(Reuters) – The bankruptcy trustee overseeing Tom Girardi’s defunct law firm is seeking to recover millions of dollars that she claims Girardi fraudulently transferred to more than 100 people and businesses, including his estranged wife, reality TV star Erika Jayne Girardi.
Since mid-December, Chapter 7 trustee Elissa Miller has filed more than 100 lawsuits alleging that Tom Girardi and Girardi Keese tried to dodge creditors by fraudulently transferring money out of the firm.
That money included client funds, which Tom Girardi and Girardi Keese treated as their own piggy bank, Miller said. A federal judge in Chicago said in November that Girardi, once a leading figure in the plaintiffs bar, was “running a Ponzi scheme with client money.”
In a new lawsuit filed Monday, Miller said Erika Girardi, a pop singer who has a starring role on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” received $97,200 from the law firm between 2015 and 2018 even though she was not an employee.
Miller said Girardi Keese was “nothing more than an illicit and felonious business operated to line the rather large pockets of Thomas, his wife, and numerous cohorts.”
A federal judge in Chicago said in November that Girardi admitted in a sealed December 2020 filing he did not pay the families of four victims of the 2018 Lion Air crash $2 million in settlement funds they were owed.
Girardi has not publicly responded to the misconduct allegations and did not participate in the state bar’s…
