Amanda Bronstad Girardi Trial Wrap Up

I want to thank all of our viewers for tuning in today to our live this is one of our first live uh videos that we've done on YouTube as part of our probate polymath podcast and we have a very interesting and exciting guest today somebody who has seen the Tom gerardi trial throughout the entire thing firsthand in person and this is a trial that we've been covering now for two weeks and we've been very involved in terms of following the trial and giving our views of everything but we couldn't have done that had it not been for the excellent reporting of Amanda bonstead and Amanda I want to thank you for joining us today it's so awesome to have you with us and in studio thank you very much so we literally lived this trial through your eyes and we read all of your reports and of course we were following your tweets and uh we're just captivated by everything and we just have probably a thousand questions we want you to recap the trial all the way through from start to finish no we don't have that kind of time I'm sorry but um but really you know I do have a number of questions but is there kind of just an overall thought that you wanted to share before we get p you know start just hitting you with a bunch of questions I have a lot of thoughts but um I think probably um you know this is a lawyer I actually don't cover criminal cases for law.com I actually cover U Mass torts and class actions so um for me this was an interesting a little bit different than what I normally write about um case and what was interesting to me was that I knew Tom dardy back in 2001 at that time he was the president of the international Trial Lawyers Association um I was just you know cutting my teeth on Los Angeles legal community and you know he was a very friendly guy and he was more than open to talk to the Press um and you know over the years I interviewed him over the cases that he filed and the cases he settled I became very familiar with Tom gerardi I interviewed him several times I've met with him in person several times um I've been to some of the crazy parties um and you know i' I've seen him in all different venues and different scenarios and this was a very different scenario and I think it just really was a little bit surreal it was a little bit surreal and I don't think I'm alone I think the people in the legal Community who who've watched him over the last decades really there's a little bit of shock because as the trial unfolded there was shock when he was charged and there was shock when he went to bankruptcy but there was this whole other Collective shock to listen to the evidence in trial and to listen to also his defense and you really got a picture of what was really going on at gerardi Keys all those years and I think that's like a part of the trial that that kind of haunts me a little bit because I think that's the first time a lot of us heard that much detail about what was really happening at his firm yeah and it happened for a long time and it was just shocking even the number of Bar complaints that were out there that apparently were never really looked into properly it just it boggles the mind that this could happen for as long as it happened and steuart you were making the point that Tom gerardy was a king of personal injury and you know he's somebody that we would see out at the Las Vegas Convention for playf attorneys every year and he would hold court and have massive parties and you never in a million years with think that this guy was running a Ponzi scheme and yet that's what the jury decided in this case what was Tom Gerard's demeanor like you saw him in court you know how did I think early on there was something that you said in one of your uh articles about how he had he got into a little bit of a tiff with his attorney and he was talking you know arguing or some it wasn't an argument but some some back and forth with with his attorney I mean was this a guy who knew what was going on was he completely incapacitated what was your impression of him uh you know everyone asked me that question and I think it's hard even as you were sitting there every day to know the answer to that he was very stoic for the most part and a lot of the times he would sit at the defense table and he would write in a yellow yellow um legal pad and and he would look at the jury and he would look at the judge he didn't very often look at his lawyers he did occasionally speak with them though and he even participated in a few few sidebars which was was a little weird I don't know how many clients do that not that often um so I feel like um what's he involved well for sure he was somewhat involved was he running the defense no I think that you know every day not every day but there were many many days where his lawyers would walk him into court and they would kind of like point to the defense table like remember you sit there was it an act I don't know could have been real he also showed up in tennis shoes slippers I mean he had the same gray Blazer every single day and it it was you know he slowly walked to to the defense table every morning did the jury see that not yet they saw when he took the stand that's the first time they saw him walking into doing his little Shuffle I see Amanda this Stuart I I really appreciate your reporting on this I actually found objectivity in your writing which I'm sure was hard to