On the fifth day of Girardi’s fraud trial in Los Angeles, new details emerged about a secret bank account used by former Girardi Keese attorneys in 2020 to funnel funds through the account without Thomas Girardi’s knowledge.
While Girardi was sending messages to his staff warning that revenue streams had dried up this year, a handful of former Girardi lawyers sent money to Keese through Citizen Business Bank in San Bernardino, according to emails.
This statement about the existence of a bank account kept secret from Girardi is the most concrete evidence to date that he knew nothing about what was going on in the company.
Most of the transactions in the secret account involved cases in Los Angeles that would normally have been handled through Los Angeles banks, a former employee of the company’s accounting department testified Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
Norina Rouillard, who has worked in the accounting department for nearly two decades and is now on her second day of testimony, said during cross-examination that she was assigned to process checks sent to the San Bernardino Bank.
“The less we know about it, the better,” the company’s former CFO, Christopher Kamon, told Rouillard in an email in 2020.
Girardi Keese’s former attorneys, Christopher Aumais, John “Jack” Girardi and Keith Griffin, were involved in the Citizens Business Bank transactions, according to email records presented to the jury.
The California Bar has since attempted to disbar Griffin and David Lira, Girardi’s son-in-law. Lira was charged with a felony in Illinois. John Girardi and Christopher Aumais do not appear to have any disciplinary records with the Bar Board.
Aumais and Kamon received Lira’s signature stamp when he left the firm in mid-June 2020. Lira’s name continued to appear on trust checks in San Bernardino even after he left the firm, Rouillard confirmed.
Rouillard testified under direct questioning Monday that Girardi determined which clients were paid from escrow accounts and when. She also recalled that Kamon never told Girardi not to pay a client.
Rouillard also reported Tuesday that Kamon inflated the cost of business expenses to get Girardi to write him larger checks than necessary. He also confirmed that Kamon sometimes wrote checks for six or seven figures using only a single period as a descriptor and categorized them as miscellaneous expenses.
Assistant Federal Public Defender Charles Snyder supported the government’s strategy of portraying Kamon as someone taking advantage of Girardi’s mental deterioration while questioning Rouillard about Kamon’s transactions.
When Snyder repeatedly asked her to confirm that in late 2020 she had believed that Girardi “couldn’t remember anything, was delusional and nothing could be done,” Rouillard began to cry, audibly took a deep breath and grabbed a tissue.
“I had personal problems,” she said.
“Take your time,” said Judge Josephine L. Staton, sending the courtroom into its lunch break.
The case is USA v. Girardi, CD Cal., No. 2:23-cr-00047, 8/13/24.
