Tom Girardi Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison for Embezzling Millions From Clients
'This self-proclaimed 'champion of justice' was nothing more than a thief and a liar who conned his vulnerable clients out of the millions of dollars,' said United States Attorney Bill Essayli in a statement.
More from Rolling Stone
Sean Combs' Accuser Thalia Graves Wins Fight to Dismiss Bodyguard's Defamation Suit
Sean Combs Trial: Hotel Security Guard Details Alleged $100,000 Bribe for Cassie Assault Video
Haley Joel Osment Ordered to 3 AA Meetings Per Week After Public Intoxication Arrest
District Judge Josephine L. Staton also ordered Girardi, 86, to pay a $35,000 fine and $2,310,247 in restitution, and said he must surrender to federal authorities no later than July 17.
In August 2024, a jury convicted Girardi on all four counts of wire fraud. Prosecutors said Girardi diverted money from accounts of his now-shuttered law firm Girardi & Keese to pay for private jet travel, luxury cars, jewelry, memberships to exclusive golf and social clubs, and more than $25 million in expenses for Jayne's company EJ Global. Former clients were initially impressed by Girardi's work in helping secure the famed $333 million settlement against Pacific Gas & Electric that inspired in the 2000 movie Erin Brockovich starring Julia Roberts, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Prosecutors accused Girardi of operating his firm like a Ponzi-scheme from October 2010 to late 2020 by lying to clients and instructing law firm employees to make incremental payments of newly obtained settlement funds to previously defrauded clients.
'Mr. Girardi, once a self-proclaimed 'legal legend' who purported to fight corporate greed, will now find himself on the opposite end of justice as he serves out his lengthy prison sentence,' Akil Davis, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office, said in a statement following Girardi's sentencing on Tuesday. 'Years of hard work went into this case by agents and prosecutors motivated to pursue justice for the victims who were betrayed by Girardi after putting their trust in his corrupt law firm in their time of need and while enduring personal hardship.'
Best of Rolling Stone
Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best
The United States of Weed
Gaming Levels Up
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Georgia probe continues into alleged Ponzi scheme targeting conservative Christians
A scandal involving an alleged massive Ponzi scheme that's centered around right-wing Georgia businessman Brant Frost IV is threatening to roil Republican Party chapters across the country. Georgia's Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, issued subpoenas Monday as part of his investigation into the alleged scheme. In July, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that a Ponzi scheme had been run out of an investment firm Frost launched called First Liberty Building & Loan. SEC investigators allege that approximately 300 investors were bilked out of at least $140 million and that about $17 million went toward personal expenses for Frost and his family, including more than $2.4 million in credit card payments and more than $570,000 in political donations. Frost apologized last month, saying in a statement: 'I take full responsibility for my actions and am resolved to spend the rest of my life trying to repay as much as I can to the many people I misled and let down.' His actions have sent ripples through the Republican Party. Frost's son, Brant Frost V, promoted First Liberty to conservatives on right-wing media — such as Real America's Voice — and has since stepped down from his post as head of a GOP county chapter in metro Atlanta. And there's a push underway to determine which conservatives and right-wing causes benefited from First Liberty's contributions. Last month, Raffensperger called on politicians who received donations to return them: Now is the time for every elected official, candidate or political action committee who received financial support from this entity currently under investigation to stand up and help the victims. Ill-gotten gains do not belong in the State Capitol. A recent investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that the money reached beyond Georgia and into states nationwide. The AJC reported that House Speaker Mike Johnson and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were among those who received donations, though the newspaper noted that it's 'not clear which contributions were paid with investors' money.' The Georgia Recorder reported that other high-profile Republicans — such as Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and then-Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida — received contributions from First Liberty in last year's election cycle. (Johnson, DeSantis, Boebert and Gaetz did not immediately respond to MSNBC's requests for comment.) According to the Recorder, some people in Georgia have returned money they received to a court-appointed receiver, including Gov. Brian Kemp, whose donations appear to have come before the alleged scheme began, and Raffensperger. The receiver, Gregory Hays, basically said the scheme was meant to exploit right-wing Christians' generosity toward like-minded causes: 'We call these affinity frauds, where you base it on a certain group, and this is very religious Christians and Republicans,' said Gregory Hays of Atlanta-based Hays Financial Consulting, who was appointed by a U.S. district court judge to receive the money from those returning the funds. 'So most of all the victims are either in politics or very faith-based investors, and all of them that I talked to were influenced by the charitable giving and the feel-good side of the company.' Several officials in neighboring Alabama have returned campaign contributions, as well. Given how expansive these donations appear to have been, the list of such politicians seems likely to grow in the coming weeks and months. This article was originally published on Solve the daily Crossword
USA Today
3 hours ago
- USA Today
Social Security is run like a Ponzi scheme. My generation has to end it.
