Jury left to decide Tom Girardi's fate in fraud trial

Staff Writer

Aug. 26, 2024 Updated 3:41 PM PT

A victim of a gas explosion that killed his girlfriend. A client injured by a medical device and fighting bankruptcy. A woman who lost her husband in a boating accident. Another whose 1-year-old son became paraplegic after a drunk driver hit the family car.

They had all gone to Tom Girardi’s law firm, trusting and believing that he would help them get the settlements they deserved, Assistant U.S. Atty. Ali Moghaddas told jurors in closing arguments Monday.

Instead, Moghaddas said, all were further victimized by Girardi — once a legal legend who is on trial on four counts of wire fraud. Prosecutors have accused Girardi of stealing more than $15 million from four clients between 2010 and 2020.

“He picked these people in the darkest hour of their life and told them what he thought they’d believe,” Moghaddas told the jury on the 12th day of the trial. “What you saw in this case is, for years, the defendant was running a Ponzi scheme.”

For nearly two hours Monday, Deputy Public Defender Charles Snyder pushed back on the government’s case, referring to his 85-year-old client as an “elderly man with cognitive decline” and laying the blame for a massive case of fraud at the feet of Chris Kamon, the former chief financial officer for the now-closed law firm, Girardi Keese.

The defense lawyers accused Kamon of stealing more than $50 million from the firm. There was a scheme to steal from clients during that 10-year time frame, Snyder said, but it wasn’t Girardi’s.

“This was Mr. Kamon’s scheme,” Snyder said. “This was absolutely not [Girardi’s] fraud.”

Kamon is also charged with wire fraud in connection with the theft of client money, along with a separate case in which he is accused of embezzling funds from the firm to finance the purchase of homes and a $20,000-per-month payment to his girlfriend.

But just because Kamon stole, Assistant U.S. Atty. Scott Paetty said in rebuttal, does not mean Girardi is innocent.

“It just makes Girardi Keese a den of thieves, and it makes Girardi the thief-in-chief,” Paetty said.

The closing arguments capped off an at-times emotional trial that has lasted for weeks and included surprising testimony from Girardi in his own defense, denying that he’d misled clients and saying they got paid every penny they were owed.

Prosecutors called several of the firm’s former clients to the stand; they described Girardi as a famous lawyer in whom they had fully placed their trust.

There was Joseph Ruigomez, who won a settlement of more than $50 million for burns he suffered in the San Bruno, Calif., gas explosion. Judy Selberg, who got a $500,000 settlement after her husband died in a boating accident. Erika Saldana, for whom the firm secured a $17.5-million settlement after her 1-year-old son had been badly injured when a drunk driver crashed into their car in 2015.

Emails presented during trial, from clients to law firm employees, illustrated the difficulties as payments lagged. Selberg said she desperately needed the nearly $300,000 she was owed to pay bills, including property taxes. Josefina Hernandez, who was waiting on settlement funds related to her pelvic mesh lawsuit, said her bank account was in the red. Saldana said her family needed it to buy a new house with more space for her son.

Saldana, who at times testified in tears, said in an email to a partner at the law firm that the family had held off on buying a hospital bed their son desperately needed because their apartment was too small. She gave her son baths on his bed because of the struggle to fit him into the shower.

“We have already lost so many opportunities to buy a house,” Saldana wrote in an April 2020 email to Girardi and another partner at the firm. “It’s been almost a year since our case settled and we still haven’t received the balance of our settlement.”

Girardi, she testified, gave varying excuses as to why they could not get the money: Her son’s trust wasn’t established yet. There was a tax issue with the IRS. A judge didn’t want to sign off on the release of the money.

The more it stretched out, Saldana testified, it felt like “reopening a wound” they had tried to close.

The family never received an outstanding $1 million they were owed.

During his trial, Girardi took notes as former clients testified and occasionally appeared to confer with his attorneys. At times, Girardi joked with court staff.

“Got a good doorman here,” Girardi said to the courtroom clerk, as he held the door open for Girardi after a break one day.

Girardi’s lawyers contended their client was mentally incompetent, unable to assist his own attorneys — let alone retain any short-term memory — and in the throes of progressive cognitive decline. A federal judge last year ruled he was fit to stand trial.

“Mr. Girardi got old and he got sick and he lost his mind,” Snyder told the jury on Monday.

Snyder argued that Girardi was running the firm in name only and called it a “Weekend at Bernie’s” situation where partners at the firm were “propping him up to keep the party going.”

During the trial, Girardi’s federal public defenders called more than 10 witnesses, including Dr. Helena Chui, who testified that Girardi has dementia; his former housekeeper of about 20 years; and his secretaries at the law firm.

Their last witness was Girardi himself, and one of his lawyers, Samuel Cross, seemed to test his client’s mental acuity for jurors, asking him if his law firm was still open, to which he answered yes.

“Tom, what’s my name?” Cross asked him.

“I have no idea,” Girardi replied. “Bad, mean, terrible, it’s one of those.”

At times, Girardi testified, funds were withheld from clients because of medical liens, clients going through divorce, or drug issues. Girardi said the holdbacks were “not for me to take the money.”

Snyder told the jury Monday, regarding Girardi’s testimony, “The lights were on but nobody was home.”

Snyder described his client to jurors as a man who time and again “took on Goliath” and prevailed. By the time the alleged fraud scheme began, Snyder said, Girardi had won every award there was to win and “did not have to cheat to win.” He told the jury he wasn’t saying that Girardi never told lies, but that “a lie alone does not equal fraud.”

“I think you all understand what’s at play here for an 85-year-old man,” Snyder told the jury in his closing argument. “Your decision in this case will forever alter the trajectory of Mr. Girardi’s life.”

In his rebuttal, Paetty said Girardi “chose himself again and again,” and used client money to underwrite an exorbitant lifestyle. He argued that Kamon stole millions and needed Girardi to do it, but added that Girardi needed Kamon as well.

“[Girardi] needed a morally flexible person in that job,” Paetty said.

Paetty said when new client funds came in, Girardi would use those to pay something to the old clients he still owed. And just like any Ponzi scheme, Paetty said, it came crashing down when the money stopped.

“The house of cards that was Girardi Keese crumbled around him because it was built on lies,” Paetty said.

The jury began deliberating Girardi’s fate Monday afternoon. He could face a decades-long prison sentence if convicted.