The former longtime head of the accounting department at the now-shuttered downtown Los Angeles plaintiffs’ personal injury law firm Girardi Keese has been sentenced to 121 months in federal prison for enabling the embezzlement of millions of dollars from the firm’s injured clients and for embezzling money from the law firm itself.
Christopher Kazuo Kamon, 51, formerly of Encino and Palos Verdes and residing in the Bahamas at the time of his November 2022 arrest, was sentenced by United States District Judge Josephine L. Staton. Judge Staton also ordered Kamon to pay $8,903,324 in restitution.
At the hearing, Judge Staton remarked on Kamon’s assistance with the ongoing fraud against Girardi Keese clients, noting he helped build a “web of deceit and manipulation.”
Kamon pleaded guilty in October 2024 to two counts of wire fraud.
“This defendant played a key role in a long-running scheme led by Tom Girardi,” said United States Attorney Bill Essayli. “For nearly 20 years, Kamon enabled Girardi’s scheme to defraud vulnerable clients of the law firm. Ironically, it was Kamon’s own lies that accelerated the law firm’s demise. We hope the sentence imposed today brings a measure of justice to his victims.”
“Mr. Kamon was a willful participant in defrauding Girardi Keese clients out of their rightful lawsuit awards,” said Special Agent in Charge Tyler Hatcher, IRS Criminal Investigation, Los Angeles Field Office.
Hatcher added, “Not only did he participate in a scheme to embezzle from clients, but Mr. Kamon also embezzled from the firm itself for his own personal use, including to purchase a multimillion-dollar home in the Bahamas. Unfortunately for Mr. Kamon, money leaves a trail, and IRS Criminal Investigation is the best in the world at finding and following those trails, and now Mr. Kamon will feel the consequences of his actions.”
“Mr. Kamon ran the law firm’s bank account like a Ponzi scheme and profited handsomely for many years,” said Amir Ehsaei, Acting Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “The FBI will continue to investigate corruption in the legal profession and will seek to make victims whole.”
From 2004 until December 2020, Kamon was the head of the accounting department at Girardi Keese, a plaintiffs’ personal injury law firm based in downtown Los Angeles. In this position, Kamon worked closely with co-defendant Thomas Vincent Girardi, 85, formerly a resident of Pasadena but who now resides in Seal Beach, as well as other senior lawyers at the law firm.
In December 2020, Girardi Keese’s creditors forced the once-prominent law firm into bankruptcy proceedings. The law firm dissolved in January 2021, and the State Bar of California disbarred Girardi in July 2022.
On August 27, a federal jury in Los Angeles found Girardi guilty of four counts of wire fraud. Girardi’s sentencing hearing is expected to occur in the coming months.
In addition to supervising the law firm’s accounting department, Kamon oversaw facilitating payment of the law firm’s expenses. Kamon had a duty to keep accurate books and records of Girardi Keese, including accounting of money held in its attorney-client trust accounts.
Typically, Girardi determined and directed which clients would be paid, how much they would be paid, and when they would be paid, and he signed all outgoing checks to clients. Kamon had signatory authority on additional Girardi Keese operating accounts.
From at least 2010 until December 2020, Girardi and Kamon schemed to defraud Girardi Keese clients out of their settlement money, using the misappropriated funds to pay the law firm’s payroll and credit card bills and Girardi and Kamon’s expenses.
Specifically, one Girardi Keese victim-client suffered severe burns all over his body when a natural gas pipeline exploded in San Bruno, California, in September 2010. Girardi negotiated a $53 million settlement of the case without the client’s prior approval and told the client the case had been settled for just over $7 million.
Per the settlement terms, $25 million was invested into an annuity. The remaining $28 million was wired into a Girardi Keese client trust account in January 2013.
Girardi, aided and abetted by Kamon, misappropriated and embezzled that client’s settlement money and used the funds to pay other Girardi Keese expenses and liabilities unrelated to this client, including payments to other law firm clients whose own settlement funds had previously been misappropriated by Girardi and others.
To prevent the victim from discovering Girardi’s embezzlement, Girardi lied to the client by saying the funds had been transferred into a separate interest-bearing account. In fact, no such transfers had been made, and no such interest-bearing account containing these funds existed.
Girardi and Kamon sent lulling payments to the victim as “interest payments” deriving from the purported interest-bearing account. In July 2019, they sent the victim a $2.5 million check, purportedly as disbursement of the victim’s settlement funds.
Girardi and Kamon knew these settlement proceeds belonged to other Girardi Keese clients. Girardi had already spent the victim’s settlement funds through disbursements unrelated to the victim’s case.
In a separate criminal case, Kamon admitted to running a years-long scheme in which he embezzled Girardi Keese funds for his personal enrichment. From at least 2013 to December 2020, Kamon utilized co-schemers to pose as “vendors” providing goods and services to the law firm.
Kamon caused the supposed vendors to issue fraudulent invoices to Girardi Keese for goods and services they purportedly provided to the law firm.
Kamon caused Girardi Keese to pay the amounts due on the fraudulent invoices. The law firm was paying the “vendors” for Kamon’s personal benefit, including for construction projects at his homes in Palos Verdes and Encino.
According to evidence presented at the recent trial of Tom Girardi, part of Kamon’s scheme involved payments to a female companion amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, including a monthly stipend of $20,000, out of the Girardi Keese operating accounts, despite the woman having no employment relationship with Girardi Keese.
Along with Girardi and David R. Lira, Girardi’s son-in-law and a former Girardi Keese lawyer, Kamon also faces federal fraud charges in Chicago. The trial, in that case, is scheduled for July 14.
