Former Girardi lawyer pleads guilty to failing to pay families of Lion Air crash victims
The attorney who worked for the jailed attorney, Tom Girardi, pleaded guilty to contempt on Thursday for disobeying a court order that said the settlement money should be transferred to the relatives of those who died in the tragic Boeing plane crash in the Java Sea in 2018.
As part of the plea agreement, Keith Griffin admitted that he failed to follow a federal judge’s order to distribute $7. 5 million received from the airline for the relatives of those who died in the Lion Air Flight 610 crash.
It’s the latest legal spat stemming from the mishandling of client fees by the defunct Girardi Keese law firm, which has led to Girardi’s federal conviction.
Girardi was once one of the country’s most feared trial lawyers, living a lavish lifestyle, a federal judge noted, including “private jets and country clubs” for him and his wife, Erika Jayne, a former star of the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
Griffin was one of the last two attorneys at the firm as it collapsed. The 54-year-old man, from Temple City, entered the plea before US District Judge LaShonda A. Hunt in the Northern District of Illinois. Hunt set sentencing for August 6.
Girardi Keese filed lawsuits in federal court in Chicago against Boeing and settled them in 2020.
US District Judge Thomas M. Durkin ordered that the settlement funds, totaling $7.5 million, be divided among each customer as soon as possible. Boeing deposited the payment funds into Girardi Keese’s customer account in March 2020.
Griffin admitted in the plea agreement that he knew that, for the next eight months, the company failed to distribute the full amount to Indonesian widows and orphans who had lost loved ones in the accident. Griffin admitted to withholding information from a Chicago-based attorney who was assisting Girardi’s firm in the case, against Durkin’s order despite repeated inquiries from clients and demands for money.
In the plea agreement, Griffin said he often confronted Girardi about paying clients. Griffin knew, however, that Girardi was not distributing those funds as required by Durkin’s order during those eight months, the plea agreement said.
Lion Air victims finally got their money back when another law firm’s insurance company paid them.
Evidence that Girardi, a power broker in California politics and law, misappropriated millions of dollars in payments from Indonesians led to the arrest of his law firm five years ago. It sparked allegations that he had been embezzling money from clients for decades and had avoided detection because of his cool relationship with legislative regulators and judges.
Girardi, 86, was disbarred in 2022 and, in 2024, convicted by a federal judge in Los Angeles of stealing millions of dollars in payments from other clients. Jurors in that case were told about the abuse of Lion Air. Girardi is now serving a seven-year prison sentence.
Tom Girardi was fired after being convicted of defrauding clients.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Two other Girardi Keese employees were also convicted. Attorney David Lira, 65, who is Girardi’s son-in-law, pleaded guilty last year to contempt charges for his willful failure to comply with an order to pay restitution. Lira was sentenced to four months in state prison and four months of house arrest and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.
The law firm’s former chief financial officer, Christopher Kamon, pleaded guilty last year to fraud charges for helping Girardi defraud victims of settlements. Kamon was sentenced to more than five years in federal prison, to go along with a 10-year sentence he received in federal court in Los Angeles for a related racketeering scheme.