do um based on the evidence as it unfolded but I'm just curious I I love to watch juries uh when I'm in trial I don't stare at them because I don't want to freak them out but I I go and watch other great personal injury lawyers like R shanore and Brian panish and and these people I love to watch the interaction of the jury just what they're looking at what they're focusing on what their facial expressions are and when the family the ruie Gomez family testified when uh Josephina herandez and Judy selberg and Erica Sana when family members were testifying about how they had been harmed by this man what was the reaction of the jury you know this jury was they were very attentive for the most part but they were very hard to read I mean they really didn't show a whole lot of expression on their faces so that made it really hard to know what they were thinking um near the very last couple of days with the defense there was I I say this with like no evidence whatsoever but there was a little feeling I got that either they had already made their decision or they were getting tired because you could see in their faces like you know like they kind of had this like okay you've said that already and and it part of it was in the trial there was starting to be a lot of repeat evidence you know here's that letter again that he wrote to the client um I do think one of the more there was a lot of parts of this trial that were very difficult to sit through to be perfectly honest there were a lot of numbers and I mean I'm a journalist so of course I would think maybe some of the jurors thought that was the most interesting part but for me it was like watching these numbers just fly left and right on both sides was a little heads spinning and I think they could have lost a few jurors on some of that but when the clients got up and testified it was heart-wrenching in in a lot of cases and and I the one that probably in the whole trial the part that stands out to me the most was um Erica Sana she was a client whose one-year-old child was paralyzed after a drunk driver hit their car the child was in a car seat so Tom gerardi sued the car seat manufacturer for her um but she never got her full settlement money and when she was on the stand she actually had to testify on Zoom because she had Co um and they tried to bring her up on the stand and the judge was like what are you doing she has Co and so they like put her down some other room and and she testified on Zoom but but when they showed her uh one of the emails she had written to Tom this was after many many many phone calls emails that she had tried to get this money from him and he was coming up with all sorts of explanations that she wasn't buying none of these clients believed any of the excuses that he was giving and this was her last email and it was November 18th 2020 and she stops and she says now this is a woman who first of all she kind of looks a little sick because she's got covid she's reliving something that's just terrifying story right and she says oh November 18th that was my son's birthday it was his last birthday before he passed away you the whole room just got silent and it and she was just bursting into tears and the judge had to call a break at that point which that's pretty you know I can't of believe that the jury didn't hear that and be affected by it and and one one follow-up question what did you think of Judge ston and how did she handle the courtroom during the the process of the trial well she was very very fair I mean she gave both sides U their due but she was very strict about time I mean they could have been in the middle of doing witness testimony and have like moved to their next question and she' go okay Council it's [Laughter] 4:30 and she's like it's time for the jury to go home she was very respectful of the jury's time but she also expected them to be there on time so they could stick to that schedule I see well that's good yeah she she ran a tight ship you know that's what you expect from a federal judge after all and uh so yeah that was my big question is what was the victim's testimony like so I mean that just must have been amaz you know not amazing but just you know yeah heartfelt and emotional yeah impactful that's what I'm trying to say to hear that testimony yeah and Joe ruy Gomez he was the first client he was the one who was in a gas pipe explosion and he had been burned all over his body he went into a coma this was back in 2010 um he went through many many years of recovery and surgeries and he showed up of course he was in a suit so you didn't you know you didn't see a lot of his skin but you could see a little bit of a part where he was probably burned and then he kind of lipped up to the stand this is a young man so you don't see a young man limping very often and that was noticeable also um Judy selberg who was a woman who whose husband died in the boat accident um she was a little bit older lady but she had brought her um emotional support dog um into the courtroom so when you see that you know these are people whose stories are they're definitely impacted by it and it was very visual as well as as listening to their toast money yeah I mean real people who needed this money for their care and their injuries and all of that and just weren't getting it that that's what's so crazy so um the IRS investigator I forget his name off top of my head Ryan