Chris Diamantis: Rennova Health and Girardi Keese Lawsuit

Chris Diamantis is a Florida-based financier best known for running the country’s largest structured-settlement annuity writer, for taking a controlling stake in the troubled rural hospital operator Rennova Health, Inc., and for being named in a 2025 bankruptcy lawsuit tied to the collapsed law firm Girardi Keese. A 1990 cum laude finance graduate of Florida State University, he has led Integrated Financial Settlements, Inc. (IFS) as chairman and CEO since 1999.¹

Who He Is

IFS, headquartered in Denver and Atlanta, describes itself as the largest writer of structured settlement annuities in the United States, with roughly 41 percent of the market and about $2.4 billion in annual annuity sales. Its subsidiaries handle structured settlements, lien resolution, and qualified settlement fund administration for mass tort cases, and it employs more than 450 people.²

Outside IFS, Diamantis has chaired The Gabor Agency, Inc., a Florida financial planning firm. He has been a director and partner at Counsel Financial Services LLC, a litigation finance company based in Williamsville, New York, since 2006, and a director of Esquire Bank in New York City since 2011.³⁴ He has served as president of the National Structured Settlements Trade Association and is identified as a member of The Florida Bar.¹

His Role at Rennova Health

Rennova Health, Inc. is a small publicly traded company that spent the late 2010s buying up rural hospitals in Tennessee and Kentucky. Over roughly two years leading up to 2020, Diamantis lent the company millions of dollars and guaranteed loans that financed the acquisitions. He sat on Rennova’s four-person board until resigning on February 26, 2020.⁵⁶

Four months after leaving the board, he converted that debt into ownership. On June 30, 2020, Rennova issued him 22,000 shares of Series M Convertible Preferred Stock in exchange for canceling $18,849,637.06 in debt and accrued interest. Holders of the Series M shares are entitled to 51 percent of all votes at any shareholder meeting, no matter how many common shares exist, so the exchange effectively handed Diamantis a controlling stake.⁵⁶

He did not keep the voting power for long. On August 13, 2020, Diamantis granted an irrevocable proxy over the Series M shares to Rennova CEO Seamus Lagan. A 2023 SEC filing shows Diamantis still owned all outstanding Series M Preferred Stock, but Lagan controlled the vote.⁷

The Rural Hospital Closures Tied to Rennova

Rennova acquired three facilities in rapid succession. It bought Big South Fork Medical Center in Oneida, Tennessee, out of bankruptcy for $1 million in 2017. It picked up the 85-bed Jamestown Regional Medical Center in Fentress County, Tennessee, from Community Health Systems for $700,000 in 2018. In 2019, it added the 54-bed Jellico Community Hospital in Campbell County, Tennessee, and the CarePlus Clinic in Williamsburg, Kentucky.⁸

The closures followed. Jamestown Regional suspended operations in June 2019 after losing its Medicare agreement, wiping out about 150 jobs. The building sat empty for years while Rennova owed the county $207,000 in back taxes. A local buyer bought the property at auction in April 2024 for $220,000, but Rennova used a legal provision to reacquire it within days by paying the overdue taxes and interest. Jellico Community Hospital closed on March 1, 2021, after the city issued a 30-day lease termination notice, costing roughly 300 jobs. The town owns the building, but Rennova kept the operating license, which has left the community unable to easily reopen the site.⁹

The nearest emergency rooms for Jellico residents became a 30-minute drive away in LaFollette, Tennessee, or Corbin, Kentucky. Jamestown went without local emergency services for four years until the University of Tennessee Medical Center opened a freestanding ER in the area.⁹

As of Rennova’s most recent annual report, filed in February 2025 for fiscal year 2023, the company operated one hospital in Oneida, still owned the Jamestown facility with plans to reopen it, and owned a behavioral health subsidiary on the Oneida campus. More than 43 billion shares of common stock were outstanding, and Rennova had no securities listed on a national exchange.¹⁰

The Girardi Keese Trustees’ Lawsuit

On October 24, 2025, three bankruptcy trustees filed a complaint in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California against Diamantis, his company D&D Funding II LLC, and CDBD Holdings, Inc. The suit arose from the bankruptcy of Girardi Keese, the Los Angeles law firm once led by the disgraced attorney Thomas Girardi.¹¹

The trustees alleged that Diamantis and D&D Funding II received more than $3.16 million in “wrongfully transferred” client settlement funds in 2013. According to the complaint, the money came out of a $10 million settlement Girardi Keese had secured for the Ruigomez family, whose family member was burned over 90 percent of his body in a 2010 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. plant explosion. The trustees said the funds were diverted through what they described as an “illegal fee-sharing arrangement” between Girardi, attorney Joseph DiNardo, and Diamantis. California law bars lawyers from sharing client fees with non-lawyers. The trustees alleged that DiNardo’s firm financed portions of Girardi Keese’s caseload in exchange for a share of recovered attorney fees, and that the Ruigomez family did not know about the arrangement.¹²

D&D Funding II LLC was co-owned by Diamantis and DiNardo. The trustees asserted the transfers were made “with actual intent to hinder, delay, or defraud creditors” and that Diamantis “should have known the funds originated from an unlawful and unethical transaction.”¹² DiNardo, a New York attorney, filed for personal bankruptcy in 2023, and a separate February 2025 lawsuit sought to prevent him from discharging a $7.5 million fraud-related claim in that case.¹¹

Diamantis and his co-defendants moved to dismiss. Court records show the bankruptcy court entered an order dismissing the adversary proceeding as of June 2, 2026.¹³

Other Recent Litigation

In May 2025, JPMorgan Chase Bank sued Christopher Diamantis and Andrea Gabor Diamantis for breach of contract in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, over a line of credit and a forbearance agreement. On July 25, 2025, the court entered a consent judgment in favor of JPMorgan Chase against both defendants, and the case was terminated the same day.¹⁴

That same year, Diamantis and several IFS-related entities were named as defendants in Fuji Funding LLC v. Lyrix Holdings LLC et al, a commercial case filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Kings County. The suit also named Structures Inc., JMW Settlements LLC, and Integrated Financial Settlements Inc., and has been marked as disposed.¹⁵

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