Guilty on All Counts of Wire Fraud

The hustler and the housewife.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, MEGA/GC Images

The verdict is in for Real Housewife of Beverly Hills cast member Erika Jayne’s husband Thomas Girardi over allegations that he embezzled more than $15 million from his firm’s clients: guilty on all counts. The 85-year-old attorney and former owner of the downtown Los Angeles law firm Girardi Keese has been sued more than 100 times, according to the L.A. Times. Girardi is currently under a conservatorship handled by his brother due to signs of dementia. During opening statements on August 6, prosecutor Scott Peatty alleged Girardi used his clients’ trust accounts like a “personal piggy bank” to support the “entertainment career” of his wife, Law.com reports. While he and Jayne have been separated since late 2020, their divorce is stalled due to the bankruptcy trial — here’s what to know about the former Housewife husband, what he said when he took the stand, and what the verdict means.

It didn’t take long for jurors to find Tom Girardi guilty on all counts of embezzling $15 million of client funds on August 27.

After deliberating for several hours, a jury found the 85-year-old husband of Erika Jayne guilty on all four counts of wire fraud. He now faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each count. The jury did not believe Girardi’s insistence that he had no knowledge that his clients failed to receive millions of settlement dollars they deserved.

During closing statements, Girardi’s public defender tried to shift blame to Girardi’s former accountant, who is facing a separate trial for embezzling funds, but the jury was not convinced. The prosecutor, assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Paetty argued instead during his closings that Girardi was in fact the “thief-in-chief” of the now-closed law firm.

“Tom Girardi built celebrity status and lured in victims by falsely portraying himself as a ‘Champion of Justice,’” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada. “In reality, he was a Robin Hood in reverse, stealing from the needy to support of a lavish, Hollywood lifestyle. Today’s verdict shows that the game is up — we can all now see this defendant for what he was and the victims he callously betrayed.”

“Girardi diverted tens of millions of dollars from his law firm’s operating account to pay illegitimate expenses, including more than $25 million to pay the expenses of EJ Global, a company formed by his wife related to her entertainment career, as well as spent millions of dollars of Girardi Keese funds on private jet travel, jewelry, luxury cars, and exclusive golf and social clubs,” according to a press release issued after the verdict by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Central District of California.

The federal case against Girardi focuses on four of Girardi’s clients — specifically, millions of stolen dollars from his client-settlement fund accounts after he failed to give them the money that was owed to them. The clients, testified at trial, include a man who suffered significant burns all over his body from an explosion, a second client who lost her husband in a boating accident, a third client who suffered severe injuries from a defective medical device, and a fourth client who suffered injuries in a car accident. In all cases, the clients received substantial settlement money due to their injuries. The government alleges Girardi embezzled the money and then falsely denied that the settlement proceeds had even been paid.

Girardi is accused of using the money he diverted from his clients’ accounts to pay for illegitimate expenses, including more than $25 million toward Jayne’s business EJ Global’s expenses, according to the federal complaint. Girardi also allegedly used the money to pay for private jets, jewelry, luxury cars, and exclusive golf and social-club memberships. Girardi’s co-defendant is also facing charges for funneling millions from the law firm’s accounts for his own benefit. At the end of 2020, Girardi’s law firm was forced into bankruptcy.

Girardi’s legal team argued that their client was incompetent to stand trial due to dementia following his arrest. Jayne had also frequently mentioned Girardi’s deteriorating mental capacity on her show. Girardi’s family placed him in an assisted-care facility in 2021, and his team alleged that due to his cognitive impairment from Alzheimer’s disease, he was unable to assist his attorney in the defense of the case. The prosecution maintained that Girardi was “feigning or exaggerating symptoms” in an attempt to thwart his trial. In January 2024, after a three-day hearing, the federal judge overseeing the case sided with the prosecution and ruled Girardi was in fact competent to stand trial.