Roberson okay Roberson so was he was the one I'm sure that was going through tons of numbers that you were talking about yes he had these amazing slideshows and graphs and charts and the first thing that I thought when I saw them was I bet the jury's not going to get that in the deliberations room because it's not exhibits it's not bank records it's not um and of course the defense's cross-examination of them went right to that point what is this based on and let's pull that apart and let's look at the documents that you based your lovely little charts on so had to like shut that down pretty pretty quick it seemed to me that that defense actually did some good work there and and they actually pointed out some things he didn't analyze and include in in his analysis uh can you speak to that did did that seem to have an impact at all well you know he kind of went on a this is the part of the trial where when I said earlier Parts came out that I had never heard before I think this was one of the things the defense was bringing up that kind of was new to me um but but he was talking about there was the San Bernardino office and the San Bernardino office was opened late in gerardi kiss's history um and there was a bank account tied to that particular office and the defense was definitely trying to put on that Brian Roberson this IRS agent hadn't even considered the fact that a number of other gerardi ke Partners had actually opened this account and there were emails where they were saying don't tell Tom you know let's keep this off his radar things along those lines and so it kind of implied that they were taking advantage of this man who was getting dementia and running this secret little side business over in San Bernardino that was definitely the part of the story that he was trying to say you didn't even know about that shouldn't he have known about that right and Ryan Roberson got you know a little defensive at first the next day he was a little calmer but he you know he was like it's not relevant it's not relevant to our investigation yeah he might have had a discussion with the lawyer I'm assuming between day one and day two of seem that way they really did yeah and we I remember reading in your reporting about how he got defensive and it's like well why get defensive I mean either you considered it or you didn't and just you know say that you did or you didn't it's not that big of a deal for an expert I think but a lot of experts kind of feel like if they admit that they didn't consider something that you know was a house of cards it all falls down but it sounds like he had a tremendous amount of documentary evidence about the money that was moving around and more importantly the money that was going out of the the client trust account and into not necessarily Tom's own pocket but for his expenses yeah I mean one of the things there were many charts one of them that uh struck me was he was trying to show a cash flow situation so you had the client money coming into the trust account but then you had money coming from the trust account to the operating account of gardi keys and then you had money going from the operating account to Gerard's personal bank account but that's one step removed and I could see the defense argument well he's and this is what they said he's the owner of the firm he was the only Equity owner of the firm if he's pulling money out of an operating account that's actually okay right yes response to that is it's not okay when your clients are getting paid but right yeah when you're taking more than your money now if you're moving money from the trust account to the operating account and it's your attorney's fees sure you can do it all day long and of course all the ledgers said fees yeah of course yeah nobody was like this is the money I'm stealing I mean it all said but the the IRS wasn't he able to show though like the ruy Gomez money which Tom I think this was Tom's downfall his lies to his clients during you know when they would call up and say where's the money and the fact that he told the ruy Gomez family they won a $5 million settlement when it was like $53 million didn't the IRS agent show when that money hit the trust account it went immediately to this Ponzi scheme idea to repay the old clients who were still waiting for their money was that did that was that clear at the trial well that was the government's Viewpoint was that this two and a half million paid to the Ria Gomez as many many years later um came out of a trust account with that was actually had a deposit from another client so yeah that was part of their Ponzi scheme description the problem with I think some of that was the defense had to admit a lot of things in this trial and you know I gotta be honest they brought up so many fairly reasonable defenses given the circumstances they had a firm that had co-mingled all these accounts and and they had comingling of different clients in the trust account however they they tried to make the case that you know a lot of firms do this it's not like you have Judy silberg's account and you know the ruy Gomez account it's it's the client trust account so of course the money is all going to be kind of mixed together right so they had to they had to admit a lot of things they they went with the this office was in disarray it was in chaos and I don't think they were wrong from if when you start looking