Michael Avenatti, a name those might find familiar from the Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels chronicles, was recently sentenced again to prison for attempting to extort Nike for $20 million.
Avenatti, well-known for his previous litigations, was convicted in a February 2020 trial on all three counts: wire fraud, extortion, and transmission of interstate communications with intent to extort. The trial was performed after Avenatti threatened to expose potential corruption within Nike’s basketball division unless the sportswear juggernaut paid him to conduct an internal investigation.
While this sentencing has finished, the lawyer still faces a plethora of bank and tax charges in California, with trials set for next week.
Upon release from prison, Avenatti will be required to serve three years of supervised release.
The timeline for Avenatti’s attempted extortion can be read below, as per the Wall Street Journal:
-Around February 2019, Mr. Avenatti began representing a youth basketball coach whose elite team had recently lost a sponsorship deal with Nike.
-On March 19, 2019, Mr. Avenatti—accompanied by Los Angeles lawyer Mark Geragos —met in New York with two of Nike’s outside lawyers from law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP. Mr. Avenatti said his client had evidence that Nike employees had funneled illegal secret payments to the families of top high-school basketball players, according to evidence presented at trial. Mr. Avenatti threatened to expose the payments at a news conference the next day unless Nike paid his client a $1.5 million settlement and hired Messrs. Avenatti and Geragos to conduct an internal investigation, according to evidence at trial.
-Mr. Geragos wasn’t charged, and didn’t testify at the trial. His lawyers disputed Mr. Avenatti’s efforts, before the trial, to characterize him as an accomplice.
-The coach testified at trial that he didn’t know about Mr. Avenatti’s proposed quid-pro-quo arrangement.
-A Nike spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the coming sentencing. After his conviction last year, the company said: “The verdict speaks volumes.”
-After the March 19 meeting, Nike’s lawyers contacted the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office. Nike had been cooperating with the office in its investigation into alleged corruption in college basketball.
-In the following days, at the direction of law enforcement, Boies Schiller lawyers recorded conversations with Mr. Avenatti, in which he repeated his alleged threats and proposed a minimum $12 million retainer or a confidential $22.5 million settlement to make the matter disappear. In one call, Mr. Avenatti threatened to “go take 10 billion dollars off your client’s market cap.”
-On March 25, Mr. Avenatti tweeted that he planned to hold a news conference the following day to disclose “criminal conduct” at the “highest levels of Nike.” Within hours, FBI agents arrested Mr. Avenatti outside Boies Schiller’s Manhattan offices and charges were unsealed against him in New York and California.