This is why you shouldn't run government programs like Ponzi schemes. Some poor group inevitably gets the rug of benefits pulled out from under them. "A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth,' Ronald Reagan once quipped, and nowhere is that better demonstrated than in the Social Security Administration. Social Security is in dire financial straits. The administration's expenses have already exceeded revenue for years, and the program's cash reserves are quickly depleting. The program has outlived its viability and should be reformed or dissolved. However, action remains unlikely. Our politicians have no interest in ripping benefits away from baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, at everyone else's expense. Generation Z, born between 1997 to 2012, is held hostage in a program that won't work for them because our politicians refuse to reduce benefits for America's boomers. The Social Security rug will be pulled out from Gen Z If Social Security is my money, then why can't I withdraw from it? While I obviously understand why and am asking that question with snark, the answer serves as a good reminder of why the program needs to be cut. The reality is that my Social Security benefits are not my money. There is no account with my name on it accumulating interest annually, or even just holding my contributions at a static total. Instead, my contributions to the system are only being made for the promise that one day a younger generation will pay into the system on my behalf. However, recent issues have made that structure unsustainable. Due to a collapse of the American birth rate, the program is expected to be unable to pay the full promised benefits to retirees within the decade. This will manifest in a 24% across-the-board reduction in benefits. Still, our politicians have done nothing to resolve the problems with the program out of fear that they will need to make cuts that are unpopular among older Americans. Social Security is a hostage situation in which nobody is willing to kill the program because of the political blowback. The most frustrating part is that it is America's wealthiest generation that has Gen Z in a bind over government benefits. Opinion: Trump accounts give newborns $1,000. It could transform generational wealth in US. Gen Z is held hostage by Social Security The collective thinking on Social Security is a twofold problem. One is a problem of information, and the other is a problem of sunk-cost fallacy. Social Security reform is an admittedly in-the-weeds topic, and I can't expect the majority of Americans to be particularly well-versed on the details. Many Americans don't even understand the basics, such as how Social Security is funded. Nearly 1 in 4 believe Social Security is a personal retirement savings account, in which their contributions are the same dollars they withdraw later in life. The result is that most people clutch their pearls at the suggestion that the program has run its course. Roughly 8 in 10 Americans oppose making cuts to the program. The second part of the issue, however, is that there are more people subscribing to their own sunk cost in the program than are not. As people have invested more of their paychecks into Social Security, with benefits simultaneously becoming closer by the day, their cost-benefit changes. The generational divide on this issue is staggering. Roughly 52% of baby boomers would prefer to raise taxes, compared with just 13% who would rather cut benefits. Gen Z is the opposite, with 49% preferring to cut benefits and just 20% favoring a tax increase. A third of both generations (the fiscally illiterate third) would opt to borrow money to pay for Social Security. Opinion: Gen Z has become lonely and antisocial. We have only ourselves to blame. Young people are overwhelmingly more favorable toward killing the program because the total contributions we have made are so little and our prospects of benefits are so far into the future. Boomers are met with the opposite dynamic. However, even we are likely to fall victim to the sunk cost of the program after a certain point. By the time we are in our 40s, Gen Z's eagerness to end Social Security will probably recede. This is why you shouldn't run government programs like Ponzi schemes, because some poor group inevitably gets the rug of benefits pulled out from under them, or the program has to continue on forever. Neither option is a good one, but it's the choice in front of America as we near Social Security's insolvency. Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
Business Insider
4 hours ago
- Business Insider
Sin City slowdown
