One day in prison for the US lawyer who knew Lion Air families were not paid

Keith Griffin, a lawyer in California, was sentenced last week by a federal court in Chicago for his part in keeping compensation away from Indonesian families. The sentence was one day in prison, with credit for time already served, so he walked out with no further jail. He also got two years of supervised release, a period when he must follow conditions the court sets and report to probation officials. Griffin had pleaded guilty to criminal contempt of court, which means knowingly ignoring a judge's order. What he admitted was this: he knew his colleague Tom Girardi had not handed the settlement money to the families, even though a court had ordered it paid.

That payment came from Boeing. Lion Air flight JT610 crashed in 2018 and killed 189 people, one of two fatal crashes involving the American company's 737 Max planes, and Boeing agreed to pay compensation to families. The amount was never made public. Girardi's law firm represented some of those families in the claims. He was later convicted of pocketing more than US$2 million meant for the Lion Air families, plus US$15 million from other injury and compensation cases. Last year he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. He has since declared bankruptcy and was disbarred, meaning he can no longer work as a lawyer.

So the man who took the money is in prison and broke, and the man who kept quiet about it is free after a single day. The South China Morning Post spoke to families who say the ruling has deepened the feeling that justice for them is still out of reach, eight years after the crash.

Why it matters

When Indonesians are killed in a disaster involving a foreign company, the compensation usually travels through foreign courts and foreign law firms, and the family's money can sit for years in accounts they cannot see. If your family is part of any cross-border claim, ask in writing who is holding the settlement, whether a court is supervising the payout, and when each instalment is due. This case shows what the penalty looks like for a lawyer who stays quiet while a payout disappears, which is worth knowing before you sign anything.