California’s state bar opened more than 200 disciplinary reviews of famed trial lawyer Tom Girardi over the last 40 years but closed most of the complaints without action before finally moving to disbar him last year, the agency disclosed Thursday.

Of those 205 disciplinary matters, roughly 120 involved allegations of mishandling client trust accounts, according to the state bar. The first complaint case about Girardi’s handling of deposits was opened in 1983, almost two decades before a federal judge in Illinois concluded the once high-flying but now disgraced plaintiffs attorney “was running a Ponzi scheme with client money.”