Avenatti couldn’t scrounge up lawyers to represent him in $20M extortion scheme case
Michael Avenatti apparently couldn’t find a lawyer to represent him on extortion charges following his stunning arrest — and wound up with a pair of court-appointed federal defenders at his side on Monday night.
Avenatti was hauled into the same downtown Manhattan courthouse where he held a news conference last year with then-client and porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a 2006 affair with Donald Trump.
Magistrate Judge Katherine Parker signed off on a deal to release Avenatti on $300,000 bond, with conditions including no contact with the alleged co-conspirator in his case, whom the Wall Street Journal has identified as celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos.
Avenatti was also ordered to surrender his US and Italian passports and to inform authorities if he’s involved in any financial transaction worth $5,000 or more.
“The government wants to make sure you’re not making any excessive expenditures,” Parker said.
Avenatti answered a series of questions from the judge by saying “Yes, your honor” and “Yes, your honor, I understand.”
But he didn’t enter a plea to four extortion counts in an alleged scheme to shake down as much as $25 million from Nike in exchange for withholding “damaging information” about the sneaker giant.
Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have also charged him with bank and wire fraud for allegedly stealing a client’s $1.6 million settlement and defrauding a Mississippi bank by using fake tax returns to obtain $4.1 million in loans.
https://nypost.com/2019/03/25/avenat...n-scheme-case/
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Originally Posted by Common