at how was managed I think chaos is a pretty good description actually yeah it sounds very chaotic so we had a we have a comment uh off of uh YouTube asking what kind of response did Tom have when he heard the guilty verdict because he saw Tom smiling when he was getting into his car from Cali yeah so in the courtroom itself with the jurors sitting there um he had no emotion he looked straight at the judge um absolutely no emotion when he left the courtroom and was walking down to his car or walking down to wherever he went after the courtroom um you know it was just the regular to just another day wow definitely had that Vibe Amanda did you attempt to talk to any of the jurors or did the judge protect them and get them out of there so that nobody could talk with them I I did not try to talk to the jurors they actually most of them from what I understand did not want to talk to us um they obviously saw us every day I do know one juror did speak to Bloomberg um and and he basically said you know his the witness it stood out to him was the expert witness on um neurology who had done brain scan analysis of Tom Gerard's brain um probably one of the drier parts of the trial to be honest but I think it went to the defense the defense had two primary arguments one was that Chris kimone the CFO of goris had taken all this money and Tom knew nothing about it the other one was that Tom was you know in the throws of the beginnings of dementia um I think a key part of the defenses strategy on the dementia argument that fell apart was that they had this expert who testified that she had um spoken with Mr gerardi and analyzed him in 2021 the government's cases from 2010 2020 right so even if he has dementia today even if when he took the stand he looked like a guy who didn't know what he was doing it doesn't matter and the government on their closing argument made a really like hard point to emphasize that they had a timeline they put up and they said all of that doesn't really matter what matters is who was Tom gerardy from 2010 to 2020 that was the period of time that our victims were um had their funds embezzled yeah we kept focusing on that because in our we do trust and will litigation and so we're always arguing about capacity and people's you know dementia Alzheimer's and the severity of it and of course we're always thinking of it in a point in time so it the only thing that matters to us is did they have capacity at the time that they signed a will or a trust and so this case was very similar to what we deal with which is okay so he was losing his capacity in 2019 2020 that doesn't really answer the question of everything he did from 2010 all the way up to 2019 when there seemed to be zero evidence of lack of capacity during those years it was only in the 2019 2020 when you started hearing some witnesses say he seemed to be losing it he seemed to be confused and and all of that stuff and then he also there was that bit about him potentially falling for a scam with the $5 billion doll check what was that all about there was another one I knew nothing about yeah yeah that that came out and everybody was like what um so there was evidence from the defense that he was writing letters to Joe Biden um about a foreign country judgment that this somebody named bips white uh was insisting and I think the company that he supposedly came from was Hollywood Land Development Company um was insisting that this judgment needed to was tied up somehow where the federal government of the United States had to release it and so Tom it's really about as convoluted as I just said like there wasn't a lot of clarity on what we were talking about here um but Tom gard's emails were going around saying we need like he had letters to to to Joe Biden who at the time was vice president of the United States um did he know Jo Joe Biden yes he did personally so it's not like completely crazy right but but there were emails from between the secretaries and the the other partners of the firm saying I thought we shut this down let's not for this to Tom don't send that out you know and it was very clear they were like he's lost his mind and we can't let this come out there was a cover up to try to keep it secret that was kind of what the defense was trying to say with that I see so yeah it maybe a lack of capacity maybe the acts of a desperate man who knows um well when they had their expert was so limited because she'd only seen them in 2021 they had to go with Witnesses and they had the the housekeeper and they yeah they had a lot of lawyers testifying about this and um but there were other lawyers the prosecutors put up who had worked on these client cases who said they never noticed anything wrong so some something that hit me about the defenses medical expert uh she was asked and I I think this was in your reporting but she was asked essentially well was he incapable of committing fraud Brad and her response simply was I can't I don't know I I I can't answer that and so it seemed to me that you know she wasn't that strong for them and then also hadn't judge ston this was the same expert that had been used in the competency hearing right yes that's right Dr Chu um she's at USC and um she was part of the competency hearing and judge ston um did not think she was credible enough to convince her I guess and also she you know judge ston um is a very softspoken very fair