Lawyer and reality star Tom Girardi sentenced to prison on 86th birthday
An unhappy birthday.
Tom Girardi was sentenced to prison for fraud today, which happens to be his 86th birthday.
A Los Angeles judge ruled that the disgraced former lawyer will serve seven years and three months behind bars, according to NBC News.
He was also reportedly ordered to pay $US2.3 million in restitution to his victims, a $US35,000 fine and surrender to begin his prison sentence on July 17.
Girardi's attorneys had been fighting for their elderly client to serve his sentence at a long-term care facility due to his alleged late on-set Alzheimer's and dementia diagnoses.
A sworn affidavit written by Dr. Nathan Lavid, a Long Beach forensic and clinical psychiatrist, and previously obtained by Page Six read, 'Dementia impairs his ability to understand the hearing. His emotional distress is directly related to his dementia and exacerbated by his confusion.'
However, the estranged husband of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne was found competent by the judge to serve in his fraud trial last year.
He was then forced to go to court to battle a February 2023 indictment that accused him of embezzling $US15 million from his former Girardi & Keese clients. The law firm co-founder had been charged with five counts of wire fraud.
Girardi was asked during the trial about the missing settlement funds in the case of his former clients, including Joe Ruigomez, a young man who was badly burned due to a gas line.
'I wouldn't have said that,' the disbarred lawyer said when asked why he told Ruigomez that his settlement was for $US5 million instead of $US53 million. 'I didn't intentionally ever tell anyone the wrong thing.'
His victims also included the families of those killed in the Lion Air 610 flight in 2018.
Girardi was found guilty on four counts of wire fraud in August 2024 after less than a day of jury deliberations.
Jayne — who filed to divorce her ex in November 2020 but has yet to finalise the split — said on Real Housewives following the trial verdict, 'I could have never saw this coming.'
'Tom was loved, he was admired, he was accomplished,' the Bravo star, 53, continued in a confessional interview. 'And this is how his story ended. I don't know that I'll ever get over that.'
The former couple was married for 22 years. They shared no children together.
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