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Michael Avenatti Is Charged With Stealing Nearly $300,000 From Stormy Daniels Michael Avenatti Is Charged With Stealing Nearly $300,000 From Stormy Daniels
(about 3 hours later)
Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged the celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti with misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars belonging to the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, his former client. Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged the celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti with misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars belonging to a former client, the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels.
The indictment, announced by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, adds to the legal troubles of Mr. Avenatti, who stands accused of more than three dozen crimes. He denied all of the charges on Wednesday and said he would continue to fight them. The indictment, announced by the United States Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, marks the disintegration of a relationship that propelled Mr. Avenatti to national prominence and adds to his mountain of legal troubles as he stands accused of more than three dozen crimes in California and New York.
According to prosecutors, Mr. Avenatti took more than $295,000 from Ms. Daniels. After helping her secure a book contract, they said, he sent “a fraudulent and unauthorized letter” bearing Ms. Daniels’s signature to her literary agent, instructing the agent to wire a portion of the book advance to a client trust account that Mr. Avenatti controlled. Mr. Avenatti is accused of taking more than $295,000 from Ms. Daniels, who is named in the indictment as “Victim-1” and was identified as the actress by a person with knowledge of the case.
Ms. Daniels, the indictment said, “had not signed or authorized the letter, and did not even know of its existence.” Mr. Avenatti is accused of putting the money toward his own personal expenses, including plane tickets, hotel stays, meal delivery, dry cleaning and a luxury car lease. After helping her secure a book contract last year, according to the charges, Mr. Avenatti sent “a fraudulent and unauthorized letter” bearing Ms. Daniels’s signature to her literary agent, demanding that a portion of the book advance be wired to a client trust account he controlled.
Mr. Avenatti began representing Ms. Daniels in early 2018, when he filed lawsuits against President Trump and Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer and fixer. Mr. Avenatti sought to release Ms. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, from a hush agreement she signed leading up to the 2016 presidential election. As part of that agreement, she accepted $130,000 and agreed to keep quiet about a sexual relationship she said she had had with Mr. Trump in 2006. Mr. Avenatti is accused of putting the money toward his personal expenses, including plane tickets, hotel stays, meal delivery, dry cleaning and a monthly payment on a Ferrari.
Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance crimes related to the payment. This month, he began serving a three-year prison sentence. Mr. Avenatti denied all of the charges against him on Wednesday and said he would continue to fight them.
According to a statement by Ms. Daniels in March, she stopped working with Mr. Avenatti early this year. She could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday. “She received millions of dollars worth of legal services, and we spent huge sums in expenses,” he said of Ms. Daniels, whom he said he had not represented since February. “She directly paid only $100 for all that she received.”
“I intend on fighting these bogus/legally baseless allegations, and will plead not guilty to ALL CHARGES,” Mr. Avenatti wrote on Twitter, just before prosecutors announced the latest counts. “I look forward to the trial where I can begin to clear my name.” Ms. Daniels — whose memoir, “Full Disclosure,” was published by St. Martin’s Press last year — could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Mr. Avenatti was arrested in New York in March on extortion charges, accused of seeking millions from Nike in exchange for what he described as evidence of misconduct by company employees in the recruitment of college basketball players. Prosecutors said she “had not signed or authorized the letter” to her agent and “did not even know of its existence.” Mr. Avenatti tried to conceal the effort by advancing money to her “from another source” to stand in for one installment, prosecutors said, and he falsely said the publisher had not paid when she asked about another portion.
In a separate indictment filed in California this spring, Mr. Avenatti was accused of stealing millions of dollars from five other clients, and of lying repeatedly about his business and income to an agent of the Internal Revenue Service, creditors, a bankruptcy court and a bankruptcy trustee. Mr. Avenatti drew national attention when he began representing Ms. Daniels in early 2018, filing lawsuits against President Trump and Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer. He sought to release Ms. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, from a hush agreement she had signed before the 2016 election. As part of that deal, she accepted $130,000 and agreed to keep quiet about a sexual relationship she said she had had with Mr. Trump in 2006.
Mr. Avenatti, who spent much of 2018 crusading against Mr. Trump on cable news shows and teasing a presidential run of his own, has called the case against him politically motivated. Both of the lawsuits Mr. Avenatti filed on behalf of Ms. Daniels were dismissed, and in one case she was ordered to pay Mr. Trump $293,000 in legal fees.
But federal prosecutors in California said that their indictment of Mr. Avenatti had grown out of a criminal investigation initiated in September 2016, months before the election that would catapult both him and his future client, Ms. Daniels, into the political arena. Yet Ms. Daniels’s story created further trouble for the president, culminating in Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea last year to campaign finance crimes related to the hush payment. This month, he began serving a three-year prison sentence. The same office that won Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea — the public corruption unit of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York — filed the new charges against Mr. Avenatti, which included aggravated identity theft.
If convicted on all charges, Mr. Avenatti could face more than 300 years in prison. The new charges add to numerous others filed this year. Mr. Avenatti was arrested in New York in March on extortion charges, accused of seeking millions from Nike in exchange for what he described as evidence of misconduct by company employees in the recruitment of college basketball players. On Wednesday, he was also indicted on those previously announced charges.
In a separate indictment filed in California this spring, Mr. Avenatti was accused of stealing millions of dollars from five other clients, one of them a paraplegic man who had won a $4 million settlement but received only a fraction of that in periodic payments that never exceeded $1,900. Mr. Avenatti was also accused of filing fake tax returns to a Mississippi bank, and of lying repeatedly about his business and income to an agent of the Internal Revenue Service, creditors, a bankruptcy court and a bankruptcy trustee.
Mr. Avenatti, who spent much of 2018 crusading against Mr. Trump on cable news shows and teasing a presidential run of his own, has called the cases against him politically motivated.
But federal prosecutors in California said their indictment had grown out of a criminal investigation initiated in September 2016, months before the election that would catapult both him and his future client, Ms. Daniels, into the political arena.
“He blatantly lied to and stole from his client to maintain his extravagant lifestyle,” Geoffrey S. Berman, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Michael Avenatti abused and violated the core duty of an attorney — the duty to his client.”
If convicted on all of the charges pending against him, Mr. Avenatti could face more than 300 years in prison.