A federal judge in Los Angeles sentenced the former chief financial officer of Tom Girardi’s closed law firm to the role of stealing millions of dollars in settlements from disgraceful lawyer clients in a 10-year prison on Friday.
US District Judge Josephine Staton imposed this period after a hearing where councillors overseeing the company’s bankruptcy accused Christopher Camon of an ongoing effort to hide the money stolen.
“Mr. Camon added what Girardi did,” Councilman Elissa Miller said. She told the judge about the phone, calling the conversation “a piece of horror in this case” to a client of former Girardi Keith, who is hoping for a multi-million-dollar legal settlement, that she would only receive $750.
Camon, a 51-year-old former Torrance High mathematics teacher, managed Girardi Keith’s bank account 10 and a half years before the collapse of 2020. During that period, Wilshire Boulevard practice served as a Ponge-like scheme in which prosecutors said they siphoned up as many as $100 million client funds in client funds to take on his wife’s gorgeous lifestyle and music career.
After Girardi’s fraud conviction last year, Camon signed a contract with the prosecutor, under which he pleaded guilty to the fraud and admitted that he routinely transferred money from his client trust account at Girardi’s direction. One case cited by Asst. US lawyer Scott Petty, Camon, has removed $50,000 in settlement funds for a client, a widow whose husband was murdered in a sailor’s accident, allowing the lawyer to pay bills at two country clubs. The other has moved $128,500 in a settlement fund that relies on women injured in medical devices so that Girardi can cover the lease with two luxury vehicles.
Camon also admitted to launching his own separate scheme in 2013 – in the words of the prosecutor, “stolen theft – theft” – stolen from Girardi. Using fake vendors and kickbacks, he spent over $6.5 million spent remodeling the property he owned on Encino and Palos Verdes, as well as on gifts and $20,000 a month with a monthly allowance for the women he met on the escort site.
How should Girardi and Camon be allocated since Girardi’s fall four years ago? After creditors pushed him into bankruptcy in 2021, financial records emerged, including settlements that rely on devastated, injured clients. Breast implants, university tuition fees for employee children, Santa Monica Condominium for Girardi’s Mistress, Santa Monica Condominium for Gucci Plus for Gucci Consultants.
At Girardi’s August trial, his lawyer alleged that the now 85-year-old lawyer had dementia and that Camon used his condition to steal from his client.
The ju umpire didn’t seem to buy the argument and convicted Girardi of four wire fraud.
Camon presented himself on his part as a small participant who followed instructions from his boss, a legend in the legal field and a personal hero to him. In a letter to the court, Camon recalled that he was diagnosed with bowel cancer just three months after he began as an accountant for the company in 2000.
“As far as I’m concerned, I owed my life to him,” he wrote. Girardi promoted him to head of the accounting firm in 2004, giving him a spent Porsche, and he paid enough to support his financially tied parents, he wrote.
During the verdict hearing, Kumon, wearing an ankle bondage and a white jumpsuit, apologized several times, saying he wanted the reader to understand, “I’m not a scary person. I tried to fix this as much as I could.”
Bankruptcy councillor Miller challenged his alleged cooperation. She refused to promote the sale of the $2.4 million waterfront apartment that Camon owned in the Bahamas, saying it had not exceeded the $1 million found at banks in Hungary and Bahamas.
Judge Staton said he found his claim that he was following Girardi’s instructions “a bit hollow” given him “ambiguous” and his apology and that he was the mastermind behind another plan that personally benefited him. She said the fact that he had no previous criminal history was unconvincing given the length of the Girardi Keith project.
“The defendant committed fraud almost every day for years,” she said. She ordered him to pay $8.9 million in reparations.
Both Girardi and Camon face additional federal charges in Chicago over the misappropriation of millions of dollars in settlements for the families of the victims of the plane crash crash. Camon is in the process of negotiating a plea deal, his lawyer, Michael Severo, told court Friday.
Girardi has not yet been declared in the LA case. The prosecutor is seeking a 14-year term. His lawyers argued that because of his cognitive decline, he should remain in a nursing home in Orange County, rather than being sent to prison. He received a medical evaluation at a federal prison in Buttner, North Carolina earlier this year, and experts there concluded that he doesn’t need any special treatment, according to a submission by lawyers this week.
Forensic psychologists and neuropsychologists who evaluated him “deemed Girardi safe and appropriate to jail.” [the federal prison system] …He doesn’t even need to be placed in a specialized medical facility at this time,” the lawyer wrote. He is scheduled to return to court in May.
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