Jud but that order in the competency ruling was pretty he's fainting and exaggerating his symptoms kind of phrase so that was a kind of wow okay she really doesn't believe this so pretty harsh yeah and then one other thing I noticed the capacity argument I noticed was a timing issue and they kept trying to get back to 2010 but they couldn't get there I mean 2020 maybe they can have a discussion 2017 the car crash and then you know he started acting strange and all those things but they really couldn't get back further on the on the City argument so then they turn to Christopher Cayman and they spend their time saying how he's awful I thought the prosecution did a beautiful job of describing gerardi and ke as a den of Thieves in other words in other words maybe Christopher Cayman is a puke let's let's just accept that he's a bad guy and he's a horrible person but that doesn't mean that Tom jardy isn't also a bad person and did these things and what what was what was that like hearing the closing argument when the prosecutor talked about the den of thieves idea did that do you think that hit its Mark uh yeah and I think actually I think both sides really tied it up in the closing arguments all this stuff we've been hearing for three weeks straight um I do think yeah they had um I mean I've talked to other uh journalists about it afterwards and a lot of them felt like the dementia argument was perhaps the stronger defense argument but I kind of thought um the kimone argument was was pretty strong because they had I mean let's be honest they had lots of witnesses coming in talking about what aook this guy was and um I mean he kind of looks bad they had a photo of him that they show the jury that jury got to see this guy who's currently in prison I mean this guy is he's bad news right and so you couldn't say that even if I mean I guess that the prosecutors had to address it they had to confront it and they had to say it in a way that would make the jury still find jity guilty I think the big question in the trial was were they in cahoots um or was it like they were all doing their sep things I don't think we really ever figured out the answer to that but they had to address it both sides yeah so when we were surprised when Tom Gerard took the stand but not surprised I mean surprised because you know he shouldn't have taken the stand probably but not surprised in the sense that there's the guy who made his living talking to juries I'm sure he couldn't help himself you know he had to get up there he had to tell the side of the story and maybe he had no choice I mean that might have been the you know some of the best evidence he had is just to get up there and deny it but what was your impression of him on the stand both on Direct but also cross well first of all the night before he testified was the first time the jury had left and his lawyer stood up and um the judge asked do you have who are your Witnesses still because she was very like we're gonna end this tomorrow and we're gonna put this in front of the jury on Monday um she had another trial on on Tuesday yesterday so she was really that was her main focus and he mentions the two other Witnesses who I didn't recognize and then he says and the defendant and one of the prosecutor stands up and goes well this is the first we're hearing about this um and then during on the day of there was another uh witness before and which she wrapped up there was this very long break and you know she's been very Clockwork about the breaks being at 10:15 10:30 and she let that jury take their break a little early and it was a bit longer and you knew that probably the jury was getting some suspicion that something was up because we were now going off the timeline and during that time um one of the defense attorneys said um your honor we'd like to speak to our client so they went into the little conference room and they were in there for quite some time and then they came out and um you know it was quite the moment because the jury comes back in the judge is standing there and she goes defense would you like to call your next witness and he goes yes your honor we call Thomas V gerardi to the stand wow and it was like what everybody yeah everybody was like get your pens ready yeah this is the moment this is Showtime um that had to have been probably the highlight of the trial in the sense of just he hasn't spoken since this whole thing has has broke open um in 2020 he hasn't he hasn't even appeared in court he hasn't appeared in bankruptcy court he didn't appear in front of the federal judge in the the um Lion a cases against boing H when he was expected to and the whole thing has been he's just got dementia he can't be here and so for him to not only be there but then talk you know we got to hear Tom JY was I surprised that he testified not really I think everyone else was but um if you know Tom gerardy you you aren't surprised right exactly yeah right he can't help himself of course I mean you felt like he was trying so hard to be quiet the whole time um and wanted to talk to that jury and when he did testify he looked directly at that jury they were sitting to his right like right there and he barely looked at the lawyers he was very focused on the jury what did I think um it was like watching an older version of the Tom jardy that I have seen before uh and could he have had Dementia or some parts of it