“Half a million dollars for any one of these families is a significant amount of money, life-changing money, given the tragedy they went through and trying to carry on after that,” Durkin said before freezing Girardi’s assets and holding him in civil contempt. Durkin immediately referred the matter for criminal investigation by the U.S. Neither Girardi nor a criminal defense attorney he brought to the hearing offered an explanation. Tom Girardi is facing the collapse of everything he holds dear: his law firm, marriage to Erika Girardi, and reputation as a champion for the downtrodden.

The legal titan and the ‘Real Housewife’: The rise and fall of Tom Girardi and Erika Jayne At least they could’ve gotten a good education, that they’d not need to worry.” I thought I could use the settlement money for the children. “This is rightfully ours, not Girardi’s,” said Septiana Damayanti, whose husband died in the crash, leaving her to raise their two daughters, ages 5 and 3. Girardi did wrest enormous settlements from Boeing in the name of their loved ones, but once wired to his firm’s bank accounts, at least $3 million due to the victims’ relatives went to Girardi’s own purposes. It was a persuasive pitch, but for five grief-stricken families, it turned out to be a lie. They handed out glossy booklets touting Girardi’s quarter-century of taking on airlines and plane manufacturers and the billions he had won for his clients. Sign up with him and you could get millions from the plane manufacturer Boeing. Girardi is one of the best attorneys in America, they told the newly widowed and orphaned in 2018. Within weeks of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 off the coast of Indonesia, Tom Girardi’s men arrived in Jakarta knocking on the doors of the victims’ families.

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