Despite what you may have seen on the internet lately, Las Vegas is not dead. The casinos are not empty. The streets aren't bare. If I'm being honest here, I wouldn't have minded a little less crowding during my little mid-August gals' jaunt to Sin City in an ill-fated attempt to see Kelly Clarkson, who canceled her residency there this month. But the vibe in Vegas is different. It's a slow summer, and it shows. Touristically speaking, this has been an unfun year for Vegas. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority says visitor volume to the city fell by 11.3% in June compared to the prior year. Convention attendance and hotel occupancy declined, too. The total number of visitors is down 7.3% over the first half of 2025. Gaming revenue is up, a signal that the people who are going are still gambling. But consumer spending, including at restaurants and bars and apparel and jewelry retailers, is down millions of dollars over the last 11 months compared to the prior stretch. Some casinos have laid off workers. Why this is happening doesn't have one straight answer. A lot of factors are in play — the rocky state of the economy, tighter US immigration policies, hangover effects from the California wildfires that have some would-be visitors staying home. The tentpole events that drew in scads of visitors in recent years, such as March Madness and the Super Bowl, aren't around this year for a 2025 boost. There are still Formula 1, the Raiders, and whatever is going on with the Sphere, which is hosting the Backstreet Boys, but those attractions are extra pricey in a moment when many travelers are feeling extra price sensitive. Las Vegas has relatively recently developed a reputation for being expensive and for nickel-and-diming people at every opportunity. The costs of plane tickets, hotel rooms, food, drinks, and even parking have skyrocketed. The nature of the city has changed, too. Instead of existing as America's slightly seedy city of vice, Vegas has gotten a sort of glow-up in an attempt to broaden its appeal. The upside: A broader audience might be up for a trip to Vegas than in the past. The downside: Vegas now resembles so many other destinations that it loses out to similarly priced (or even cheaper) competitors, especially if visitors aren't having a bang-up time. "You're starting to change the mentality of the visitor where they're thinking, 'Well, I could go to Las Vegas, but it's going to be a pain in my neck, or I could go to Cancún,'" says Michael Schoenberger, a professor of hospitality management at the College of Southern Nevada. "It's a cumulative effect that's just now starting to show up." While the "what's wrong in Las Vegas" conversation is peaking right now, things have been shaky for a while, says Amanda Berlarmino, an assistant professor of hospitality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "To be honest, we've struggled with visitation since the pandemic," she says. Asian tourism has not recovered, she says, and this year, there's been a decline in other international visitors, including, importantly, Canadian tourism, thanks in part to President Donald Trump's antagonism towards America's neighbors to the north. International visitors tend to do longer stints than domestic visitors, who might just pop down for a weekend, which makes their pullback cut a little deeper. We are a more expensive market now than we've ever been before. The domestic picture isn't especially pretty, either. Worries about the economy may be keeping Americans at home. A disproportionate amount of Las Vegas visitors tend to come from California, but the number of vehicles crossing the California-Nevada border on Interstate 15 declined by 4.3% in June compared to the same month last year. Berlarmino chalks much of it up to the fires that hit Southern California at the start of the year. Schoenberger notes that disruptions from highway construction have been a problem, too. Steve Hill, the president and CEO of the LVCVA, says while these issues are not ideal, Las Vegas has seen worse in the recent past. "It is not the crisis situation like we've seen through Covid or the extended downturn through the Great Recession," he says. Beyond some of these more acute issues, one major complication that's gradually been growing may finally be reaching an inflection point: pricing. To put it plainly, Las Vegas is hella expensive. The longtime proposition of Las Vegas was that it was relatively cheap to get there and stay there, because once people got there, the amount they spent on gambling at the casinos and resorts more than made up for it. But that's no longer the case. Flights to the city may still be slightly less expensive than some destinations, but they're not that far from trips to New Orleans, Miami, or Washington, DC. The same goes for hotels, though prices can vary widely. The typical clientele has also shifted. While Las Vegas' traditional market was people over 60 who tended to be value-conscious, now more people are coming in their prime earning years and demanding more premium services and experiences. Resort economics have changed, too. Gambling is no longer so important as a revenue driver — it's hotel rooms, food and beverage, and events. Combine all of that with inflation and consumer wallets being squeezed, and you can see why some visitors may shorten trips or just scrap them altogether. "We are a more expensive market now than we've ever been before," Berlarmino says. Many Las Vegas casinos and hotels started charging for parking in the mid-2010s, and they're piling on resort fees, too. My recent four-night stay at the Cosmopolitan Hotel included $249.44 in resort fees and associated taxes. While there are ways to do Las Vegas that aren't so costly — staying in budget or value hotels away from the Strip, buying food and alcohol at a store, or abstaining from drinking entirely — all the little add-on fees can make people feel like they're being ripped off. "Since starting right before the pandemic and then continuing after the pandemic, we've introduced a lot of pain points to the visitors that historically were not present," Schoenberger says. "Why we charge people to drink what drinks cost in New York City, I have no idea." Hill says that the narrative around the cost of Vegas is "overblown," and says there are "all kinds of ways" to achieve a budget-friendly experience. "We've got 150,000 rooms and they, right this minute, run from $9 probably to $600," he says. The slowdown in visitors has led some hotels to cut their prices, he adds. Why we charge people to drink what drinks cost in New York City, I have no idea. Gambling being more widely available around the US is both a blessing and a curse for Las Vegas, which used to be one of two major places in the states, along with Atlantic City, where you could legally bet. On the one hand, people who have the gambling itch can probably find a place to scratch it within a couple of hours from their homes. On the other hand, the proliferation of gambling may also mean more people get the itch. Chris Grove, a sports-gambling-industry investor at Acies Investments, tells me the growth of sports betting has been "nothing but a net positive for Vegas." It's given people a taste of betting, and if they like it, it might inspire them to go to the biggest place in America there is to do it. Grove compared it to the poker boom of the early 2000s. "Online poker got really popular, and you ask the question: Did that do anything to dissuade people from coming to Vegas to play poker? And the answer is no," Grove says. Plus, summer is a slow time for sports gambling. If people were sitting home on their couches on sports betting apps instead of going to Vegas, they'd be doing so during the NFL season and March Madness. Other Vegas developments have been a mixed bag. Formula 1, back in Vegas since 2023, is an attraction, but preparing for it has caused transit disruptions, Schoenberger says. In the company's second-quarter earnings call, MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle said that Las Vegas remains "fundamentally solid" and blamed the company's 9% drop in earnings from its Strip resorts on a "uniquely disruptive remodel" at its MGM Grand and slow mid-week bookings at two of its value operations. Caesars said in its second-quarter earnings that it had seen decent gaming results in Las Vegas during the period, even in the face of weaker demand for its hospitality offerings. "The top third-ish of the market is still doing exceptionally well," Hill, of the Convention and Visitors Authority, says. It's when you get into the middle third that "it becomes more acute, the more budget-conscious the visitor needs to be." It's tempting to ascribe to Las Vegas' slowdown some greater meaning. Maybe it's just a temporary blip, but what if it's a recession indicator? Or a sign of the times and proof that Las Vegas is over? Declaring that the slow summer is the end of Sin City as we know it would be a bit premature. The same goes for calling it a surefire sign of a recession. But it does seem like Vegas is in a sort of weird limbo, even if it's only temporary. It's a place that feels stuck in time — besides some of the outfits and what's on the TV, you might not know if you're in a casino in 2010 or 2025. After all, DJ Pauly D of " Jersey Shore" fame is playing. Where it is getting more modern, like the additions of the Sphere and the NFL's Raiders, it's still figuring out the logistics. It's responding to consumer demand for a higher-end experience, but still faces with consumers who may not be prepared to pay such high-end prices. If a trip to Vegas is going to run you the same as a vacation to New York, San Francisco, Miami, or even Mexico, you might think twice about how much of a premium you actually put on the Sin City experience, especially when the main differentiator is that in Vegas, you're surrounded by tables and machines designed to suck money out of you. To be clear, Las Vegas is lovely. Gambling is fun, as long as it is done responsibly. The shows are great, the hotels are comfy. Its nightlife offers a good amount of (responsible) debauchery, and its daylife is fairly family-friendly. When it's not sweltering hot out, the outdoor stuff is really great, too. Despite the videos, pictures, and memes floating around online, it was far from empty. (Also, anywhere could be painted as bare if you go at the right time of day.) The city might just be in the midst of a slight pivot moment — not that it's changing its identity, but it's finding an identity in a culture and economy that are changing around it. "Las Vegas is still attractive to people," Schoenberger says, "because it's a place where you can go and no matter where you're from in the world, it looks different."
