Tom Girardi was put under his brother's conservatorship with Alzheimer's disease, then convicted of stealing client money and sent to prison at 86

Tom Girardi won the $333 million Hinkley settlement with PG&E and in a sworn statement valued himself at $264 million. He married Erika Jayne in 2000^†; she joined The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in its sixth season. A lender stated in an affidavit that more than $20 million moved from his firm, Girardi Keese, to her company, EJ Global. On 3 November 2020 Jayne filed for divorce. In December 2020 Chicago federal judge Thomas Durkin held Girardi and his firm in contempt and entered a $2 million judgment over settlement money owed to families of Lion Air crash victims. The firm was forced into bankruptcy. In January 2021 his brother Robert, an Orange County dentist, petitioned for a conservatorship and was appointed temporary conservator. A court psychiatrist reported in March 2021 that Girardi had late-onset Alzheimer's disease. On 1 June 2022 the California Supreme Court disbarred him and ordered restitution. Prosecutors alleged that up to $100 million was taken from client accounts. On 27 August 2024 a federal jury convicted him of four counts of wire fraud. Judge Josephine Staton found him competent, ruling that he had dementia but also exaggerated it. On 3 June 2025 she sentenced him to seven years and refused to let him serve the term in the locked Alzheimer's unit of his Seal Beach nursing home. He surrendered to federal custody on 17 July 2025. His son-in-law, David Lira, pleaded guilty to contempt in Chicago in June 2025.