yes that's very likely but I also think he knew exactly what he was doing up there some of there were a few statements he said where I went that's a little like he um he kept telling his own lawyer I'm not ready for cross I'm not ready for cross yeah I was my lawyer that and um and he kept repeating don't take a salary I don't take I'm a good guy I don't take a salary and he would praise his employees well it's the good people they're the ones that we should you know they're the ones that were doing all the work and they're the good people and I mean he was um very very like and I felt like the his lawyer tried to keep him hemmed in like on certain limited questions yeah I have spoken to some criminal defense attorneys who said that's called damage control like you want to limit because the cross examination is limited to those questions right um and you don't want him to have a field day on Tom gerney on Cross examination so um I felt like the cross-examination was very short there were a lot of like that's all you're going to ask him oh right you know it kind of felt like that but um but also powerful at the same time so when Tom was looking at the jury was it like in an intense way or like a creepy way or was it a desperate way like it was a Tom Dy way oh okay persuasive very persuasive Mr Personality yeah Mr Personality that's exactly right he was very like um you know I don't take a salary I look look I'm a good but guy I'm a good guy you know that kind of um summarizing but it's kind of that um you know he he he always had a very calm to me and not he had a very um welcoming demeanor you know he was easy to talk to um he kind of has like I'm one of you kind of feel um and so I think he was doing that um but then you know when his lawyer then comes up for a um redirect question and he says um is your Law Firm still open Mr gerardi and he says yes and then he says who am I and he says I don't know Ma bad mean terrible one of those right yeah my reaction was it's possible he doesn't know who that lawyer is that was actually a guy who joined his defense team um like six months ago so he hasn't been the guy that's been there all this time um but I also had a little bit of a like are we doing this just to make a point yeah is it a bit of a show but it's not so obvious that you could walk away and say for sure I see and and and Tom never did Apologize in any manner whether he was saying you know I just feel bad for what happened to these people there was no apology or anything or or did he get to that that's a really good question um no not in those words I think what he said was if people weren't paid I I just I didn't know about that and they asked him like would you on cross-examination would it be okay for you to be you know writing checks to EJ Global your wife Erica gerardi when these clients hadn't been paid would that be okay and he says no you know no by the way and then I'm sorry go ahead he had acknowledge that this all looked really bad but his the his testimony made it sound like I really didn't know if I had known that Chris kimone was taking all this money yeah and that people weren't getting paid I'd have done something about it I think his exact words I'd have got him indicted yeah by the way to know the distinction between right and wrong if he really does understand that distinction that's something that people that are at the latter stage of dementia they they lose that ability they also lose the ability to tell humor and there was one question where I think the the prosecutor asked him are you not are you one of the greatest attorneys ever and I think Tom said why thank you or something along those lines did that come off as him trying to be funny or did he misunderstand what the prosecutor was asking him I think it was really hard for Tomy to not agree to that right oh that's funny yeah but he did use humor there were times his lawyer would come up and say are you ready and Tom JY would go you know he'd straighten his throat and he's like are you ready and he's like I don't know what question are you gon to ask well it seemed like he knew that the prosecutor was the bad guy even though he said his lawyer was the bad guy because he kept saying to the prosecutor be nice to me be nice to me you know yeah so that' be nice to me interestingly some of the phrases we heard him say on his testimony are things that we also saw in letters and in voicemails that they played to the jury yep be nice to me that was one of the ones the jury had already heard before so to to have these voicemails and these letters and then like put them together as that human being that's sitting there on the stand yeah I think that was um kind of like made sense yeah and it seemed like when his clients would call him uh he would be uh where he would ask for their sympathy and then if they challenged him he would get mad at them and then he wouldn't give them much time to talk on the phone with them like he was always in a hurry is that kind of how it came out when when he would speak with his clients I think the the strongest evidence the prosecution put on were these letters he wrote to the clients and the voicemails he left for the clients because I don't think you could get your head around why a really decent lawyer would do that you know um he he would say it with a lot of charm and he would say things like oh you know I really feel bad