Los Angeles – A sentenced federal judge Celebrity Lawyer of Famous Tom Girardi Seven years and three months in prison on Tuesday for embezzlement of tens of millions of dollars of their customers, including several with serious physical injuries and families of people killed in accidents.
The American district judge Josephine L. Staton also ordered Girardi, 86, to pay a fine of $ 35,000 and $ 2.3 million in restitution for former clients. A jury in August found him guilty of four electronic fraud positions, and could have been sentenced to up to 80 years in prison.
Girardi is the husband separated from the star of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” Erika Jayne and appeared in the program dozens of times between 2015 and 2020.
Once he was among the most prominent lawyers of the Nation, often representing the victims of great disasters against powerful companies. A demand against the Pacific Gas and Electric in California led to a $ 333 million agreement and was portrayed in Julia Roberts’s film “Erin Brockovich”.
But his legal empire collapsed, and was inhebrated in California in 2022 about customer robberies.
Girardi has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and the problems with his memory led another court to put him in a guardianship under his brother. But on Monday, Staton ruled that he was mentally competent to be sentenced, as she had previously found it mentally competent to be judged.
The judge had allowed him to remain free until his sentence, but ordered him to be delivered to the authorities before July 17.
An email to Girardi’s lawyer in search of comments on the conviction was not responded immediately.
The former clients who testified against Girardi in their trial included a woman from Arizona whose husband was killed in a boat accident and victims who were burned in a 2010 gas pipe explosion in San Bruno, south of San Francisco.
Prosecutors played with the jury of voice emails in which Girardi gave a litany of false reasons why a court could not be paid, including tax and debt obligations and authorizations of judges. He often told them: “Don’t be angry with me.”
