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LOS ANGELES (CN) — Disgraced plaintiff attorney Tom Girardi was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison on Tuesday following his conviction last year for stealing millions of dollars from his clients’ settlements to fund a lavish lifestyle for himself and his reality-TV wife Erika Jayne.
U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton rejected the request by Girardi’s lawyers to let him serve his sentence in the closed memory care facility in Southern California where he has been residing since his arrest. The Barack Obama appointee ordered him to surrender on July 17 to the facility selected by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons for him to serve his sentence.
Staton also ordered Girardi to pay $2.3 million in restitution to four of his victims.
The judge also wasn’t persuaded that Girardi’s mental decline was so severe that he wouldn’t remember why he was in prison or that his well-publicized fall from grace was already punishment enough so that a custodial sentence wasn’t warranted.
“During trial, Mr. Girardi was keenly aware that he was charged with stealing from his clients,” Staton said. “Custody is not reserved for the unfortunate.”
Girardi, who turned 86 Tuesday, briefly addressed the court to state that there had been some negligence at his now-defunct firm Girardi Keese, but that everyone got paid.
“I didn’t get any money,” Girardi, who suffers from moderate dementia, told the judge. “I just tried to help people. Unfortunately mistakes were made.”
Girardi’s profession of innocence prompted Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Paetty to observe that he still continued to lie as he had done for years to his clients when he told them that the settlements he had negotiated for them were somehow held up or when he sought to hide behind mental incompetency to avoid being held accountable for his crimes.
In one particularly egregious case cited by the prosecutor, Girardi won a $53 million settlement for a man who had suffered severe injuries and lost his girlfriend and family home in a gas explosion, but told him that the settlement was only $7.25 million.
“If there’s ever a defendant to give a break to, this is not the one,” Paetty said in arguing for a sentence of as long as 14 years in prison.
Girardi’s federal public defenders said that he would appeal his conviction.
The judge on Monday had ruled that the disbarred lawyer’s declining mental health wasn’t severe enough that it would be inappropriate for him to serve time in federal prison.
“This self-proclaimed ‘champion of justice’ was nothing more than a thief and a liar who conned his vulnerable clients out of millions of dollars,” said United States Attorney Bill Essayli. “My office will vigorously prosecute corrupt lawyers and those who assist them in criminal activities.”
Two of Girardi’s victims addressed the court at the sentencing hearing to describe the stress and anxiety they had to endure to get their settlement money from the lawyer they thought would look out for their interests.
Girardi, once among the most successful and politically connected attorneys in California, was convicted in August on four counts of wire fraud.
Federal prosecutors accused him of running what amounted to a Ponzi scheme, using money from his clients’ settlements to pay off older clients whose money was past due while throwing up a series of elaborate deceptions and obfuscations to keep the newer clients, lawyers and creditors at bay.
But much of the money also went to fund his lavish lifestyle, one replete with private jets and exclusive country clubs, to say nothing of his wife Erika Jayne’s entertainment career. Eventually, his firm collapsed under the weight of all those creditors.
The 12-day trial featured testimony from each of the four victims in the case: Joe Ruigomez, who was badly burned in a gas line explosion that killed his girlfriend; Judy Selberg, whose husband was killed in a boating accident; Josefina Hernandez, who was injured by a faulty medical device; and Erika Saldana, whose 1-year-old baby was injured in a car crash with a drunk driver.
The jury deliberated for just four hours before finding him guilty.
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