Avenatti charged with stealing Daniels’ money
Avenatti charged with stealing Daniels’ money
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles lawyer Michael Avenatti was indicted Wednesday on charges of stealing from his former client Stormy Daniels by skimming money from her deal to write a memoir detailing her alleged sexual affair with Donald Trump.
It was the third time in two months that federal prosecutors have charged the celebrity attorney with criminal wrongdoing. Daniels is the sixth Avenatti client whom prosecutors say he defrauded.
A federal grand jury in New York accused Avenatti of forging Daniels’ signature on a document instructing her literary agent to wire her money to him.
“Far from zealously representing his client, Avenatti, as alleged, instead engaged in outright deception and theft, victimizing rather than advocating for his client,” said Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Prosecutors said Avenatti improperly diverted nearly $300,000 to his own bank accounts and used roughly half of it for personal expenses, including the lease of a Ferrari.
On Twitter, Avenatti denied the charges. “No monies relating to Ms. Daniels were ever misappropriated or mishandled,” he said.
Under an April 2018 contract that Avenatti helped negotiate with her publisher, St. Martin’s Press, and literary agent, Janklow & Nesbit Associates, Daniels was to receive an $800,000 advance in four installments for her memoir, “Full Disclosure.” The book, which included graphic details of her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump at a Lake Tahoe resort, was published in October.
The publisher sent the first two installments — a total of $425,000 — to Daniels’ agent, which forwarded the money to her after taking a fee, according to the indictment.
But Avenatti embezzled the third and fourth installments, the grand jury alleged. He did it by emailing a letter to Janklow & Nesbit on Aug. 1, 2018, instructing the agent to wire the remaining money to a bank account Avenatti controlled. The letter purported to be from Daniels, with her signature.
But Daniels neither authorized nor signed the “false wire instructions,” the indictment says.
When he received the two remaining installments, minus the agent’s fees, Avenatti spent the money on hotels, airline tickets, car services, restaurants, dry cleaning, a $3,900 lease payment on the Ferrari and various business expenses, according to the indictment.
Avenatti repeatedly lied to Daniels to cover up the theft, the grand jury alleged.
“When is the publisher going to cough up my money?” she asked him in December, according to the indictment.
Avenatti did not tell her he had already received and spent the money, telling her instead he was threatening to sue the publisher. “They need to pay you the money as you did your part and then some,” he allegedly told her.
Daniels made Avenatti famous last year by hiring him to sue Trump to void a nondisclosure agreement she signed before the 2016 election. In exchange for her silence, the adult-film star was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump.
Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty last year to a campaign-finance felony for orchestrating the deal. Prosecutors say Trump directed Cohen to pay the hush money to Daniels, a stripper who has performed in more than 150 pornographic movies over the last two decades.
When the scandal broke in early 2018, Avenatti fueled the media frenzy in scores of interviews with Anderson Cooper, Megyn Kelly, George Stephanopoulos and other television news personalities.
Tensions between Avenatti and Daniels spilled into public view in November.