LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal decide sentenced disbarred superstar lawyer Tom Girardi to seven years and three months in jail on Tuesday for embezzling tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from his purchasers, together with a number of with extreme bodily accidents and households of individuals killed in accidents.
U.S. District Choose Josephine L. Staton additionally ordered Girardi, 86, to pay a $35,000 advantageous and $2.3 million in restitution to former purchasers. A jury in August discovered him responsible of 4 counts of wire fraud, and he might have been sentenced to as much as 80 years in jail.
Girardi is the estranged husband of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Jayne and appeared on the present himself dozens of instances between 2015 and 2020.
He was as soon as among the many most outstanding attorneys within the nation, typically representing victims of main disasters in opposition to highly effective firms. One lawsuit in opposition to California’s Pacific Fuel and Electrical utility led to a $333 million settlement and was portrayed within the 2000 Julia Roberts movie “Erin Brockovich.”
However his regulation empire collapsed, and he was disbarred in California in 2022 over shopper thefts.
Girardi has been recognized with Alzheimer’s illness, and points along with his reminiscence led one other courtroom to place him in a conservatorship underneath his brother. However on Monday, Staton dominated that he was mentally competent to be sentenced, simply as she had beforehand discovered him mentally competent to face trial.
The decide had allowed him to stay free till his sentencing however ordered him to give up to authorities by July 17.
An e-mail to Girardi’s lawyer in search of touch upon the conviction was not instantly answered.
Former purchasers who testified in opposition to Girardi at his trial included an Arizona lady whose husband was killed in a ship accident and victims who have been burned in a 2010 fuel pipeline explosion in San Bruno, south of San Francisco.
Prosecutors performed jurors voicemails through which Girardi gave a litany of false causes cash {that a} courtroom had awarded couldn’t be paid, together with tax and debt obligations and decide authorizations. He incessantly advised them, “Don’t be mad at me.”
