"The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Erika Jayne faces yet another legal battle after her former costume designer filed a lawsuit alleging she conspired with American Express and the Secret Service to have him falsely charged with credit card fraud.
Christopher Psaila accuses Jayne of intentionally filing for fraudulent refunds through American Express and then bribing a Secret Service agent through her husband to pursue false felony charges against him, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Central California. His allegations were first reported on by the Los Angeles Times in February.
Psaila was charged in 2017 with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft; federal prosecutors dismissed the case in September 2021.
Evan Borges, Jayne’s attorney, denied the allegations and said the suit seemed “calculated” to coincide with the “rave reviews” of Jayne’s Las Vegas residency, which opened at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay over the weekend.
“Independent federal prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office made the decision to charge plaintiff with crimes, no one else,” Borges said. “The notion that Erika controlled the U.S. Government, or for that matter a Fortune 100 company such as American Express, is fantasy.”
Jayne began working with Psaila, who co-owns the design company Marco Marco, in 2014 to create costumes for her singing career, the suit says. He alleges that he created numerous outfits that Jayne wore during her performance and charged the credit card she provided after she declined to review invoices he tried to give her.
"As a customer of Marco Marco, Defendant Erika Girardi, through her agents, purchased, during 2015-2016, approximately $934,000 worth of goods and services pursuant to 132 separate transactions, all of which were charged to the AMEX card," the lawsuit says.
Psaila submitted text messages, emails, receipts, sketches and social media posts to prove Jayne did, in fact, wear his designs.
Their working relationship continued until December 2016, when Jayne questioned the charges and accused Psaila of overcharging her. At the same time, Psaila's suit alleges that her husband, Tom Girardi, paid a $7,500 bribe to a Secret Service agent, who was his friend and whom he represented in a civil case, to open an investigation into him.
Although he is accused of having facilitated the alleged bribe, Girardi is not named as a defendant in the suit. Girardi, who was disbarred in California in 2021, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and is in a court-ordered conservatorship with his brother serving as his guardian.
The suit alleges Secret Service agents sent Jayne to wear a “hidden recorder” at a meeting on Dec. 14, 2016, with Psaila to review charges and invoices. Psaila did not admit fault in the meeting, according to the suit, but he promised to “do what it takes to make things right.”
Jayne and Girardi filed claims with American Express, which Psaila said refunded them $787,117.88 “to which they were not entitled.” Psaila accuses the credit card company of failing to do its due diligence in investigating the charges before it issued the refund.
The credit card refund, Psaila alleges, was a key part of the grand jury indictment.
"The AMEX refund resulted in the Secret Service Defendants obtaining an indictment because most reasonable people would assume such a reimbursement of that size would be persuasive evidence of wrongdoing," the suit says.
American Express said in a statement Wednesday that federal law enforcement contacted it in late 2016 about its investigation into Psaila and that it did not play a role in his criminal investigation.
"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," the company said.
A representative for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit accuses the Secret Service of failing to "do the basics of any criminal business fraud investigation," including failing to review documents seized in the investigation or a forensic audit of Psaila's business records.
The Secret Service also declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing its policy about ongoing litigation.
Psaila seeks a jury trial and $18.2 million in damages.
Last year, Jayne was dismissed from a lawsuit that alleged that her husband embezzled $2 million from the families of victims of the 2018 Lion Air crash in Indonesia. The lawsuit alleged that Girardi kept the money to "support a never-ending spending spree by himself and Jayne."
Girardi was indicted in February in U.S. District Court in Chicago in connection with the Lion Air case. He was charged with 12 counts: Nine counts allege wire fraud, and three allege misconduct by court officers, stemming from allegations that the defendants failed to distribute money owed to their clients.
Jayne filed for divorce in November 2020, a month before the lawsuit was filed. A judge ordered Girardi’s assets frozen in a separate case the next month.
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