MANHATTAN (CN) — The Second Circuit on Wednesday affirmed thrice-convicted lawyer Michael Avenatti’s 2020 conviction for trying to extort up to $25 million from the Nike corporation.
“The trial evidence was sufficient to support Avenatti’s conviction for honest-services fraud because a reasonable jury could find therefrom that Avenatti solicited a bribe from Nike in the form of a quid pro quo," the appeals panel concluded in its 79-page opinion confirming the lawyer’s conviction.
One month before the Covid-19 virus shut down all courts in New York City, a jury in Manhattan federal court convicted Avenatti of threatening the sporting goods giant that he would expose a corruption scandal unless it paid him millions of dollars, rejecting his claims that he was a lawyer acting in good faith when he tried to hammer out a deal with Nike on behalf of a California youth basketball coach.
The disbarred celebrity attorney, who shot to fame in 2018 by taking on Donald Trump for hush-money payments that later spurred the former president's historic first criminal indictment, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for convictions on three criminal counts in the Nike case — extortion, transmission of interstate communications with intent to extort and wire fraud.
In bare-knuckle negotiations with NIke, Avenatti threatened to hold a press conference and contact The New York Times unless Nike forked over more than $1.5 million to amateur basketball coach Gary Franklin — and hired him and co-counsel Mark Geragos to conduct an internal investigation for a retainer of $15 million to $25 million.
“It’s worth more in exposure for me to just blow the lid on this thing,” Avenatti told attorneys for the multinational corporation on tape. “A few million dollars doesn’t move the needle with me.”
Represented by federal public defenders, Avenatti argued on appeal that federal prosecutors’ evidence at trial was insufficient to support the jury’s verdict on his criminal liability for threatening to expose Nike’s improper payments to amateur basketball players.
The Second Circuit panel was not persuaded by Avenatti’s assertions on appeal, in light of evidence of the attempted quid pro quo extortion shown to jurors during the trial.
"Avenatti’s problem then was not that the challenged charge failed to provide him with a sufficient legal basis to argue his defense theory,” the judges wrote, affirming the conviction in its entirety. “Rather, his problem was that compelling evidence indicated that he had demanded a multimillion-dollar internal investigation retainer from Nike not to achieve Franklin’s objectives but only to enrich himself.”
The appeals judges also noted that Avenatti's "financial position was precarious" at the time of the Nike negotiations, and he had "a pressing personal need for over $11 million" to pay off outstanding judgments.
The three-judge panel was made up of Senior U.S. Circuit Judge John M. Walker Jr., Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Reena Raggi and U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Park.
Representatives for Avenatti did not immediately respond to request for comment Wednesday.
The 30-month sentence in the Nike case runs concurrently with the four-year sentence ordered by another judge in the same district on Avenatti’s conviction for stealing book proceeds from Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who catapulted Avenatti to fame as he represented her during her legal battles with then-President Trump.
Having separately pleaded guilty to federal embezzlement charges in the Central District of California, Avenatti faced an additional 14-year sentence on top of the two prison terms he received in New York.
Avenatti admitted in June 2022 to stealing a total of $7.9 million from four of his clients, including from one man who became paraplegic as a result of his incarceration in Los Angeles County jail and received a $4 million settlement. Avenatti also pleaded guilty to obstructing the IRS effort to collect $3.2 million in payroll taxes from his coffee business, which the government said was partially funded by the money he had stolen from clients.
U.S. District Judge James Selna imposed a 14-year sentence in the California case and ordered that this term of imprisonment run consecutive to sentences totaling four years from the two federal cases in the Southern District of New York.
The 52-year-old is incarcerated at a federal prison near Los Angeles, where he lived and practiced law. His law license is suspended and he is scheduled to be released from prison in 2036.
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