Mr..

Girardi, what is your reaction to the verdict?

After years of waiting, the verdict is finally here in the saga of Tom Girardi, the estranged husband of Real Housewives star, Erika Jane. Well, I cried when I heard the verdict.

It was a guilty verdict on all four counts.

I'm elated. I'm joyful for that.

I expected no other verdict, but I still got chills when it happened.

This case is really the most staggering legal scandal I think we've ever seen, and we're not done.

The one-time legal titan now convicted felon, not saying much as he left the courtroom.

Do you have any comment on the verdict, sir? Any comments at all? He was a perpetrator of injustice, victimized recognizing his own clients when they were most vulnerable and most in need.

The jury convicted Girardi on all four counts of wire fraud, agreeing that he stole millions of dollars from his own clients, now facing decades behind bars.

Shame on you. There's a special place in hell for Tom Girardi.

I kept my eyes on Tom the whole time just to see how he would react. He looked at the judge. He looked down. He slumped back into his chair. As she was reading the guilty verdict.

With four counts of federal wire fraud, because they are all separate victims, they can be stacked together. So 20 years for each count is over 80 years. In fraud cases, people go to prison. Sam Bank Infried went to prison. Jen Shah went to prison. Elizabeth Holmes and many others. The feds aren't going to shy away from sending him to prison because he's old.

Girardi's fall from grace captured the attention of the country, in part thanks to his wife. Jane is a longtime star of the Bravo franchise, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Girardi himself often appearing alongside her. I love you. Thank you for meeting me. Instead of having lunch with a bunch of gnarly insurance people, I got you. The reality TV star has not been charged with a crime related to her husband's scheme, and she is not a part of the federal case at trial, but she is facing a number of civil cases. She is denied all wrongdoing, something she addressed in a sit down with Girardi's victims in the Hulu documentary, The Housewife and the Hustler 2: The Reckoning.

Thanks for coming. Did you ever hear about him taking money or anything before this whole thing blew up?

No. Like the lawsuits that were against them? I found out when I was sued in Arizona from a lending company, when I was named, and that was the first time. I said, Why am I in this lawsuit? The three answers I kept getting were, It's. Don't worry about it. I've got it handled. But why is my name in here? I'm not part of the business. So that's when I started noticing I'm not going to lie. Something's wrong.

Erica did not make an appearance for Girardi's trial. While Tom was in court, she was filming for the upcoming season of her reality show. At the time the trial started, she was in St. Lucia with her cast mates. However, her name was mentioned by prosecutors, the government laying out how Girardi used $20 million to help fund her career, including elaborate music videos. It's expensive to be We heard prosecutors talk about the money that Tom Girardi was spending to support her career through her company, E.

J. Global. So though she wasn't a witness and though she is not charged, she was still very much mentioned in this case because the spouse is one of the people benefiting from all of this theft, and jurors want to know where the money went, and a lot of it went to Erica.

Look, I think a lot of people want to know what's going to happen to Erica. She still is facing civil lawsuits, so she still has a lot of mud she has to trudge through. So she's not totally in the clear.

Girardi had pleaded not guilty, but the US attorney successfully argued to a jury of seven men one in five women that Girardi deliberately stole client money and lied to cover it up. I feel sorry for the victims.

The victims were in pain.

He was taking up money from them.

The defense maintained Girardi depended on the wrong people and blamed chief financial officer, who they say stole all the money. The CFO has pleaded not guilty. Girardi's attorneys say the 85-year-old was in mental decline and had no idea what was going on at the firm, something they tried to demonstrate when Girardi testified in his own defense.

I think that most people would say it's never a good idea for a defendant to get on the stand. I will say it was the first time I found some empathy towards him listening to him. It didn't change my mind about how I felt about the evidence, and I figured I thought the jury would feel the same way.

When I heard Tom Girardi was taking the stand, I was absolutely stunned. This is always a terrible idea, especially for someone who thinks they are going to outsmart the attorneys and sweet talk the jury. That's not someone who's missing a step. That's somebody who's trying to pull one over on the jury, and I'm glad he wasn't able to.

The current charges against Girardi came from four specific former clients, including Kathy and Joe Ru Gomez.

He is not going to do this to anybody else, and he should have never done it to me. He shouldn't have underestimated me.

Their story was shown in the Hulu documentaries, The Housewife and the Hustler, and its sequel, The Reckoning. I'm fighting for money that I'm owed. I'm fighting for money that's going to take care of me with all the surgeries I have to do. Joe was burned over 90% of his body and won a settlement worth tens of millions of dollars. The prosecutors say Girardi leveraged his Fame as the lawyer who won the the Erin Brockovich case to assure clients like Rue Gomez that he was on their side.

At the end of the day, all of these clients had never been through anything like this. They're trusting the guy, the Aaron Brockovich lawyer, to help them and he didn't.

It's been a solid five years, 24/7, thinking about how to get to this day and not knowing if it would ever happen until the moment I heard the verdict.

Kimberly Archie is a close family friend of the Rue Gomez's. She also worked with Girardi over the years as an expert in sports injuries.

It's not really a happy moment. How could it be happy to know that for 40 years, this man walked on people in their worst day, in their worst moment, when their children died, when their parents died, when they were dying with cancer, when they were losing their homes and they're homeless, and he's flying on a jet and going from country club to country club with people's money. It's not a happy day, but it's the first step in making it right.

Many of Girardi's former clients and people who feel wronged by the attorney were there for the verdict, even though their allegations weren't directly on trial. For them, this feels like the only opportunity to hold Girardi accountable.

He was still in all the way back from the '90s, but we're here today, and I thank God that the jury got it right.

Danny Barnes says he filed complaints against George Girardi with the California State Bar Association back in the '90s. He detailed his story in The Housewife and the Hustler, too.

Had I not been cheated out of my money from these attorneys, Tom Girardi, I would not be here in this neighborhood and in this area.

Danny believes the disgraced attorney still owes him millions of dollars.

The door is possibly open for us to try and recoup some of the monies that he's stolen. Many people was pushed into poverty as a result of the scam that Tom Girardi was running. I hope that he goes to prison for the full extent of the law.

The ripple effect of Tom Girardi's fall from grace is going to be much broader than just this federal trial and just these convictions. We learned that other lawyers in the firm are targets of investigation. His CFO is going to be prosecuted. There have been massive looks into the California State Bar and how this was allowed to happen.

We're just relieved for it to finally happen and to be behind us so that we can focus not on Erica, not on the celebrity status of Tom and Erica, but on the system that allowed him to do this. He didn't do this alone, and this is not really justice. It's the first step.

Anything to say, sir? Now everyone will have to wait a bit longer to find out Girardi's punishment. Sentencing is set for December.