Michael Avenatti arrested and charged with extortion for allegedly 'extracting more than $20m from Nike'

California lawyer once touted possible presidential run

Michael Avenatti - the lawyer whose high profile clients have included Stormy Daniels – has been arrested and charged with allegedly trying to extort up to $25m from Nike.

Federal prosecutors in New York claimed the 48-year-old lawyer, who rose to prominence for representing the adult actress in her legal battles with Donald Trump, contacted the sportswear and equipment giant, and threatened to release damaging information if it did not pay millions of dollars to himself and an unnamed co-conspirator.

“I’ll go take $10bn off your client’s market cap…I’m not f***ing around,” he he alleged to have said, according to the legal filing, which charges the lawyer with extortion, and bank and wire fraud.

According to the complaint, Mr Avenatti, who frequently jousted on Twitter with Mr Trump and who at one point claimed to be considering a presidential run, met in March 2019 with lawyer for Nike and made the threat.

The news comes on the day that the California-based lawyer had tweeted: “Tmrw at 11 am ET, we will be holding a press conference to disclose a major high school/college basketball scandal perpetrated by @Nike that we have uncovered. This criminal conduct reaches the highest levels of Nike and involves some of the biggest names in college basketball.”

There was no immediate response from Mr Avenatti or from Nike.

It was later learned that Mr Avenatti had been arrested.

“When lawyers use their law licenses as weapons, as a guise to extort payments for themselves, they are no longer acting as attorneys. They are acting as criminals,” said Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney in New York.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles later announced separate charges of wire fraud and bank fraud against Mr Avenatti.

CNBC said that in the Los Angeles case, Mr Avenatti is accused of negotiating a $1.6m settlement for a client in a civil case, but then giving the client “a bogus settlement agreement with a false payment date of March 10, 2018”.

It said the Los Angeles US attorney’s office said: “Avenatti misappropriated his client’s settlement money and used it to pay expenses for his coffee business, Global Baristas US LLC, which operated Tully’s Coffee stores in California and Washington state, as well as for his own expenses.

“When the fake March 2018 deadline passed and the client asked where the money was, Avenatti continued to conceal that the payment had already been received, court documents said.

“Avenatti also allegedly defrauded a bank in Mississippi by submitting to the lender false tax returns in order to obtain three loans totalling $4.1m for his law firm and coffee business in 2014.”

Nick Hanna, the US attorney in Los Angeles, said: “[The allegations] paint an ugly picture of lawless conduct and greed.”

Mr Avenatti has not yet commented on the claims. It is not known if he has a lawyer.