for you I I would be mad too I would be just livid mad if my my lawyer wasn't getting me my money after everything you've been through you're my favorite clients I tell you what I'm gonna do I'm gonna I am paraphrasing but this is kind of the gist of what the jury heard um I'm going to write a check out of my own personal account I'm just going to write you a check and and probably um one of the the clients I believe it was Miss Fernandez um had testified I apologize if I have my client wrong here but um she had testified that he had promised her that he was going to write this check for her and it was going to be an envelope and it was going to be at the office of jority keys and she just needed to come pick it up and she even double checks with the secretary I mean you don't want to go anywhere in La without making sure this is worth for sure yeah and so she checks and and she says yes yes there's an envelope for you here and she comes to pick it up and she's supposed to get like hundreds of thousands of dollars and she has a check for 5,000 so insulting it's very and that's what she said she said it was insulting and she wrote him emails and said this is totally I can't believe that's all you gave me um what lawyer you know you rack your brain with like what what is the possible scenario that a lawyer could legitimately have an excuse here um you know some of the excuses were things that I think if you're not a lawyer and you're one of these these clients who who really just are just trying to survive every day maybe they believed you know they he was very convincing oh there's these tax issues he would talk about um there's an annuity there's a judge that has to sign off on this you know people who aren't in that world of mass towards or even law they wouldn't necessarily question that and he said it in a way that was very like reassuring I'm gonna you know what I'm goingon to do I'm gonna talk to him on Tuesday he had very specific like and then if I don't hear from him from Tuesday then I'm GNA just write you a check or I'm gonna this should all clear up by Thursday he had like a lot of promises yeah and then he didn't follow through on them steuart and I even said in one of our videos that you know if go back three four years we would have believed Tom gerardy I mean he was the king of personal injury you know if he had told me something I probably would have believed it you know until I didn't get paid for a while and then maybe I'd stop believing it but but you know that was the type of person that you're dealing with and the thing that hit me is that there was no evidence that Tom was ever emailing ing his CFO saying what's going on here I keep getting these calls from clients that aren't getting paid why are they not being paid because that's what I would do if if I had a CFO and I was getting calls from clients saying hey we haven't received our check I'd be like what the heck you know what's going on and there was it seemed like there was none of that well there was a lot of testimony about the fact that Tom JY didn't use a computer so when he got emails his secretary would handle the question of whether to print them out and hand them to him so there was of a plausible what is it deniability where he just maybe didn't know because all these he just not checking emails so right um and then the lawyers would kind of discuss whether to show it to him or not is this something we need to print out for Tom um there was testimony from Junior lawyers who had tried to get these clients paid and it was like a wall they would ask other senior Partners who would just say go ask Tom and then they would ask Tom Andy go I'll take care of it you need to just back down you know you need to move on to other cases I'm I'm in charge I'll take care of it so the way that the firm worked I mean he but did he have communications with the CFO not really I mean that is kind of they even described um how the made a point that they even showed like a blueprint of how the office was actually two buildings stuck together and the CFO was in one building and Tom was in another and so they literally didn't even communicate back and forth all that much yeah it just did not seem believable to me at all that that Tom dry would not have known what was happening here so so in the end I mean Tom Gerard convicted on all four counts and it seems like the pro prosecutors did a fantastic job obviously they got the the verdict that they wanted what was your impression of just the prosecutors and how they handled everything um well one kind of interesting note is the lead prosecutor Scott py actually was an actor before he was a lawyer oh and uh which in Los Angeles is probably not all that unusual but um you know is an interesting career shift uh so when he spoke it was it was very easy to listen to him he was a very um you know he knew how to speak to an audience it was very clear um and and then Ali motus was also very um dramatic like he he pointed to to the defendant and used his hands a lot and um I I think everyone felt like there was um a lot of very clear and dramatic uh arguments from the prosecutors the defense of three lawyers on the public defender side and Charles Snider was probably the lead who did most of the trial um you know I think they had a little bit a little bit more trouble but I also I I really do feel like they brought up everything they