Michael Avenatti has attempted to play down rival celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred's claim to have found a third tape of R. Kelly sexually abusing children and says it is likely the same footage that circulated years ago which Kelly was acquitted over.

Allred announced the footage at a press conference last week. The tape was found by couple Gary and Sallie Dennis and was labeled 'R. Kelly'.

They say it was filmed in the 1990s and showed the embattled singer having sex with underage girls. Allred has handed it to police for them to investigate further.

Avenatti, who claims to have found two other tapes of the singer having sex with underage girls, however dismissed her claims in a tweet on Sunday.

He said the footage was 'most likely' the same as a bootleg video which circulated in the early 2000s on Chicago street corners.

Michael Avenatti dismissed Gloria Allred's claims against R. Kelly in a tweet on Sunday and said the tape she claims to have come into possession of and handed to police is 'old evidence'

Gloria Allred held a press conference on Sunday with Gary Dennis who claims to have found a tape showing R. Kelly having sex with a minor in his attic

In 2001 and 2002, two separate tape surfaced which both allegedly showed Kelly having sex with underage girls.

They first appeared in the mailboxes of journalists in Chicago who then sent them to the police.

Kelly was indicted in 2002 but the case did not go to trial until 2008 and he was acquitted by a jury who said that while they believed it was him in the tap, they could not be sure that the girl was the underage victim prosecutors claimed it was.

In his tweet, Avenatti wrote: 'The tape referenced by Ms. Allred today is most likely a copy of a tape that was sold at flea markets/street corners throughout Chicago in the early 2000s.

Avenatti has launched his own allegations against Kelly. He claims to have found two tapes of the singer engaging in sex acts with underage girls and has given them to police

'Thousands of copies of the same tape were sold and prosecutors have known about it since approx. 2001. This is old evidence.'

He is fighting to have Kelly charged on further counts after claiming to have come into possession of two other tapes.

Kelly is currently on bail on child rape and rape charges which apply to four different women, three of whom were underage when the alleged crimes happened between 1998 and 2010.

His attorneys say it is 'open season' on R. Kelly and that he has never had sex with an underage girl.

'R Kelly denies that he is on any tape with underaged girls.

'The doubt here is self-evident, with reporting that the man on the tape kinda, sorta looks like R Kelly. That doesn't make it him. It is not him,' his lawyer Steve Greenberg told TMZ on Sunday.

Gary and Sally Dennis say they found the tape in an old box of VHS sports videos at their home in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago.

Gary Dennis said one of the tapes had 'R Kelly' written on it. He assumed it would be an old concert, but when he watched it he was horrified to see a man who looks like Kelly engaging in sexual acts with young African American girls.

The couple turned the tape over to authorities this week, saying they didn't know Kelly and were unsure of where the tape came from since it had been boxed up for several years.

Greenberg questioned why the Dennises had the tape in the first place, suggesting that they could be prosecuted for possession of child pornography but then insisted it did not show his client having sex with anyone underage.

Deja vu: R. Kelly is shown, left, leaving court in Chicago in 2008 after being acquitted on child pornography charges. He is shown, right, leaving jail in Chicago on Saturday. He is facing 10 fresh charges

'It is obviously now just open season on R Kelly. It is irresponsible to continue to take the speculation of every Tom, Dick and Harry, and report it as if it is fact.'

The Dennises spoke at a press conference on Sunday with Allred where Gary, an assistant at a nursing home, gave a description of what was on the tape, saying of the man believed to be Kelly: 'He was telling them what to do and what to say, and it appeared that he was in control of the camera.

'In addition, he was engaging with these children in sexually abusive acts. He appeared to be in command of the girls and they looked as though they were just saying and doing what he told them to do.'

He said he was 'disgusted' and 'horrified' by what he saw on the video.

'I can't get the memory out of my head, it just stays with me constantly. (It's) sickening and shameful and most of all harmful to those children,' he said. 'It breaks my heart to see a celebrity whose music I used to love harm children in this way.'

He said that because the tape also has a sports game on it, he believes it may have come from a friend.

Allred said she was contacted by Dennis and she subsequently handed the tape over to law enforcement in the federal Eastern District of New York. She didn't say why it went to that venue.

Kelly, 52, wept, yelled and screamed during an interview with CBS last week where he denied the allegations

She said the identity of the young girls was not known but there was no reason to believe they were the same victims who recently came forward for the documentary 'Surviving R Kelly'.

Allred noted that the video appeared to have been filmed in the 1990s and that her clients assumed the girls were underage because they were not 'fully developed'.

Without going into specifics about the abuse, Allred said: 'It is fair to say, however, that no child should ever be subjected to the kind of abuse and degrading sexually predatory misconduct depicted on the tape.'

In an interview that aired Wednesday and Thursday on CBS This Morning last week, Kelly pleaded with viewers to believe that he never had sex with anyone under age 17 and never held anyone against their will

He was released from jail on Saturday where he had been held in connection to overdue child support. He was released after a payment for more than $161,000 was made on his behalf by a mystery donor.