Former Girardi firm lawyer pleads guilty over failure to pay orphans, widows of plane crash victims

[ad_1] A lawyer who labored for now-imprisoned legal professional Tom Girardi pleaded responsible to legal contempt on Thursday for disobeying a court docket order that referred to as for settlement funds to be distributed to family of these killed within the devastating 2018 crash of a Boeing jet into the Java Sea.

As a part of a plea settlement, Keith Griffin admitted he did not observe a federal choose’s order to distribute $7. 5 million acquired from the aerospace firm for the family of these killed within the crash of Lion Air Flight 610.

It's the newest authorized fallout from mismanagement of consumer settlement funds by the now-defunct authorized agency of Girardi Keese, which led to Girardi’s federal conviction.

Girardi was as soon as one of many nation’s most formidable trial attorneys, whose lavish life-style, a federal choose would notice, included “personal jets and nation golf equipment” for himself and his spouse, Erika Jayne, a former star of “Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

Griffin was one of many final two legal professionals on the agency because it crumbled. The 54-year-old, of Temple Metropolis, entered his plea earlier than U.S. District Decide LaShonda A. Hunt within the Northern District of Illinois. Hunt set sentencing for Aug. 6.

Girardi Keese filed civil lawsuits in federal court docket in Chicago towards Boeing and settled them in 2020.

U.S. District Decide Thomas M. Durkin ordered that the settlement funds, which totaled $7.5 million, be apportioned to every consumer as quickly as attainable. Boeing wired the settlement funds into Girardi Keese’s consumer belief account in March 2020.

Griffin admitted in a plea settlement that he knew that, for the following eight months, the agency did not distribute the complete quantity to the Indonesian widows and orphans whose family members had died within the crash. Griffin acknowledged withholding info from a Chicago-based legal professional who was helping Girardi’s agency with the case, in contravention of Durkin’s order and regardless of the shoppers’ repeated inquiries and calls for for the cash.

Within the plea settlement, Griffin acknowledged that on a number of events he confronted Girardi about paying the shoppers. Griffin knew, nevertheless, that Girardi was not distributing these funds as required by Durkin’s order over these eight months, the plea settlement states.

The Lion Air victims ultimately acquired their settlement funds when one other legislation agency’s insurer paid them.

Proof that Girardi, an influence dealer in California politics and the legislation, had misappropriated hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in settlement cash from the Indonesians led to the implosion of his legislation agency 5 years in the past. It spurred allegations that he had stolen cash from shoppers for many years and eluded detection due to a comfortable relationship with State Bar regulators and the judiciary.

Girardi, 86, was disbarred in 2022 and, in 2024, convicted by a federal jury in Los Angeles of embezzling hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in settlement funds from different shoppers. Jurors in that case have been informed in regards to the Lion Air misappropriation. Girardi is now serving a seven-year federal jail sentence.

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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Occasions)

Two different Girardi Keese staff have been additionally convicted. Legal professional David Lira, 65, Girardi’s son-in-law, pleaded responsible final yr to a legal contempt cost for his willful failure to abide by the settlement fee order. Lira was sentenced to 4 months in federal jail and 4 months of residence confinement and ordered to carry out 200 hours of neighborhood service.

The legislation agency’s former chief monetary officer, Christopher Kamon, pleaded responsible final yr to a wire fraud cost for serving to Girardi embezzle the victims’ settlement funds. Kamon was sentenced to greater than 5 years in federal jail, which can run concurrently with a 10-year sentence that he acquired in federal court docket in Los Angeles for a associated embezzlement scheme.