Just getting started. After adjusting to her new home on the Wednesday, July 7, episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Erika Jayne is forced to confront the fraud lawsuit against her and Tom Girardi in the upcoming episodes of the Bravo hit.
“What’s being said is just, I mean, it’s insane,” Erika, 49, tells Lisa Rinna in a promo for the July 14 episode.
In another scene, the Pretty Mess author adds, “That lawsuit that says my divorce is a sham so I could hide assets — people want to believe that.”
Erika later breaks down in tears during a chat with Kyle Richards. “I mean, I could have never predicted this f—king s—t,” she says. “This is the end.”
Garcelle Beauvais, meanwhile, is in disbelief. “Every day it’s something more. You almost go, like, ‘Is it the same person we know?’”
Us Weekly confirmed in November 2020 that Erika filed for divorce from Tom, 82, after more than two decades of marriage. One month later, the spouses were accused of faking their split to protect their assets. The class action lawsuit filed by Edelson PC also includes claims that the pair embezzled settlement money intended for the victims of families killed in a 2018 plane crash.
Lawyer Jay Edelson alleged last month that Erika received “10s of millions of dollars” from Tom’s firm to fund her companies.
“We think that money came from client funds. And we’re going to look into all of that. And that’s all going to be, you know, part of proof that we showed to a jury — that she was knee-deep in this fraud, and she can say, ‘Oh, she didn’t know anything about it.’ And I think that’s going be hard for to convince a jury of,” he alleged on the “Reality Life with Kate Casey” podcast on June 16. “She was basically taking client funds and using it to fund her lifestyle. And if we’re successful [in our case], that means that we’re going to be able to get whatever possessions she has back in order to pay off any sort of judgment.”
Tom, for his part, told the judge during a September 2020 deposition that he had no money left. The former attorney has been placed under conservatorship after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s earlier this year. Tom, who was stripped from his law license, told the court last month that he didn’t approve of the conservatorship.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs on Bravo Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET. Scroll through for everything Erika said about Tom on this week’s episode:
