New York Daily News

Suit: Star used crash vics for loot

- BY NANCY DILLON

“Real Housewives” star Erika Jayne and her lawyer husband Tom Girardi are using a “sham” divorce to hide money embezzled from the “widows and orphans” of plane crash victims, a new lawsuit claims.

According to the complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Chicago, the high-flying couple used settlement funds from the devastatin­g 2018 Lion Air crash to underwrite their “lavish” spending and then hatched a fraudulent divorce amid Tom’s financial “downward spiral.”

“At the heart of this deception is defendant (Tom) Girardi and his need to fund outrageous lifestyles for himself and his soon-to-be ex-wife, Erika Jayne,” the paperwork filed by class action firm Edelson PC claims.

It alleges Erika, 49, and Tom, 81, reached the upper echelons of the “glitz-and-glam world of Hollywood” through appearance­s on Bravo’’ “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and realized they needed to “projec a public image of obscene wealth a all times” to stay there.

To that end, Tom “resorted to emm bezzling the proceeds of settlement that should have been directed to hii clients,” including funds earmarked for “the widows and orphans who lost loved ones in the tragic crash o Lion Air Flight 610,” the lawsuit says

It claims the couple’s divorce, filed Nov. 3 in Los Angeles, “is simply a sham attempt to fraudulent­ly protect Tom’s and Erika’s money from those that seek to collect on debts.”

Messages left at Tom’s law firm were not immediatel­y returned Wednesday.

Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea in October 2018, becoming the first major accident involving the new Boeing 737 MAX series aircraft.

Litigation followed, and Tom’s firm Girardi Keese represente­d nearly a dozen families who sought to recover damages related to the losses of their loved ones, the new lawsuit states.

Edelson PC, the plaintiff in the new filing, was brought in as local counsel to assist in the litigation and settlement process.

The proceeds of the confidenti­al settlement­s were allegedly transferre­d thereafter from Boeing to Girardi Keese, and Girardi has since “kept it for his own purposes and doled it out to his friends and family,” Edelson’s complaint states.

“By all accounts, Girardi keeps engaging in fraud and deception in order to support a never-ending spending spree by himself and Jayne,” the filing states.

“Erika reportedly spends $40,000 per month on her ‘look,’” it claims.

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