Kamon, 49, the chief financial officer of Girard Keese who they say stole between $50 million and $100 million from the company.
Kamon is facing an upcoming separate trial in which he’s charged with similar counts to Girardi’s.
During the trial, prosecutors told jurors that Girardi preyed on clients who were ‘in their darkest hours,’ suffering from terrible injuries or mourning the death of loved ones.
Joe Ruigomez - who desperately needed money to pay the giant medical bills for the horrible injuries he suffered in a 2020 gas explosion at his home that killed his girlfriend - was told by Girardi that his settlement from the PG&E utility was $5 million, when it was actually $50 million.
Another Girardi client, Judy Selberg, hired the once-acclaimed lawyer to bring an unlawful death lawsuit after her husband Paul was killed in a boating accident in April 2018.
Girardi won $500,000 for her but today, more than four years after the settlement, she’s still owed a large portion of that.
He also held up Erica Saldana’s $2.5 million settlement which she needed to pay the medical bills for the devastating injuries her one-yer-old son suffered in a car crash.
And Josie Hernandez had to declare bankruptcy because Girardi didn’t pay her the money she was owed from a settlement over a medical device injury.
In all these cases, when the clients called or emailed Girardi to ask when they were going to get their money, he came up with excuses like there was a lien or ‘holdback’ on the settlement, that there was an IRS issue or a judge needed to ‘sign off’ before the money could be paid. All these claims were false.
‘He lied to his clients over and over and over again about why they weren’t being paid,’ Assistant U.S. Attorney Ali Moghaddas told the court. ‘He lied to them them because he did not want to give them their money because it was gone….it was already spent.
‘Behind the curtain he was pilfering his clients’ funds. It was just cruel to treat victims in this manner.
'He was buying two private jets while his clients weren’t getting paid…. This this case is a simple and sad story of trust violated and greed.’