Disbarred lawyer Tom Girardi attributes $15M client theft to accounting errors before his prison sentence
Attorney Tom Girardi is pictured outside a Los Angeles courthouse in July 2014. (Photo by Damian Dovarganes/The Associated Press)
Disbarred lawyer Tom Girardi was sentenced Tuesday to more than seven years in prison, a day after a federal judge found that he was healthy enough to serve his time in prison, rather than a medical care facility.
Girardi, who turned 86 years old on the day of his sentencing, was convicted in August 2024 for stealing $15 million from four clients of the now-collapsed law firm Girardi Keese over the course of a decade. U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton of the the Central District of California sentenced Girardi to 87 months in prison and ordered him to pay $2.3 million in restitution, according to a June 3 press release from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Central District of California.
Girardi is known for his role on the legal team that secured a $333 million settlement for groundwater contamination in a case portrayed in the film Erin Brockovich. He is the estranged husband of Erika Girardi, who appeared on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reality TV show.
Reuters, Law360, Bloomberg Law and NBC News are among the publications with coverage of the sentencing.
The 87-month sentence was below the recommended guidelines sentence of 135 months to 168 months, according to Law360.
Staton had found Girardi that was competent to stand trial in January 2024. His lawyers had contended that he had dementia. He was also recently hospitalized for liver dysfunction.
“But when given a chance to address the court on Tuesday,” Law360 reports, “Girardi appeared to understand the allegations against him. He briefly repeated statements he’d made on the witness stand at his trial that any missing money was due to accounting errors, and that all of his clients ultimately received their money.”
A prosecutor countered that some clients did not receive their money, Law360 reported.
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