A former lawyer who worked alongside disgraced attorney Tom Girardi on the Lion Air Flight 610 settlement case has been sentenced to just one day in prison, with credit for time already served, over his role in the firm's failure to pay crash victims' families millions of dollars owed to them. U.S. District Judge LaShonda Hunt in Chicago also ordered Keith Griffin to serve two years of supervised release and pay a $100 assessment.
Griffin pleaded guilty in March to a single count of criminal contempt of court, according to Reuters. He had originally been charged with four counts of criminal contempt and two counts of failing to report a crime for his part in the firm's failure to turn over settlement funds tied to the 2018 crash of Boeing 737 Max Lion Air Flight 610, which killed all 189 people aboard in Indonesia. Prosecutors had pushed for a three-month sentence, while Griffin's defense sought probation.
Griffin worked with Girardi and fellow attorney David Lira on the Lion Air litigation. Boeing wired $7.5 million into Girardi Keese's client trust account in March 2020 to settle claims on behalf of victims' families, but the firm failed to distribute the full amount over the following eight months, according to the Department of Justice, cited by the Los Angeles Times. Girardi and Girardi Keese were accused by co-counsel of stealing more than $2 million of that money outright.
How the Missing Money Finally Reached Families
The victims eventually got what they were owed only after Chicago-based co-counsel Edelson PC arranged for its own insurer to cover the missing funds, according to View from the Wing. Edelson had partnered with Girardi Keese as local Chicago counsel under a fee-sharing arrangement, and it was Edelson's own December 2020 motion that first exposed the missing payments, prompting U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin to hold Girardi and his firm in civil contempt and freeze their assets. Durkin also ordered the turnover of the settlement funds in the case.
In November 2022, Durkin said Griffin and Lira knew from the start that Girardi did not pay clients when he was supposed to, though the judge did not sanction either attorney at that time, per the same account. Griffin's attorney, Mark Werksman of Werksman Jackson & Quinn, told Reuters that Griffin is grateful for the court's compassion and looks forward to moving on with his life. Griffin himself argued he was the least culpable participant in the offense and had already paid dearly for his failure to act, according to Reuters. The Chicago U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment on the sentence.
A Fraction of the Punishment Handed to Girardi and Kamon
Griffin's one-day sentence stands in sharp contrast to the penalties imposed on the men at the center of the firm's collapse. Tom Girardi was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $2.3 million in restitution following his August 2024 conviction on four counts of wire fraud in Los Angeles, according to the Department of Justice. That conviction, covered previously by Hoodline's coverage of Girardi's fraud trial, involved a separate scheme in which Girardi was found to have stolen $15 million in client settlement funds. Girardi has appealed his conviction to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and is currently incarcerated at a federal prison medical center in Rochester, Minnesota, per the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Girardi Keese's former chief financial officer, Christopher Kazuo Kamon, received an even longer sentence: 121 months in federal prison and $8.9 million in restitution for aiding Girardi's client fraud and running a separate $6 million embezzlement scheme against the firm itself, the Department of Justice said. David Lira, Girardi's son-in-law, pleaded guilty to the same criminal contempt charge Griffin faced and received a four-month sentence in 2025. Federal prosecutors have said Girardi Keese operated as a Ponzi-like scheme for a decade, using incoming settlement money to cover operating expenses, payroll, and prior victims, while diverting more than $25 million to finance expenses for Girardi's estranged wife, Erika Jayne.
State Bar Discipline and Ongoing Fallout
Griffin's federal sentence follows separate state disciplinary action. The Review Department of the State Bar Court of California recommended in November 2024 that Griffin be suspended from practicing law for 15 months and placed on three years of probation after finding him culpable of multiple ethical violations, even though State Bar prosecutors had originally sought his disbarment for failing to notify clients of received funds. Lira also faced State Bar sanctions, having been barred from managing client trust accounts and required to practice under another attorney's supervision pending a formal disbarment trial, according to the LA Times.
The scandal has also driven changes at the state level. California lawmakers led by State Senator Tom Umberg passed legislative reforms in 2023 and 2024 to overhaul the State Bar's discipline system, including new mandatory attorney misconduct reporting rules, after the Bar faced criticism for failing to act on decades of complaints against Girardi. Civil recovery efforts tied to the firm's collapse have also been winding down. Erika Girardi settled a $25 million civil lawsuit in May, brought by the Girardi Keese bankruptcy trustee seeking to recover alleged fraudulent transfers, including more than $14 million in law firm payments made on her business credit card between 2008 and 2020, as Hoodline previously reported in its coverage of Erika Girardi's last-minute settlement. Griffin's time-served sentence marks one of the final criminal resolutions in the multi-year fallout from the firm's collapse, even as questions about full civil asset recovery for victims remain open.
