NEW YORK CITY, NY – Apparently, disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti has a bit more time to serve behind bars. He was reportedly sentenced to four years in prison for stealing approximately $300,00 from his former client, Stormy Daniels.

Avenatti has not exactly had the best of luck as of late, as he’s currently serving a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence that he was sentenced to back in July of 2021 after he attempted to extort Nike for roughly $25 million by threatening to release bad press on the company lest they paid up.

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But obviously, the Nike fiasco was not the end of Avenatti’s legal problems, as the very client he used to boost his career – Stormy Daniels – was a victim of Avenatti’s unlawful practices.

Many remember Avenatti’s rise to fame (or notoriety, depending on how you look at things) when he filed a lawsuit on behalf of Daniels in March of 2018 in an effort to invalidate a 2016 non-disclosure agreement relating to a purported affair with Donald Trump back in 2006.

And Avenatti really milked the Trump/Daniels drama, racking in a combined 108 appearances between CNN and MSNBC between March 7th and May 10th of 2018. But apparently, media appearances were not all Avenatti was milking while in cahoots with Daniels.

The disgraced attorney helped Daniels land an $800,000 book deal regarding the Trump allegations but had fabricated a letter made to look as though it came from Daniels that redirected $300,000 from the advance on the book deal that went straight into his pocket.

During the wire fraud and identity theft ploy trial, Avenatti has represented himself in court. When Daniels took the stand, he worked to discredit her by bringing up Daniels’ infatuation with paranormal topics and even asserted he was entitled to taking the $300,000 for the work he’d done for her.

Yet, there was one pesky issue with him claiming the money rightfully belonged to him – namely, it was never in the contract regarding the book deal.

This past February, Avenatti was found guilty of one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft, where he could’ve faced as much as 20 years behind bars alone for the wire fraud charge.

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However, he was doled out a four-year sentence that will run concurrently in part with his active sentence for attempting to extort Nike, with District Judge Jesse Furman informing Avenatti that once the Nike sentence is completed, he’ll still have another 30 months to serve behind bars.

But the legal troubles are still far from over for Avenatti, as he’s going to trial this July in California for allegedly embezzling $10 million in various settlement funds from five different past clients and charges relating to tax and bankruptcy fraud.

This piece was written by Gregory Hoyt on June 2, 2022. It originally appeared in RedVoiceMedia.com and is used by permission.

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