Family Court Judges: Engaged in Insider Trading?

Insiders connected to Santa Clara Family Courts have leaked  the financial disclosures of family law judges. These disclosures  appear to support years of rumors that Family Court Judges are using information they obtain while overseeing divorce and probate cases, to personally profit, otherwise known as : Engaging in Insider Trading .

​The documents received by investigators  relate to the financial disclosures of Mary Ann Grilli, Santa Clara's longest sitting family law judge. Mary Ann Grilli has warmed the bench in Silicon Valley for over 20 years, while the valley was virtually transformed to  the tech and real estate empire of California, that it is today.

​When investigators began to compare information in the cases before Mary Ann Grilli with her financial disclosures, a disturbing pattern was revealed.

​In 2001 the Court of Appeals, Sixth District, overturned Mary Ann Grilli  In Re Marriage of Cheriton.   The Court noted  Grilli's extreme abuse of  discretion by not compelling Brad Baugh's client, David Cheriton to lawfully support his children or his  wife after a 20 year marriage. The Court's decision revealed that David Cheriton was willing to pay experts to impute his former wife for income that could be earned at $38,000 a year as an opera singer, while sharing a crammed apartment with her four children, as David Cheriton  enjoyed a sprawling  Los Altos property , a position as a professor at Stanford University and countless investments, including one as a first investor of Google. 

At the same time David Cheriton  used Brad Baugh as his lawyer  in a divorce to decimate and bankrupt his former spouse and  four children, public records show that at David Cheriton invested over $25,000,000 in educating other children, through philanthropic donations. These donations were  clearly intended to scrub his personal image, and image he  may have used along with  his private Silicon Valley network  to benefit Brad Baugh, and close family members of lawyers , experts and judges in Santa Clara's  Family Law Community.

​Mary Ann Grilli's husband , John Grilli, who was employed with Thermawave, which was purchased in 2007 by KLA Tencor and which may have ties to Angle Investors like David Cheriton and may show how the spouses of family law judges can profit  from the complex scheme of insider trading in Silicon Valley linked to  Santa Clara Family Courts.

​​Mary Ann Grilli was unphased  by the Court of Appeal's scolding at a  Santa Clara Family law annual meeting. Was that because Mary Ann Grillli and her husband profited far more from Grilli's involvement in family  law cases than what appeared in public or on her legally required financial disclosures?

​The long standing relationship Grilli has with lawyer Brad Baugh has been especially puzzling for the family law community. It is widely accepted that Brad Baugh receives a disproportionate number of favorable rulings and unlawful fee awards when he appears in divorce cases before Mary Ann Grilli, and where he represents wealthy fathers associated with closely held Silicon Valley companies .

​Additionally, whistleblowers have reported that while Mary Ann Grilli has dined with court staff and other judges in the Sunnyvale community , they have discussed  Silicon Valley businesses. The businesses discussed may not be directly related to the cases before them,  which would be a  violation of Judicial Ethics, but if the discussions involved information gleaned off the financial records obtained while presiding over family law cases, and the judges or their family members and friends , or even fellow judges profited from that information, then Judges like Mary Ann Grilli have far more to worry about then violations of the Judicial Code of Ethics.   

​Did Mary Ann Grilli obtain information from her family law cases that compelled her to sell of investments prior to the Tech and Real Estate Bubbles in Silicon Valley?

​Is Mary Ann Grilli's  and her husband profiting based on awards and decisions Mary  Ann Grilli makes in family law and probate cases she has overseen in Silicon Valley for over 30 years?

​A team of investigators arrived in Santa Clara County to address the outright bias of Mary Ann Grilli in divorce cases,  where one party was clearly unrepresented or socio economically disadvantaged. The team may have uncovered something much larger than a biased or incompetent judge.