Disbarred lawyer Tom Girardi 'didn't seem all there' in late 2020, ex-employee testifies in embezzlement trial
Attorney Tom Girardi is pictured outside a Los Angeles courthouse in July 2014. A public defender representing Girardi in his embezzlement trial has asked a former accounting employee about a secret bank account being used by other lawyers at his now-closed law firm. (Photo by Damian Dovarganes/The Associated Press)
A public defender representing disbarred lawyer Tom Girardi in his embezzlement trial asked a former accounting employee Tuesday about a secret bank account being used by other lawyers at his now-closed law firm.
Federal public defender Charles Snyder asked former accounting employee Norina Rouillard whether other lawyers at the now-collapsed Girardi Keese firm in Los Angeles were “secretly running money” through the bank account, Law.com reports.
“I don’t know if secretly,” Rouillard replied.
She also denied an intent to conceal anything from Girardi, who is accused of stealing $15 million from four clients.
Bloomberg Law called testimony about the bank account “the most concrete evidence presented so far that [Girardi] wasn’t aware of all that was going on at the firm.”
Prosecutors suggested that the secret account may have been for the benefit of clients.
Pressed about signs of cognitive decline, Rouillard acknowledged that she thought that Girardi “was off” by November 2020, Law.com reported.
“He didn’t seem all there at that time,” she said.
Girardi called Rouillard 35 times in one day and asked her after the December 2020 collapse of Girardi Keese how to get the firm reopened, she testified.
Girardi was found competent to stand trial in January. His lawyers say he suffers from dementia.
Rouillard also acknowledged that trust checks were signed with the signature stamp of a lawyer who had left the firm. One of the employees who obtained the stamp was former chief financial officer Christopher Kamon, who is the godfather for her son, she said.
Kamon has been charged in an alleged $10 million “side fraud” scheme and is scheduled for trial next year.
Prosecutors had claimed in opening statements Aug. 6 that Girardi treated his client trust account “like a personal piggy bank,” Law360 reported. The money was used, prosecutors said, to support a lavish lifestyle and the career of his estranged wife, Erika Girardi, who appeared on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reality TV show.
Girardi and Erika Girardi have been separated since late 2020, according to Vulture. She has maintained that she had no knowledge of fraud.
Girardi, who gained fame as part of the successful legal team portrayed in the movie Erin Brockovich, is also facing charges in Chicago. He is acused of misappropriating more than $3 million in settlement funds in connection with the October 2018 crash of Indonesia’s Lion Air Flight 610.
