She was a cocktail waitress who had come to Los Angeles after dancing at a go-go club in New Jersey. He was a twice-divorced personal injury lawyer known for his trial victories. When they met in the late 1990s at Chasen’s, one of Tom Girardi’s preferred Hollywood haunts and the restaurant where Ronald Reagan proposed to Nancy Davis, Erika Jayne was a 27-year-old single mother. At 60, Girardi’s work with Erin Brockovich and others fighting corporate adversaries had made him a force in his field—and soon, part of the inspiration for the movie named for his client. He and Jayne married in 1999.

But in August 2021, the Erin Brockovich poster from Girardi’s Wilshire Boulevard office, signed by Julia Roberts, was up for sale. By the time of his firm’s bankruptcy auction, his personal and professional collapse was all but complete. Girardi & Keese had more than $100 million of debt, according to court filings. He had been sued in Chicago the prior year for embezzling funds from Boeing’s settlement for families of victims of the 2018 Lion Air crash, which killed 189 people, and he would soon be disbarred.

From the Archive: A House Divided

His divorce, meanwhile, played out on the 11th season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Jayne joined the cast of the Bravo show in 2015 following a quixotic and relatively late-in-life attempt at pop stardom with the support of Girardi & Keese; according to court filings, the firm paid $25 million to her entertainment company. She achieved some degree of camp success, telling People in 2018 that “Erika Jayne was born out of rebellion.” For the most part, she became a reality star, and Girardi, an intermittent RHOBH presence known to viewers as “Mr. Girardi,” became an elderly, generally amiable man on TV. In November 2020, the month before he was sued over the Lion Air funds, Jayne cited irreconcilable differences in her divorce papers.

On Tuesday, Girardi will face a first set of criminal charges, bringing a crescendo to the downfall of a pillar of Los Angeles law. He was indicted on five counts of wire fraud in the city’s federal court last year for allegedly embezzling more than $15 million from several clients. (A judge dismissed one count last month.) According to prosecutors, Girardi and his CFO concocted a variety of mechanisms to avoid paying out settlement money they had won for these clients and used funds from other clients’ settlements to cover their tracks—and keep the law firm afloat. In some instances, prosecutors claimed, Girardi made up a number of false reasons for delays: medical liens needed to be satisfied, court proceedings were ongoing, or he had to fly to Washington, DC, to work out tax issues with government officials. Another trial related to misappropriating client funds is slated for next year in Chicago; he has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

Girardi’s public slide began when his firm started working with Edelson PC. The Chicago law firm’s founder, Jay Edelson, another plaintiffs’ lawyer, had previously developed a reputation as a thorn in the side of Silicon Valley, after filing a series of class action lawsuits against big tech companies over privacy issues—Sam Altman described him to The New York Times in 2015 as “a leech tarted up as a freedom fighter.” When Edelson and Girardi were both representing families of Lion Air victims, Edelson’s firm became aware of unusual delays in disbursing the sums Boeing paid to Girardi & Keese. As a titan of the trade with virtually unparalleled recognition, Girardi had some leeway—plus, he was 81 years old and running what struck Edelson’s colleagues as a slow and antiquated law practice. (He now resides in an assisted living facility and has unsuccessfully sought to avert his trial by citing dementia and Alzheimer’s diagnoses.)

“This is a guy who made hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in his career,” Edelson told me last week. “So the idea that he would steal a few million dollars from widows and orphans, it just didn’t add up.” When he met Girardi for the first time—the type of lawyer that he himself wanted to be—he recalled the attorney handing out signed photos of Jayne and detailing his annual Morton’s Steakhouse expenditures.

“The big aha moment was when I read in whatever stupid gossip mag I came across that Erika Jayne had filed for divorce,” Edelson went on. “At that point, I said, The money might actually be gone.”

Edelson PC ultimately sued Girardi and his firm in December 2020 on behalf of several of the crash victims’ families, alleging that Girardi embezzled the settlements “in order to continue funding his and Erika’s lavish Beverly Hills lifestyles” as he and his firm were “locked in a downward spiral of mounting debts and dwindling funds.” (The suit is on hold as Girardi’s criminal case in Chicago plays out.) In May 2021, Girardi and Jayne put their Pasadena home up for sale for $13 million; that June, Hulu released a documentary titled The Housewife and the Hustler.

I asked Edelson about parallels to Girardi’s pattern of alleged fraud, proposing Bernie Madoff as an example at the extreme financial end. “Morally, at least,” he said, “it is significantly worse than what Bernie Madoff did.” The victims, as he pointed out, were “clients who lost their dad or they’ve got a catastrophic injury and they’re never gonna be able to walk again.” And then there was the element of brazenness—Edelson thought Real Housewives had played a key role. When Girardi was signing up their clients in Indonesia, Edelson said, “part of their pitch apparently was to explain, this guy is a celebrity in the United States.”

Bravo enthusiasts have long noted the franchise’s propensity for featuring white-collar crime. A Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star is in prison for a telemarketing scheme targeting the elderly and vulnerable, and a New Jersey cast member served 11 months for mail, wire, and bankruptcy fraud. “There appears to be a large overlap between the type of person who would commit a federal crime and the type of person who would willingly broadcast their life on television,” attorneys Cesie Alvarez and Angela Angotti wrote for Bustle in December. “We like to picture a Venn diagram of narcissism and delusion, with ‘Real Housewife’ and ‘White-Collar Criminal’ right in the center.”

A questionnaire for prospective jurors in Girardi’s trial asks, to that end, whether they have watched The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or other Bravo shows—Girardi’s public defenders were concerned that doing so would color perceptions of him. Jayne has spoken about the allegations against her ex-husband on and off throughout the last few seasons, insisting in one instance that “my divorce is not a sham” and “being the possible target of a federal criminal investigation is not cool.” Girardi’s trial is expected to last five to seven days, and in May, Bravo announced that Jayne would return for the show’s 14th season.

This story has been updated.