Erika Jayne Accused of Fraud in $18 Mil Lawsuit as She Speaks

Erika Jayne glams up for Rodeo trend occasion on the MCM flagship retailer in Beverly Hills on 10 Aug 2023. Credit: MEGA

Erika Jayne is responding to a lawsuit filed in opposition to her and a quantity of others with a press release from her lawyer.

After the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star, 52, was sued for greater than $18 million by designer Chris Psaila, who claims Erika and her estranged husband, Thomas Girardi, 82, conspired with the United States Secret Service and American Express to falsely accuse him of fraud, extorting cash, and ruining his profession, Erika slammed the case as “calculated.”

According to an August 29 report from TMZ, Erika and two Secret Service brokers, as nicely as others, are named in the lawsuit filed by Chris, who urged Erika corrupted the brokers and satisfied them to prosecute him for allegedly making over $800,000 value of fraudulent prices to Thomas’ American Express account (Erika was listed as a licensed person).

As Chris explains, Erika gave him and his boutique, Marco Marco, permission to cost the cardboard for the costumes he designed and offered for her performances after he started working with the RHOBH solid member in 2014. But years into their skilled relationship, Erika accused him of making between $800k to $900k in unauthorized prices from 2015 to 2016 — and allegedly conned the Secret Service and bribed Robert Savage, the top of Secret Service’s Los Angeles workplace at the moment, into investigating and charging him with crimes.

While Chris insists all of the designs got to her, American Express sided with Erika and refunded her and Thomas over $787,000 earlier than he had an opportunity to inform his facet of the story.

In his lawsuit in opposition to Erika and others, Chris says Thomas and Robert had a friendship and that Robert has a “history of falsely billing for advance Presidential location scouting trips” that pressured him out of the company.

Chris went on to say that Thomas bribed Robert to research him in change for representing him in a lawsuit in opposition to Volkswagen and agreed to pay him $100,000 upon the beginning of mentioned investigation.

Because the designer claims to have suffered emotional misery, monetary hurt, and emotional, psychological, and bodily accidents as a result of of the claims made in opposition to him and the cash that was finally taken, he desires not less than $18.2 million from the named events.

In response to the swimsuit, a rep for American Express spoke to TMZ.

“In late 2016, federal law enforcement contacted American Express regarding its investigation into fraud by Mr. Psaila. While it is our policy to not comment on the specific activity on an individual Card Member’s accounts, we followed our regular processes and procedures throughout this investigation as we dealt with law enforcement,” they said. “We did not initiate the investigation, nor did we proactively contact law enforcement, and the information law enforcement requested from us was typical in fraud investigations. We did not play any role in the criminal investigation of Mr. Psaila or his business other than responding to inquiries from law enforcement.”

Following the submitting of the lawsuit, Erika’s lawyer, Evan Borges, launched a press release.

“It seems calculated that Plaintiff timed this lawsuit to coincide with the rave reviews of Erika’s Las Vegas residency opening. Plaintiff’s claims against Erika are entirely without merit. Independent federal prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office made the decision to charge plaintiff with crimes, no one else. The notion that Erika controlled the U.S. Government, or for that matter a Fortune 100 company such as American Express, is fantasy.”

Robert Savage additionally spoke out, telling TMZ, “I am restricted by a non-disclosure when I retired from the U.S. Secret Service to discuss casework during my tenure without their approval, so I would respectfully redirect your questions pertaining to the lawsuit to the USSS Office of Chief Counsel and U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of California.”

He then gave a nod to a months-old interview he did with the L.A. Times (that was carried out below USSS approval), which featured him admitting to being in contact with Erika in regard to the difficulty and referring her to a member of the federal government company.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season 13 is anticipated to premiere on Bravo someday this fall.