Tom Girardi, ‘Real Housewives’ Erika Jayne’s Husband, Is On Trial For Allegedly Embezzling Millions

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When Erika Jayne Girardi first joined “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” in 2015, she shocked even her affluent castmates with her ostentatious displays of wealth, including a palatial mansion, private jet, extravagant jewelry, designer outfits styled by her personal “glam squad,” which included a creative director and choreographer for her aspiring career as a pop performer — all bankrolled by her husband, a high-powered personal injury lawyer 33 years her senior.

Now, Tom Girardi, 85, is a defendant in a criminal trial that began in Los Angeles this week, charged by federal prosecutors in March 2022 with embezzling $15 million from vulnerable clients. He is also charged in Chicago with stealing millions more in settlement awards from Boeing to families of a plane crash that killed 189 people. (That case, tentatively scheduled to be tried next year, is on hold until the conclusion of his trial in California.)

In opening statements Tuesday, prosecutors said that Girardi treated settlements he secured from his clients like “a personal piggy bank” that he used to fund, among other things, “the entertainment career of his former wife,” according to a reporter for Law.com.

Girardi gained fame for winning the landmark environmental lawsuit dramatized in the 2000 film “Erin Brockovich,” for which Julia Roberts won an Academy Award. As his wife shot to fame in “RHOBH,” he became better known as her benevolent benefactor in his occasional appearances on the Bravo TV show.

In court on Wednesday, one former client testified about