Disgraced attorney Tom Girardi – estranged husband of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne (pictured together left) – used money belonging to clients’ like a ‘personal piggy bank’ while swindling them out of millions of dollars in settlement funds, a federal court in Los Angeles heard Tuesday. In one case of a man badly injured in a house explosion, Girardi won a huge settlement of $53 million – but he told his client victim that the settlement was only $7 million, jurors were told during opening statements on the first day of a trial that’s expected to last a week.
Girardi, 85, – who built a powerhouse legal firm after his fight against a California utility giant that inspired the Oscar-winning movie Erin Brockovich – is charged with four counts of wire fraud, which he’s pleaded not guilty to. A fifth wire fraud charge against him was dismissed last week. Appearing in court Tuesday in a gray jacket, khaki pants, blue open-neck shirt and white tennis shoes, Girardi showed little emotion and instead staring for long periods at the jury of seven men and five women opposite him in the courtroom.
U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton has declared Girardi ‘competent to stand trial’, despite his dementia diagnosis which his court-appointed attorneys argued rendered him mentally unfit to help in his own defense. As lawyers pointed the finger of blame at another man, Christopher Kamon, 49, the chief financial officer of Girard’s once prestigious law firm, Girardi Keese, who they claim embezzled $50 million from the accused and his company.
Girardi’s high-rolling career as a top LA lawyer came crashing 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.
Assistant federal prosecutor Scott Paetty told the LA court that between 2010 and 2020, the shamed attorney lied to clients and used their misappropriated millions to pay for his own lavish lifestyle of ‘private jets, luxury cars, expensive jewelry with his third wife, ex-go-go dancer Jayne (pictured together), 52, including $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 the law firm filed bankruptcy in 2021 with more than $100 million in debts.
Girardi – who is facing up to 20 years in prison if convicted – was disbarred in 2022 following the allegations against him. He remains free on $250,000 bond. At the trial Tuesday, prosecutor Paetty told the jury that in 2010, Joe Ruigomez was in hospital, for his life, after being horribly injured in an explosion at his home. Girardi came to see Ruigomez ‘in his darkest hour,’ the court was told, showing him and his family a magazine cover on which he was featured as a hero of the Erin Brokovich case and boasting that he would be his ‘champion’ and win the money the victim needed to rebuild his life.
He did win a whopping $53 million but he told the victim’s family that the settlement was $7 million, said Paetty, ‘And when $28 million of that settlement came into the law firm’s trust account, he (Girardi) used it to pay off other clients he owed money to and other debts.’ Girardi ‘lied to Riugomez’ and ‘stole millions and millions’ from him and other clients,‘ the prosecutor added. He used his law company’s trust fund – set up to deposit settlement funds from successful lawsuits – ‘like a personal piggy bank, drawing money from it whenever he wanted’. And when clients in successful lawsuits asked him where their money was, he ‘lied and used numerous false excuses’ about why they hadn’t received their money, said Paetty.
In the other three LA cases Girardi is facing charges for, client Jessie Hernandez ‘never received a penny’ from the lawsuit he won for her, the court was told. Another client, Judy Selberg, received a $500,000 settlement – but Girardi charged more than that in legal fees, said Paetty. And the $2.5 million settlement Erica Saldana won for injuries in an accident also involving her husband and child was used to pay off one of Girardi’s other clients he owed money to, he added. Winding up his opening statement, Paetty urged the jury to find Girardi guilty of fraud ‘for cheating his clients out of the money that was rightfully theirs because of the injuries they suffered.’
In the opening statement for the defense, Girardi’s court-appointed attorney, Sam Cross, countered, telling jurors that they shouldn’t look at the case as like a Hollywood movie, but ‘more as a documentary.’ He cast Girardi as a victim himself – an aging legal titan with failing mental faculties who was defrauded by CFO at Girardi Keese – for ‘stealing $50 million out of the back door of the firm.’
Cross argued that Girardi – unaware that Kamon, was embezzling millions from him and his law firm, ‘put back $80 million back into the company to try to keep it afloat. ‘But it kept sinking because Christopher Kamon, was stealing the money.’ Kamon – who’s charged with wire fraud charges similar to Girardi’s, but is being tried separately – was arrested in 2022, because, according to Cross, ‘the game was up and he was trying to flee to the Bahamas where he had bought a home for $2.4 million’.