could have brought up in this trial they really did and and you have to kind of acknowledge that because I I think they were handed a really difficult case and I think they um brought brought up things that made you think yeah no I think that they did the best with what they had I mean what what more could they do so so his sentencing set for December 6 um he's not in custody right now he's living in a care facility from what I understand or assisted living facility is what I understand and so not much of a Flight Risk I suppose so they decided to not take him into custody right and so next up is uh and is it we keep calling him Christopher Cayman is it Cayman you know in the trial they said kimone kimone okay but again somebody that wouldn't be on most people's radar in the first place so who is this guy right and yeah he he came with um Witnesses who were this this really colorful Construction Company owner who walked into the courtroom and said hi everybody and I mean he was from another world and most of the people we had been listening to lawyers and accountants and people like that and then this guy walks in and he's got a hat and plad shirt on and he's just you know keeps accidentally talking over the lawyer and oh whoops he'd say you know oh okay and then you weird exactly the face that I think most of us have yeah it's like what what world was this kimone guy part of right and then you had a an ex-girlfriend who was getting a payment every month and a house which I think some people might have referred to her as an escort so she gets on there with her you know in on Zoom but she you know it was another world out there that kimone was operating and and I think that was just you know we'll see about him he's actually been chared alongside with Mr gerardi and um his trial I actually was trying to look this up because uh his trial is in front of the same judge on January 21st okay um and it was severed from Mr JY because you know they were blaming each other and the judge we're not GNA do a trial very well that way yeah and we weren't going to hear testimony from kimon and Gerard's trial because he still can take the fifth and he doesn't have to testify and so they end up having to kind of find other witnesses to fill in those gaps which they did with the you know the girlfriend or whatever she was so yeah that's going to be a really interesting trial and so obviously we'll be paying attention to that one I'm assuming you will too uh yeah I think so I'm planing to um there's also uh prosecutors in Chicago who have charged Tom gerardi and Mr kimone and David lra um who is Tom Gerard's son-in-law who also worked at gerardi ke and the reason he is charged in Chicago is because he he worked on The Lion Air cases um and I believe trial is Actually March of next year that's a civil case isn't it no no this is that criminal okay I thought there was a civil case also filed in relation to the Lion a yeah I think that's Jay edon's case that's right correct yes um but that's all on hold because of the bankruptcy so I think that's been kind of like sidelined a lot along with a lot of other suits against Tom gardy um but in the criminal side yeah you have prosecutors planning to go to trial in Chicago that's I'm looking at my notes Here March 3rd um of next year um and that one is actually in this trial the prosecutors were trying to put on evidence that there was $15 million taken from four clients um in the the prosecutors in Chicago have brought a case that involves $3 million and it's the lionaire victims it's a smaller amount but it does involve Mr lra who if you sat through the in the lionaire case the judge in the lionaire case had held uh sanctions hearings with Mr lra as well as another partner in Jes named Keith Griffin and they testified for three days and if you listen to that he's got a lot of interesting stories oh wow it'll it'll be interesting to hear his perspective um and I don't know if he's gonna get severed from gerardi and all that mess but um one thing I did want to point out is there there were other names of gerardi Kei Partners who came up in this trial repeatedly David lero was one Keith Griffin was one Chris Al was one um and Jack gerardi who is Tom Gerard's brother also came up several times and it did make me wonder you know the government has been very clear the prosecutors in Los Angeles have said this is an open investigation they're not done and so we may not be done here yeah it's could be very interesting and there's so much we probably still don't know and we probably will find out with kone's trial as that you know gets underway so it's it's just unbelievable everything that's happened here well thank you so much Amanda can't we can't thank you Ness for joining us it's absolutely great to talk to you we loved your reporting and love to hear your thoughts on this thank you very much for having me and thanks for uh using my tweets and and materials so I'm glad I'm glad I was able to tell the story for those who couldn't be there yeah that was fantastic great to meet with you Amanda this is this has been great thank you very much all right I want to thank everybody for joining us today and we will keep you posted on more updates as gerardi and the Chris kimone trial gets underway and and thank you also for joining us on one of our first lives but we will be back very shortly and we hope you have a great day