Tom Girardi, the once-popular but now-disbarred lawyer who rose to fame through his marriage to “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Jayne, was convicted Tuesday of embezzling “tens of millions of dollars” from clients of his now-shuttered law firm, Girardi & Keith.
The jury convicted the 85-year-old Girardi on four counts after less than a day of deliberation. Prosecutors said Girardi misappropriated funds from his law firm's accounts to pay for private jet travel, luxury cars, jewelry, memberships to luxury golf and social clubs, and more than $25 million in expenses for Jane's company, EJ Global. During the 13-day trial, some of Girardi's former clients testified they were impressed and coerced by his track record in winning a landmark $333 million settlement with Pacific Gas & Electric, featured in the 2000 film “Erin Brockovich,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
“Tom Girardi used his celebrity status to lure victims by falsely portraying himself as a champion of justice,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement Tuesday. “In reality, he was a reverse Robin Hood, stealing from the needy to support his lavish Hollywood lifestyle. Today's sentence marks the end of the game. We can now understand who this defendant was and the victims he coldly betrayed.”
Girardi is scheduled to be sentenced on December 6th and faces up to 20 years in federal prison on each charge.
Prosecutors said Girardi told “numerous lies” to his clients between October 2010 and late 2020 in order to withhold the settlement funds and use them for himself. Girardi sometimes falsely denied receiving the money or claimed he couldn't pay it until “bogus” conditions, such as tax obligations or law enforcement approvals, were met, prosecutors said.
“I trusted him too much,” former client Joseph Ruigomez, who was severely burned as a teenager in a San Bruno pipeline explosion in 2010, testified at trial, according to the Los Angeles Times. Part of Ruigomez's $53 million settlement was used to pay other Girardi clients in what prosecutors described as a Ponzi scheme.
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During the trial, Girardi's public defender reportedly said it was Christopher Kazuo Kamon, the chief financial officer of Girardi's company, who should be blamed. Kamon, 50, was residing in the Bahamas at the time of his November 2022 arrest in the case and is awaiting his own trial, scheduled for January 2025. Kamon is charged with multiple fraud counts for aiding and abetting Girardi's scheme to defraud his clients. Girardi and Kamon are also scheduled to go on trial in Chicago next year for defrauding the families of victims of the 2018 Lion Air crash, in which a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX series plane crashed into the Java Sea near Indonesia.
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“Mr. Girardi was hired to represent clients who trusted him, when in reality he lied to them and stole their money to fund a lavish lifestyle,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Akil Davis of the FBI's Los Angeles field office said Tuesday. “Mr. Girardi falsely promoted himself in the media as a pillar of the legal community with a strong sense of justice, but his clients who were wronged by him for years have found true justice with today's sentence.”
Girardi's defense has repeatedly argued that the notorious lawyer is mentally incompetent, and during the trial, a doctor testified that Girardi suffers from dementia, according to the Los Angeles Times.
