Tiffany Li, the so-called "Hillsborough Heiress," agreed to pay $10 million in a wrongful death settlement over the 2016 killing of Keith Green, her ex-boyfriend and the father of their two daughters. The settlement details, which emerged this week, reveal that each of Li's daughters will receive $5 million after attorney and litigation fees are subtracted, as reported by SFist. The girls, aged 9 and 11, will gain access to the funds upon turning 18.
The wrongful death suit, brought forth by the girls’ grandmother, Colleen Cudd, and joined by Li's two daughters, was resolved early last year. After intense negotiations and multiple attorney changes by Li, the settlement ensures that the girls will have financial means separate from their mother's influence, which, seen through the lens wound tight around the case's dramatic twists and turns, seems like a hard-fought victory for the Green family. According to a statement obtained by SFist, Colleen Cudd expressed relief that the settlement money was set aside "that the girls had something for themselves when they turned 18 and that their mother didn't control them."
Previously, in 2019, a criminal trial acquitted Li of all charges related to Green's murder, despite prosecutors' claims that she had conspired with her boyfriend, Kaveh Bayat, and another associate to execute the crime mainly out of fear of losing custody of her children. The high-profile case hit the headers after Li posted a massive $35 million bail, with funds garnered from her family's substantial real estate construction fortune in China, a fact that pegged her with the weighted title of the "Hillsborough Heiress." As recounted by SFGATE, Li and Green had cohabited in a $7 million estate owned by her mother in an affluent Peninsula community before the contentious breakdown of their relationship.
Alongside the payment to her daughters, Li also dolled out $100,000 to Cudd and another $50,000 to the Green estate, bringing the total settlement to a noteworthy sum, Duffy Magilligan, a lawyer for Green’s family, told SFGATE. This settlement, he mentioned, will give the young girls a chance to seek out the truth regarding their father's character, free from the financial grip of the Li family, providing them an opportunity "to reach out to Keith’s mom and to reach out to his family and learn what a great father he was."
Legal attempts to keep the settlement amount away from public eyes were unsuccessful, with California's 1st District Court of Appeal ordering the disclosure in October 2023. Tiffany Li and her daughters' whereabouts remain, as they moved to China after the high-profile trial and subsequent media scrutiny, with echoes of the case's tumultuous journey still lingering in the air.
