Once a titan of California’s legal world, Tom Girardi, now 85, has fallen hard from grace. A federal jury in California convicted the disbarred attorney on four counts of wire fraud, finding he had misappropriated $15 million in settlement funds from his own clients. Girardi, once celebrated for high-profile cases like the $333 million Pacific Gas & Electric settlement that inspired the movie Erin Brockovich, now faces the grim reality of his conviction after a three-week trial.
Jury Reaches Guilty Verdict in Ponzi Scheme Case
The jury’s decision came after just four hours of deliberation, underscoring the gravity of the evidence against Girardi. Prosecutor Ali Moghaddas painted a picture of Girardi as the orchestrator of a decade-long Ponzi scheme, deceiving clients with promises of payments while funneling their settlement money to fund his extravagant lifestyle. “Using client one’s money to pay client two, and client two’s money to pay client three,” Moghaddas explained, likening the case to a textbook Ponzi scheme.
