Government lawyers disclosed allegations against former Girardi Keese CFO Christopher Kamon at a detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Maryland. The 49-year-old was arrested on a wire fraud charge filed by L.A. prosecutors last week as he arrived at a Maryland airport on a flight from the Bahamas.
How Kamon figured into the corruption at Girardi’s firm has been a persistent mystery. Kamon worked at the firm for 20 years and had intimate knowledge of the money flowing through its accounts from multimillion-dollar legal settlements, but has repeatedly invoked his right against self-incrimination when pressed to provide information in court proceedings.
During the hearing Thursday, Assistant U.S. Atty. Colleen McGuinn indicated that Kamon was running his own “side fraud” for years apart from a “larger theft scheme” that unfolded at Girardi Keese. That separate criminal operation remains under active investigation, she said. It involves losses of about $100 million in client money and several possible “co-schemers,” including attorneys, she said.
It was unclear whether those in the government crosshairs included Girardi. The 83-year-old, who owned the firm and, along with Kamon, controlled its bank accounts, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease last year and is in a court-ordered conservatorship.
With money stolen from Girardi Keese, the prosecutor said, Kamon lived well beyond his $350,000 salary. Pilfered funds helped finance a 13-month remodel on one of his five residences and allowed him to pay $20,000 per month to an unidentified woman whom he met on an escort website, McGuinn said. He took her on expensive vacations using stolen money and would lavish her with gifts, including the costly purse, the prosecutor said.
“This is not a Robin Hood-type of theft,” McGuinn said in the downtown Baltimore courtroom of Kamon’s alleged conduct. “This is purely greed and a lavish lifestyle.”
After hearing a lengthy description of the evidence against Kamon, U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Maddox ordered him to remain in federal custody and be transferred to California to face the wire fraud charge.
The judge noted that Kamon faced a very long sentence if convicted, demonstrated “a lack of trustworthiness” and had already taken steps to build a life in the Bahamas. “I believe that if you did know about the arrest warrant, your return would have been unlikely,” Maddox said.
The precise mechanism of Kamon’s alleged embezzlement scheme and the identities of those involved were unclear. Several filings in the case remain sealed.
At least some of the embezzlement involved kickbacks from lawyers, the prosecutor said. Kamon issued checks for thousands of dollars to attorneys and others who then transferred the money to him in cash.
McGuinn, who was joined in court by a special agent from the Internal Revenue Service, said the alleged embezzlement totaled at least $10 million and that federal investigators continued to try to hunt down his assets.
After Girardi Keese collapsed in 2020, Kamon sold or put up for sale properties he owned in Rancho Palos Verdes, Encino, Fresno County and Nevada. In court, McGuinn said Kamon recently wired $2.2 million to a law firm in the Bahamas to purchase a residence there.
Citing the overseas residence and recent liquidation of assets, McGuinn argued that Kamon was a flight risk who could not be trusted out on bond. Further, McGuinn said that the sustained embezzlement scheme cast doubt on the origins of any money put up for bail.
Any promise “of monetary bond is paved with dirty money,” McGuinn said.
Defense attorney Jessie K. Liu rejected the idea that her client was a flight risk, and said that in recent months, he had made multiple back-and-forth trips from the U.S. to the Bahamas. She noted that Kamon was arrested while returning to Maryland to visit family. While the prosecutor contended that Kamon had purchased property in the Bahamas in order to secure permanent residency — and therefore complicate potential efforts to extradite him — Liu pointed out that the country still had an extradition treaty with the U.S.
“If Mr. Kamon was trying to flee,” Liu said, “he did a very bad job of it.”
Hamilton reported from Baltimore and Ryan from Los Angeles.