Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Michael Avenatti on Wednesday with fraud and aggravated identity theft for allegedly taking money that was supposed to be paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Avenatti is accused of misappropriating funds Daniels was supposed to get in a book deal while he represented Daniels in her legal battle against President Trump and his former, longtime attorney Michael Cohen.
Prosecutors alleged Avenatti forged Daniels’ signature on a document instructing her literary agent to divert money from the porn star to an account controlled by him, then spent the money on his own personal and business matters, including the lease of a Ferrari, hotels and airline tickets, and dry cleaning. He is accused of diverting nearly $300,000 to his own account.
Avenatti helped Daniels negotiate an $800,000 advance with her publisher and literary agent. She was to receive the advance in four payments for her memoir Full Disclosure, released in October. The publisher sent the first two payments, totaling $425,000, to Daniels’ agent, who passed the payments to Daniels after taking a fee. Avenatti is accused of embezzling the last two payments.
The lawyer said Tuesday he expected to be indicted in the next 48 hours and intended to fight the “bogus” and “legally baseless” allegations.
“No monies relating to Ms. Daniels were ever misappropriated or mishandled. She received millions of dollars worth of legal services and we spent huge sums in expenses,” he said in a tweet Wednesday before the charges were announced.
The new charges follow a slew of others Avenatti is already facing in New York and California. The 48-year-old lawyer was hit with charges in New York after he allegedly tried to extort Nike if the sportswear company did not pay him tens of millions of dollars for his silence. He is also facing separate charges of tax, wire, and bank fraud in California.
Avenatti rose to fame last year when he was hired by Daniels to represent her in a defamation lawsuit against Trump. A federal judge in California tossed out the lawsuit and ordered Daniels to reimburse Trump for legal fees.
Daniels and Avenatti announced they had parted ways in March. Avenatti claimed his law firm split with the porn star “for various reasons,” but Daniels later said she would have fired him if he had not resigned as her attorney.
Daniels previously hinted about potential legal actions, but did not clarify whether they would be directed at Trump or Avenatti. “It’s about to get real f—ing good,” she said in March.
“It pains me to not be able to share at this very moment,” she added as to why she couldn’t go further into detail about the situation with Avenatti.
