March 25, 2019
The Southern District of New York (SDNY) has announced criminal charges against attorney Michael Avenatti (full complaint pdf below) for attempting to extract more than $20 million in payments from Nike Corp, a publicly traded company, by threatening to use his ability to garner publicity to inflict substantial financial and reputational harm on the company if his demands were not met.
The SDNY counts against Avenatti include conspiracy to transmit interstate communications with intent to extort, conspiracy to commit extortion and more. In the SDNY case, attorney Mark Geragos is a co-conspirator.
Additionally and simultaneously, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles alleged in a separate criminal complaint that Mr. Avenatti embezzled a client’s money to pay his own expenses and cover debts—including for his law firm and coffee business—and defrauded a bank using phony tax returns.
Here’s the SDNY criminal complaint:
UPDATE: Below is a video of the SDNY Press Conference:
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(Via Wall Street Journal) […] According to the complaint filed in New York, Mr. Avenatti and Mr. Geragos, the alleged co-conspirator, met with lawyers for Nike in New York on March 19 and threatened to release damaging information unless the company agreed to pay the two lawyers millions of dollars and another $1.5 million to the client Avenatti claimed to represent.
Boies Schiller agreed to federal prosecutors’ request to record another conversation with Mr. Avenatti and did so, this person said.
On a March 20 phone call, Mr. Avenatti said he expected to get $1.5 million for his client and wanted a multi-million-dollar retainer from Nike to conduct an “internal investigation,” according to the complaint. During the call—which was on the eve of the company’s quarterly earnings call—Mr. Avenatti said that if his demands weren’t met, “I’ll go take ten billion dollars off your client’s market cap. … I’m not fucking around.” (link)
Here’s the criminal complaint from California:
Centinel2012 