June 2, 2022, at 6:10 a.m. NEW YORK (Reuters) -Michael Avenatti, the brash California lawyer who took on then-President Donald Trump, was sentenced on Thursday to four years in prison for defrauding his best-known former client, the porn actress Stormy Daniels.
attorney Michael AvenattiStormy Daniels and her attorney Michael Avenatti leave federal court in New York, on April 16, 2018. Avenatti was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for cheating client Daniels of hundreds of thousands of dollars in book proceeds.
51 years (February 16, 1971)Michael Avenatti / Age
Daniels went on to write a memoir, “Full Disclosure,” for which she was to receive an $800,000 advance. But according to federal prosecutors, Avenatti stole $300,000 of that amount by faking Daniels's signature on a form that rerouted the wire transfers to an account he controlled.
Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' one-time attorney, sentenced for$25M Nike extortion plot. Avenatti represented Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a tryst with Donald Trump. He was convicted of fraud related to LA youth basketball and a Nike sponsorship. He faces fraud two more trials this year, and another in 2022, on fraud and other charges.
Exit Full Screen. Avenatti represented Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a tryst with Donald Trump. He was convicted of fraud related to LA youth basketball and a Nike sponsorship. He faces fraud two more trials this year, and another in 2022, on fraud and other charges.
The judge wrote that evidence showed that Aven atti "devised an approach to Nike that was designed to enrich himself" rather than address his client's objectives. Nike case: Text messages released in Michael Avenatti case allege conversations about Nike payments.
Daniels said a tryst with Trump a decade earlier resulted in her being paid $130,000 by Trump's personal lawyer in 2016 to stay silent. Trump denied the affair.
Avenatti represented Daniels in 2018 in lawsuits against Trump, appearing often on cable news programs to disparage the Republican president. Avenatti explored running against Trump in 2020, boasting that he would "have no problem raising money.". Daniels said a tryst with Trump a decade earlier resulted in her being paid $130,000 by Trump's ...
U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe called Avenatti's conduct "outrageous," saying he "hijacked his client's claims, and he used those claims to further his own agenda, which was to extort millions of dollars from Nike for himself."
Avenatti, the judge added, "had become drunk on the power of his platform, or what he perceived the power of his platform to be. He had become someone who operated as if the laws and the rules that applied to everyone else didn't apply to him.".
Avenatti formerly represented Stormy Daniels, who tried to sue the president to get out of a non-disclosure agreement she had signed before the 2016 presidential election .
At the time he approached Nike, Avenatti had been representing his then-client Gary Franklin, who ran a youth basketball league in Los Angeles. Court papers said Avenatti threatened to hold a press conference alleging Nike had made illicit payments to young basketball players in Los Angeles.
Avenatti was arrested shortly after announcing he would hold a news conference about a scandal surrounding the company. "This was an old-fashioned shakedown," prosecutor Geoffrey Berman said at the time. The jury heard that Avenatti had been at least $11m in debt.