According to the complaint filed in the Southern District of New York, Michael Avenatti allegedly threatened to hold a press conference to announce allegations of employee misconduct at the athletic-wear company unless Nike hired Avenatti. | Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images Legal Avenatti charged with trying to extort $20 million from Nike The former lawyer for Stormy Daniels was also charged in a separate fraud case in Los Angeles.

Michael Avenatti, the attorney who shot to national fame for representing adult film actress Stormy Daniels in her case against President Donald Trump, was arrested Monday in two separate cases of alleged financial crimes on both coasts.

New York prosecutors accused Avenatti of trying to extract more than $20 million from Nike Inc. by threatening to inflict financial and reputational harm on the company. Avenatti, a frequent attacker of Trump who flirted with a 2020 presidential bid, is also facing separate bank and wire fraud charges in Los Angeles, authorities said.


Avenatti told reporters Monday evening that he was confident he would be “fully exonerated,” according to The Associated Press. He spoke after appearing in federal court in New York, where he was released on $300,000 bond.

The California lawyer received national attention while representing Daniels in two lawsuits against Trump related to hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign. Prosecutors on Monday said Avenatti used his newfound fame to intimidate Nike for money.

According to the complaint filed in the Southern District of New York, Avenatti allegedly threatened to hold a press conference to announce allegations of employee misconduct at the athletic-wear company unless Nike hired Avenatti and an unnamed co-conspirator to conduct an “internal investigation” of the company for somewhere between $15 million and $25 million.

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One of Avenatti’s clients allegedly possessed evidence of Nike employees making payments to top high school basketball players and their families that the company attempted to conceal. Avenatti also said Nike had to pay $1.5 million to his client, an amateur California basketball coach with knowledge of the payments, according to the complaint.

Avenatti threatened to go public with the information on the eve of Nike’s quarterly earnings call and at the start of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament to maximize “the potential financial and reputational damage his press conference could cause to Nike,” prosecutors said. The attorney tweeted on Monday morning plans for a press conference the following day.

“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,” Avenatti wrote. “This criminal conduct reaches the highest levels of Nike and involves some of the biggest names in college basketball.”

The threats were allegedly made during a string of meetings and phone calls between Nike lawyers, Avenatti and his unnamed co-conspirator, whom the APreported to be Mark Geragos, an attorney who has represented high-profile celebrities like Michael Jackson and, more recently, Jussie Smollett. After an initial meeting on March 19, representatives from Nike called the U.S. Attorney's office, and every interaction Avenatti had with Nike afterward was monitored or recorded by officials.

The pair at one point also gave Nike the option of a $22.5 million payment “to resolve any claims” their client might have in lieu of the company paying for an internal investigation, according to the complaint.

Avenatti repeatedly said he wouldn’t continue to “play games” and warned Nike attorneys that he would “go take $10 billion off your client’s market cap,” according to prosecutors.

He hinted at the pain he prepared to unleash with a tweet Thursday linking to an article about former Adidas executives who were sentenced last week for committing wire fraud.

“Something tells me that we have not reached the end of this scandal,” Avenatti tweeted. “It is likely far far broader than imagined … ”

Avenatti faces separate charges in a California case for allegedly embezzling a client’s money to pay his own expenses and for allegedly defrauding a bank in Mississippi by using false tax returns to obtain $4.1 million in loans.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California, Avenatti used the misappropriated money to pay for personal expenses and those of his law firm and coffee business.

Avenatti faces a maximum sentence of 50 years in federal prison if convicted for both crimes. He will appear in court in New York on Monday and in California at a later date, said authorities, who added that the arrest was coordinated between the two U.S. Attorneys' offices.

U.S. Attorney Geoff Berman at a New York press conference Monday said an investigation is continuing when asked whether the claims brought to Nike had any merit and whether charges would be brought against Geragos.

Asked if Avenatti's fame and role in the Stormy Daniels case might raise questions about whether or not the office was politically motivated in arresting Avenatti, Berman said: "This office doesn't take politics into account when it decides to charge a case."

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, tweeted Monday that she was “saddened but not shocked” by news reports of the charges.

“I made the decision more than a month ago to terminate Michael’s services after discovering that he had dealt with me extremely dishonestly and there will be more announcements to come,” she wrote.

At a Los Angeles press conference Monday afternoon, U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said the allegations paint an "ugly picture" of Avenatti as "a corrupt lawyer who instead fights for his own selfish interests by misappropriating close to a million dollars that rightfully belonged to one of his clients."

Across the country, Berman's account of the other half of the simultaneous charges echoed condemnation of the alleged criminal activity.

“A suit and tie," he said, "doesn't mask the fact that at its core this was an old-fashioned shakedown.”

Laura Nahmias contributed to this report.