Erica Jayne’s ex Tom Girardi ran a ‘massive Ponzi scheme’ to defraud clients out of millions, prosecutor tells LA court in Real Housewives’ ‘trial of the century’

Disgraced attorney Tom Girardi ran “a massive pyramid scheme” to bilk clients out of millions of dollars, a prosecutor told jurors Monday on the final day of the now-disbarred attorney’s nearly three-week trial in federal court in Los Angeles.

“He acted with the intent to defraud, he knew what he was doing,” Assistant District Attorney Ali Moghaddas said in his closing arguments in the case against Girardi, the estranged husband of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne, who went before the jury for a verdict.

‘He lied to his clients over and over again about why they weren’t getting paid. He lied to them because he didn’t want to give them their money because it was gone… it was already spent.

‘Behind the curtain he stole his clients’ money. It was just cruel to treat victims this way.’

Girardi, 85 – is charged with four counts of wire fraud in which he is accused of cheating clients out of $15 million in settlement money owed to them for injuries they suffered. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The former superlawyer — looking tired and somber on Monday, wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt, khaki pants and the same rumpled gray jacket he wore for much of the trial — founded the high-powered law firm Girardi Keese after his battle against a California utility giant inspired the Oscar-winning film Erin Brockovich.

But his promising career collapsed in 2020 when he was accused of stealing millions in settlements he received for victims of the 2018 Lion Air plane crash in Indonesia.

Claims from that crash — which killed 189 people — are the basis for separate criminal charges against Girardi that are still pending in Chicago. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges as well.

Federal prosecutors allege that between 2010 and 2020, the disgraced lawyer — who faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty — lied to his clients and used the millions he embezzled to fund his own lavish lifestyle of “private jets, luxury cars, expensive jewelry, and exclusive golf and country club memberships” with his third wife, 52-year-old former go-go dancer Jayne. He also took $20 million to fund her acting career.

Meanwhile, Girardi, testifying as a witness last week, denied any wrongdoing, claiming that “every client got every penny that every client should have gotten.”

And he accused his law firm’s chief financial officer, Christopher Kamon, 49, of looting victims’ settlement funds and embezzling some $50 million.

His defense team has maintained that Girardi is mentally unfit to stand trial and that his advanced dementia prevents him from realizing that Kamon robbed his company.

Kamon has been charged with wire fraud, similar to Girardi’s, but is being tried separately. He is also accused of embezzling $10 million from Girardi Keese, which is now bankrupt with $100 million in debt. Kamon has pleaded not guilty to all charges he faces.

Moghaddas insisted in court Monday that Girardi is as guilty of defrauding clients as Kamon.

“There is no doubt that Mr. Kamon is guilty,” he told the jury of seven men and five women. “But today is not Mr. Kamon’s day, it’s Tom Girardi’s day. And to say that Kamon did it is not true.

“Was it Kamon who lied to clients? Was it Kamon who hid documents? Was Kamon’s name on Girardi Keece’s door?”

While Moghaddas conceded that Girardi’s mental state may have deteriorated, he laughed at the defense’s claim that his dementia was the reason he was unaware his clients were being defrauded between 2010 and 2020.

“The only mental state that matters is the one in which these crimes were committed, not his mental state now,” he said. “Mr. Girardi was deceiving his clients long before he began to deteriorate mentally.”

In his closing argument, defense attorney Charles Snyder responded by telling jurors that Girardi’s cognitive impairment made him resemble the title character in the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

“He was getting old, he was getting sick, he was losing his mind. The lights were on, but no one was home. He was losing touch with reality.”

Snyder described Girardi’s declining mental faculties this way: He “mixed things up, didn’t recognize his wife, lost documents” and once believed he was then-Vice President Joe Biden’s secret personal attorney.

Snyder said Girardi was overwhelmed by “hundreds of cases and thousands of clients. He wasn’t paying attention to what he was signing. What he knew was what he was told by Mr. Kamon. He was unknowingly signing off on the theft of tens of millions of dollars by Mr. Kamon.”

Snyder described Kamon as “a virtuoso, a Michael Jordan of lies and deceit” and said the former Girardi Keese CFO — who made $350,000 a year at the company — “walked away with somewhere between $50 and $100 million.”

‘Mr. Kamon had unfettered access to Girardi Keese’s client accounts — which generated $1.2 billion between 2010 and 2020 — with virtually no oversight. The firm’s finances were completely under Mr. Kamon’s control.

“Mr. Girardi was not a knowing participant in Mr. Kamon’s fraud. He had no idea what was going on with the company’s finances.

“But the remedy for bad management is bankruptcy – and that has happened – not criminal prosecution.”

Snyder told the court that when Girardi discovered that Girardi Keese was losing money and was at risk of bankruptcy, he poured millions of his own money into the company to keep it afloat.

That didn’t work out, and Girardi went broke. “He lost more of his own money than anybody,” Snyder added.

In rebuttal to Girardi’s defense, Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Paetty said the case was “a simple and sad story of broken trust and greed,” in which the once-vaunted attorney “bought private jets (he had two worth a combined $12 million) while his clients went unpaid.”

Paetty heaped scorn on Girardi and accused Chris Kamon of the massive fraud, saying that “Girardi had siphoned off $14 million” from the company’s accounts before 2010, “when Kamon started at Girardi Keese.”

‘Girardi Keese was a den of thieves and Tom Girardi was the thief in chief. Girardi Keese was a house of cards built on Tom Girardi’s lies.’

As for the defense that claimed Girardi’s mismanagement was partly to blame for the charges against him, Paetty said, “Disorganization and sloppy administration are not defenses to fraud.”

And as for the defense’s argument that Girardi’s declining mental capacity left him unaware that Kamon was scamming millions, Paetty added: “Who knows what his mental state is now, but what matters here is his mental state when he lied to his clients and stole their money.”

After the prosecution rejected his defense, Judge Josephine Staton dismissed the jury at 2:20 p.m. to begin deliberations.