Dive Brief:

• Ex-Girardi Keese CFO Christopher Kamon was sentenced to over 10 years in federal prison, after aiding in the embezzlement of millions of dollars both from the now-defunct personal injury firm’s clients and the firm itself, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said in a Friday press release.
• U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton also ordered Kamon, 51, to pay $8.9 million in restitution, noting the former finance chief aided in the ongoing fraud against Girardi Keese’s clients by helping to build “a web of deceit and manipulation,” according to the Friday release.
• “This defendant played a key role in a long-running scheme led by Tom Girardi,” U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement included in the release. “For nearly 20 years, Kamon enabled Girardi’s scheme to defraud vulnerable clients of the law firm. Ironically, it was Kamon’s own lies that accelerated the law firm’s demise. We hope the sentence imposed today brings a measure of justice to his victims.”          

Dive Insight:

Kamon was arrested in November 2022 and pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud in October 2024, admitting to the embezzlement of funds both from the law firm itself for personal enrichment, including the purchase of a multi-million dollar home in the Bahamas, and to aiding the firm’s co-founder, Tom Girardi, in siphoning tens of millions in settlement money from its clients, according to a plea agreement.

A more than 20-year veteran of the firm, Kamon joined the now-defunct Girardi Keese in 2000 as an accounts payable clerk in 2000 and rose to lead its accounting department from 2004 until the firm was placed into bankruptcy proceedings in December 2020. The former finance chief also had signatory authority on additional Girardi Keese bank accounts, and was responsible for overseeing the firm’s expenses, according to the October 2024 release.

“I have spent the past 750+ days thinking about how my participation...unjustly affected, not only the lives of the clients, but of my family and friends, and there is absolutely nothing I can say or do to undo the pain and suffering I have caused,” Kamon wrote in a letter filed with the court on April 8 prior to his sentencing.

“Though I'm certain no one believes I have the right to ask for anything, I would like to ask, actually beg, that I not be judged solely on the wrong I have done, but to please give consideration to the things I have done right and to the person I truly am,” Kamon wrote in his April 8 letter. “I am not the criminal fraudster the prosecutors and Mr. Girardi's lawyers have tried to portray me as. I am simply a 51 year old man who made a mistake, and I say this not to make light of what I have done, but with the hope that I might be forgiven.”

The sentencing marks one of the final chapters in a sprawling, years-long saga of fraud surrounding the Los Angeles-based personal injury law firm and its leadership, including Kamon, co-founder Tom Girardi, and Girardi’s former wife, Erika Jayne, who starred in the reality show “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

The law firm was dissolved in 2021 after a group of creditors filed petitions to place it under involuntary bankruptcy related to claims they were owed millions, CFO Dive previously reported. The claims quickly snowballed, unveiling a decades-long Ponzi scheme perpetuated by co-founder Girardi and others associated with the firm, according to court documents. Girardi, who built a celebrity reputation as an attorney willing to take on large corporations, was disbarred in 2022 and convicted of four counts of wire fraud in August 2024 by a federal jury, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said in a release at the time.

Both Kamon and Girardi are facing separate federal charges in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois for wire fraud related to misappropriation of settlement funds related to clients that were victims of a plane crash.

Kamon’s attorney Michael V. Severo of the Severo Law Firm did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California did not offer comment beyond the statements included in its Friday release.