On RHOBH, Jayne has maintained that she had no knowledge of the alleged fraud and was blindsided when the allegations came out. She met with several victims of the alleged fraud in part two of Hulu’s documentary about Girardi’s alleged crimes, The Housewife and the Hustler 2. In the documentary, Jayne said she found out about the allegations when she was named in a 2019 lawsuit for an unpaid loan alongside her husband. At the time, a lawyer for Girardi called the lawsuit a “publicity stunt.”

“I found out when I was sued in Arizona from a lending company when I was named and that was the first time,” Jayne said. “And I said, ‘Why am I in this lawsuit?’ And the three answers I kept getting were, ‘It’s bullshit, don’t worry about it, I’ve got it handled.’ But why is my name in here? I’m not part of the business?”

Jayne is not part of the case. She filed for divorce from Girardi in November 2020 after 21 years of marriage. A month later, both Girardi and Jayne were sued in an Illinois lawsuit brought by the widows and orphans who lost family members in the Lion Air Flight 610 crash that killed all 189 individuals onboard. They allege that Girardi embezzled the proceeds of settlements that should have been directed to his clients to continue funding his and his wife’s lavish Beverly Hills lifestyles. That case has been put on hold temporarily while Girardi’s federal trial takes place.

In a statement, Evan C. Borges, Jayne’s attorney, maintains that while the account records described the payments as the global expenses of EJ Global — amounting slightly in excess of $25 million — the funds were paid to third parties for alleged business expenses and not directly to Jayne or her company EJ Global. Earlier this year, Jayne said on RHOBH that she hasn’t felt supported by her other castmates, especially when she won an appeal regarding her $750,000 earrings after the district court reversed the turnover order and ordered the bankruptcy trustee to prove the money used to pay for the earrings was actual client trust-fund money. While Jayne implored the ladies to let the legal process play out, Garcelle Beauvais and Crystal Minkoff were not impressed. “I wish she would just let the earrings go and give something back to the victims so that you can sleep at night,” Beauvais said in a confessional on the show. “You need good karma.”

The jury sat through Real Housewives of Beverly Hills clips, heard testimony on money squandered on a portable stripper-pole rental business, and listened to Girardi taking the stand himself after his legal team insisted unsuccessfully that their client was not competent to even stand trial.

On the stand Thursday, Girardi was defiant, answering and deflecting the questions put toward him by the prosecution. The decision to place him on the stand was shocking considering the claims about his memory and health. During his testimony, he denied knowing that some of his clients didn’t receive their settlement funds saying “every client got every penny that every client was supposed to get,” according to the Los Angeles Times. He also denied intentionally misleading a client and telling them a settlement was $5 million instead of $53 million. He also denied using his client’s money to buy jewelry for Jayne. Instead, Girardi blamed the firm’s CFO Christopher Kamon, who has also been charged with wire fraud for allegedly embezzling the firm’s funds, as the one squandering the firm’s money.

Keith A. Davidson, managing partner at Albertson & Davidson a trust and estate expert who has been monitoring the trial, was in disbelief that Girardi chose to testify calling it possibly his “Hail Mary.”

“I was surprised he took the stand at all, that was not a good strategy,” Davidson said. “A criminal defendant probably should not be taking the stand. But in this case, their whole argument was that he lacked capacity and yet here he is getting on the stand and it appears as though he was saying things that were relatively articulate. Of course he could remember things that benefited himself. It just seemed like it went against the whole lack of capacity argument that they were trying to mount.”

Because Girardi made a living talking to juries Davidson guessed that Girardi still thought he would sway his own. “It was his last chance to try and tell his side of the story,” Davidson said. “Or it could have just been a Hail Mary.”

The trial, which began on Monday, August 5, was scheduled to last 12 days. It ends with closing arguments on Monday, August 26. Girardi’s case was heard by a jury of seven men and five women.

Girardi was arrested on these charges in February of 2023 and ordered to hand over his passport before he was released on a $250,000 bond. Girardi has already been disbarred from practicing as a lawyer in California. He is set to be sentenced