Prison Justice
Disbarred lawyer Tom Girardi attributes $15M consumer theft to accounting errors earlier than his jail sentence
Legal professional Tom Girardi is pictured outdoors a Los Angeles courthouse in July 2014. (Picture by Damian Dovarganes/The Related Press)
Disbarred lawyer Tom Girardi was sentenced Tuesday to greater than seven years in jail, a day after a federal decide discovered that he was wholesome sufficient to serve his time in jail, quite than a medical care facility.
Girardi, who turned 86 years previous on the day of his sentencing, was convicted in August 2024 for stealing $15 million from 4 shoppers of the now-collapsed regulation agency Girardi Keese over the course of a decade. U.S. District Decide Josephine L. Staton of the the Central District of California sentenced Girardi to 87 months in jail and ordered him to pay $2.3 million in restitution, in response to a June 3 press launch from the U.S. lawyer’s workplace for the Central District of California.
Girardi is thought for his function on the authorized group that secured a $333 million settlement for groundwater contamination in a case portrayed within the movie Erin Brockovich. He’s the estranged husband of Erika Girardi, who appeared on The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills actuality TV present.
Reuters, Law360, Bloomberg Legislation and NBC Information are among the many publications with protection of the sentencing.
The 87-month sentence was under the really useful pointers sentence of 135 months to 168 months, in response to Law360.
Staton had discovered Girardi that was competent to face trial in January 2024. His legal professionals had contended that he had dementia. He was additionally lately hospitalized for liver dysfunction.
“However when given an opportunity to deal with the courtroom on Tuesday,” Law360 stories, “Girardi appeared to grasp the allegations towards him. He briefly repeated statements he’d made on the witness stand at his trial that any lacking cash was as a consequence of accounting errors, and that each one of his shoppers in the end acquired their cash.”
A prosecutor countered that some shoppers didn’t obtain their cash, Law360 reported.
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