Tom Girardi, the embattled lawyer and estranged husband of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills personality Erika Jayne, gave $300,000 to a Los Angeles judge with whom he was having an affair so the woman could purchase ocean-front property in 2015, according to court records obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Girardi, 83, allegedly drew the money not from his personal account, but from a trust account holding funds won by his law firm for cancer victims and the residents of a polluted California community. Many of the victims still allege they “never got a dime” of the money they were owed, according to one person who spoke to the Times. An attorney for Girardi’s former paramour, Tricia Bigelow, who retired last year, told the Times that the wire “was NOT marked as coming from a [Girardi Keese] trust account.” Jayne reacted with shock to the news on Wednesday. “Wow. I knew about jewelry, shopping sprees, and plastic surgery but this really threw me for a loop,” she wrote in an Instagram caption accompanying a screenshot of the Times’ story.
