Michael Avenatti Charged With Extortion and Wire Fraud

On Wednesday, a grand jury charged disgraced pornstar lawyer Michael Avenatti with extortion and wire fraud. The revised indictment dropped a conspiracy charge against Avennati but added an additional count of wire fraud. According to the indictment, Avenatti threatened to hold a damaging press conference on the eve of Nike's quarterly earnings report and the start of the NCAA's men's college basketball tournament unless Nike agreed to pay Avenatti around $25 million in payments. Avenatti said he was representing a youth basketball coach who had evidence that Nike employees had concealed unauthorized payments to families of top high school basketball players. The U.S. Attorney's Office had recently opened a criminal investigation into a competitor of Nike's for similarly concealing payments to families of high school athletes. -- More...