so anyone interested in the Erika Jayne Girardi case should listen to this interview with the lawyer hired to retrieve the money owed to the victims, Ronald Richards :
I have summarised the key points for you though!
•it doesn’t actually matter whether Erika knew where the $25 million was coming from. This is not a criminal case and Erika is not facing jail time. This is about recovering the money stolen from the victims, and it is alleged that $25 million was spent by Erika over the past years on her glam and singing career. Whether or not she knew that this money was obtained fraudulently is neither here nor there (as Sutton was saying in the previous episode) she has to pay it back.
*Ronald Richards cannot understand why morally Erika is being uncooperative. If she didn’t know before, she knows NOW that the money she was spending over these years should have gone to those victims, and so if she really cared she would be making offers to transfer funds. For example, to hand over whatever money she personally has now and then make an arrangement to give 10% of her yearly earnings until it’s paid back. Ignorance is not a defence.
*It seems like Tom getting his conservatorship has spared him from actually facing any jail time. It also seems like Tom himself hadn’t been spending any money over these years, it pretty much all went to Erika.
*Even people who worked for Erika who benefited financially from this money may now have to give back money towards the victims.
*Ronald Richards says that Lisa Rinna is going to have to formally declare and testify how she knows for sure that Erika had nothing to do with this. Because Lisa Rinna has been talking with such authority on tv about it, Richards says that she now is involved and needs to say how she knows for sure. He suspects it will lead to her just signing a piece of paper saying she was talking hot air because she was being filmed for a tv show, unless she really does actually know something, in which case he wants to know what.
*Ronald Richards will not rest until as much of the money lost to the victims is recovered.