The not-so-long awaited documentary on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne and her lawyer hubby Tom Girardi, titled The Housewife and the Hustler, has arrived and it’s as wild as we’d hoped.
There’s no word on when it’s gonna drop in Australia just yet, but it’s been unleashed over in the States and here’s all the juicy details that were revealed during the true crime doco of the year.
Tom allegedly stole money that was intended to go to the families of plane crash victims
The allegations levelled against Tom Girardi became public knowledge last December after he was sued for alleged financial malfeasance months after Erika Jayne announced she was filing for divorce.
The suit alleged that Tom had stolen from “the widows and orphans who lost loved ones in the tragic crash of Lion Air Flight 610 — in order to continue funding his and Erika’s lavish Beverly Hills lifestyles.”
During the doco, Bias Ramadhan, a man from Indonesia whose mother died in the plane crash, shows emails where he asked for the money that went missing.
“We are the victims here,” he says. “Not him, Tom — not his wife.”
Tom Girardi is also accused of stealing millions from a family
The lawyer is accused of stealing millions of bucks from Joe Ruigomez, a guy who won a lawsuit when their house blew up. Girardi allegedly promised to dispense the settlement money to them monthly, however, the mediator in the lawsuit tells ABC News that Tom’s claim that the payments should be monthly is “false,” and he was “unaware of Mr. Girardi’s actions.”
Tom allegedly stopped paying the money entirely in January 2017.
Tom’s legal colleagues were disgusted by what they saw on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
Apparently Girardi Keese, the legal firm owned by Tom Giarai, was known for “lavish” Christmas parties and “swanky” annual events, but the husband and wife duo’s display of wealth on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills made the Los Angeles legal community “cringe.”
A legal consultant named Kim Archie who used to work with Girardi said lawyers who represent afflicted people should have a sense of “decorum,” while attorney Brian Kabateck said he was “appalled” by the amount of bragging Erika Jayne did on the show, where she frequently mentions the couple’s private jets and her overly expensive “glam squad.”
Several Real Housewives turned on Erika
Throughout the doco, there are several celebrity guests including The View host and lawyer Sunny Hostin, podcaster Heather MacDonald and, perhaps more wildly, several Real Housewives, including ex Beverly Hills housewife Dana ‘Pam’ Wilkey (who has also had her share of legal dramas, look ’em up) and Danielle Staub a.k.a the New Jersey housewife who had a table flipped on her during a discussion about her legal woes.
Tom has major connections and pull in both the legal and police community
The aforementioned Kim Archie’s son was killed in a motorcycle crash in 2014 and because of her ties with Tom Girardi, no lawyer would work with her on the wrongful death lawsuit because they “they didn’t want to step on Tom Girardi’s toes.”
She says Tom has connections to the police that go “all the way to the top”, as well as connections to the district attorney’s office, the California attorney general, and the bar association.
The Ruigomezes sued Tom and he allegedly screwed them over again
The family whose house blew up sued Tom Girardi for cutting off their payments and he agreed to pay them $12 million in instalments, but he cut those payments off as well after the first million.
Tom is now bankrupt
Tom Girardi is in involuntary bankruptcy, and was also recently placed under a conservatorship due to being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. His assets are being seized and liquidated in order to pay back his creditors.
Erika Jayne is probably richer than Tom Girardi now
Brandon Lowrey, a reporter at Law360, says during the doco: “If you were to ask me in 2019 who would come out paying who in this divorce, I’d probably say that Erika would be getting a lot of money from Tom.
“But at this point, she’s earning more than Tom is, and she probably has more assets than he does. She could come out on top, or she could get dragged in and end up in a whole lot of debt.”
There’s no word as to when or if the doco is coming to Aus, but fingers and toes!
The case is currently being documented on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills with episodes dropping weekly on Hayu.
Matty Galea is the Senior Entertainment Editor at Pedestrian who also dabbles in woo-woo stuff like astrology and crystals and has been penning horoscopes since the start of his career. He also Tweets about pop culture and astrology and posts spicy content on Instagram.
