Welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Thursday, June 5. In today's briefing, 23andMe is moving toward securing a big recovery for its shareholders after its ex-CEO reopened its auction with a topping bid. And celebrity lawyer Tom Girardi, whose law firm filed for bankruptcy, was sentenced to prison.

23andMe’s former CEO pushes purchase price nearly $50 million higher. 23andMe has a path to a higher purchase price than the $256 million offered by biotech giant Regeneron after the genetic-testing company’s former chief executive pushed a bankruptcy court to reopen its sale process.

23andMe was set to sell itself in bankruptcy to Regeneron before former CEO Anne Wojcicki bid $305 million after the auction ended through her recently founded nonprofit TTAM Research Institute. Wojcicki’s bid dwarfs her previous offer to acquire the company for $40 million just ahead of its March bankruptcy filing.

On Wednesday, 23andMe asked Judge Brian C. Walsh of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Missouri to reopen the company’s sale process so it could consider TTAM’s bid. At the hearing, 23andMe’s attorney inadvertently revealed the amount that TTAM offered to pay for the company.

Celebrity lawyer Thomas Girardi sentenced to seven years for fraud. Girardi, 86, was found guilty by a jury last year on four counts of wire fraud. His Los Angeles law firm, Girardi Keese, filed for bankruptcy in 2020, and he was disbarred in 2022.

Federal prosecutors said Girardi operated his law firm like a Ponzi scheme. He lied to clients and directed employees to make incremental payments of settlement funds to pay previously defrauded clients from new settlements.

Millions of dollars from his law firm were directed to pay expenses at a company formed by his estranged wife, a star on “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” and on private jet travel and luxury cars, prosecutors said.

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