Pop crooner and “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Girardi quietly put an end to a long and splashy legal battle over her ex-husband’s now-defunct law firm on Thursday, settling a $25-million bankruptcy lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court.
The suit alleged the singer should have known she was profiting off embezzled funds linked to the sprawling case against her ex-husband, former L.A. legal heavyweight Tom Girardi, and his firm Girardi Keese. The couple was accused of funneling millions from the law firm to prop up Erika’s music career.
Performing as Erika Jayne, she topped the charts in the 2010s with a series of raunchy dance club hits. But court records show she spent millions more than she made as a musician.
Larry W. Gabriel, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, wrote in a pretrial filing Monday that Erika and a company associated with her “received the benefit of [Tom] Girardi’s massive fraudulent scheme.”
Tom Girardi is currently serving a seven-year sentence in federal prison after he was convicted of wire fraud for bilking his personal-injury clients in 2024. The disgraced former attorney was found to have stolen tens of millions from his firm.
His wife’s pop hits mixed boasts about luxury brands and explicit sex acts with pulsing dance beats and a bratty falsetto, a tone actress Lake Bell famously dubbed “sexy baby voice.”
In depositions taken as part of the suit, Erika said she had no knowledge of her husband’s crimes. She claimed to be ignorant about where the millions she spent on recording, merchandise, tours and “fun, playful, and sparkly outfits” were drawn from.
“I did not know how much I spent per month or per year,” she said in one exchange. “Girardi Keese paid my Amex credit card bill every month.”
Monday’s filings show Girardi Keese paid at least $14 million in charges to her American Express account between 2008 and 2020.
The payouts began in the late 2000s when Erika, then a stay-at-home mom, sought to relaunch herself as a performer. In 2016, near the height of her pop fame, her husband began to complain she was charging too much on the credit card account. After repeated entreaties to tamp down her spending, Girardi tried for the first time to look at her balance.
Soon after, Girardi grew suspicious of charges being made to her card by a Hollywood costumer — worries she reported to one of Girardi Keese’s clients, an agent in the Secret Service, records show.
On the advice of the agent’s Secret Service colleagues, she said she disputed the AMEX charges and was ultimately refunded more than half a million dollars to her personal account, despite the original payments having come from the law firm.
Erika Girardi’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
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