A federal pass judgement on sentenced disbarred celebrity lawyer Tom Girardi to seven years and 3 months in jail on Tuesday for embezzling tens of tens of millions of greenbacks from his shoppers, together with a number of with critical bodily accidents and households of other folks killed in injuries.
U.S. District Pass judgement on Josephine L. Staton additionally ordered Girardi, 86, to pay a $35,000 nice and $2.3 million in restitution to former shoppers. A jury in August discovered him accountable of 4 counts of cord fraud, and he will have been sentenced to as much as 80 years in jail.
Girardi is the estranged husband of “The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills” big name Erika Jayne and seemed at the display himself dozens of occasions between 2015 and 2020.
He used to be as soon as a number of the maximum outstanding legal professionals within the country, frequently representing sufferers of primary screw ups in opposition to tough firms. One lawsuit in opposition to California’s Pacific Fuel and Electrical software resulted in a $333 million agreement and used to be portrayed within the 2000 Julia Roberts movie “Erin Brockovich.”
However his regulation empire collapsed, and he used to be disbarred in California in 2022 over consumer thefts.
Girardi has been recognized with Alzheimer’s illness, and problems along with his reminiscence led some other court docket to place him in a conservatorship below his brother. However on Monday, Staton dominated that he used to be mentally competent to be sentenced, simply as she had prior to now discovered him mentally competent to face trial.
The pass judgement on had allowed him to stay unfastened till his sentencing however ordered him to give up to government by way of July 17.
An e mail to Girardi’s lawyer searching for remark at the conviction used to be now not right away spoke back.
Former shoppers who testified in opposition to Girardi at his trial integrated an Arizona lady whose husband used to be killed in a ship twist of fate and sufferers who have been burned in a 2010 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, south of San Francisco.
Prosecutors performed jurors voicemails wherein Girardi gave a litany of false causes cash {that a} court docket had awarded may now not be paid, together with tax and debt tasks and pass judgement on authorizations. He incessantly informed them, “Don’t be mad at me.”
This tale used to be firstly featured on Fortune.com
