Wall Street Journal<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n-Around February 2019, Mr. Avenatti began representing a youth basketball coach whose elite team had recently lost a sponsorship deal with Nike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-On March 19, 2019, Mr. Avenatti\u2014accompanied by Los Angeles lawyer Mark Geragos \u2014met in New York with two of Nike\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-Mr. Geragos wasn\u2019t charged, and didn\u2019t testify at the trial. His lawyers disputed Mr. Avenatti\u2019s efforts, before the trial, to characterize him as an accomplice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-The coach testified at trial that he didn\u2019t know about Mr. Avenatti\u2019s proposed quid-pro-quo arrangement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-A Nike spokeswoman didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment on the coming sentencing. After his conviction last year, the company said: \u201cThe verdict speaks volumes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-After the March 19 meeting, Nike\u2019s lawyers contacted the Manhattan U.S. attorney\u2019s office. Nike had been cooperating with the office in its investigation into alleged corruption in college basketball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-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 \u201cgo take 10 billion dollars off your client\u2019s market cap.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-On March 25, Mr. Avenatti tweeted that he planned to hold a news conference the following day to disclose \u201ccriminal conduct\u201d at the \u201chighest levels of Nike.\u201d Within hours, FBI agents arrested Mr. Avenatti outside Boies Schiller\u2019s Manhattan offices and charges were unsealed against him in New York and California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Avenatti, a name those might find familiar from the Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels chronicles, was recently sentenced again…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":328335,"featured_media":990485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1224791],"tags":[],"cultivate_rss":[],"class_list":{"2":"type-post"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Michael Avenatti Sentenced For Attempting To Extort Nike | Snkrs Day<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n