While serving his sentence for attempting to extort Nike, Michael Avenatti was convicted in February 2022 of stealing $300,000 from former client Stormy Daniels. Daniels had been paid $800,000 for a tell-all book, and while acting as her lawyer, Avenatti intercepted the funds and pocketed $300,000. He was convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, and faced 20 years in prison. Fortunately for Avenatti, he avoided a lengthy sentence and was given four years in prison in June 2022, which amounted to him serving an additional two and a half years behind bars after his Nike sentence. “I have destroyed my career, my relationships and my reputation and have done collateral damage to my family and my life,” Avenatti said at the time, per CNN.
A peculiar detail of the Daniels fraud case was that Avenatti decided to represent himself in court. “He fires his defense team so he can cross-examine me himself,” the former adult film star recalled to VladTV in June 2022. “And that went on for five and a half hours where he basically tried everything to discredit me,” Daniels added. Part of Avenatti’s court strategy in the fraud case was to prove that Daniels was “crazy.” He even had her prescription medication history submitted as evidence, but the “Full Disclosure” author had never been on any serious medication, and his strategy proved baseless.
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Not long after, it was revealed that Avenatti had defrauded multiple clients, which led to him being given major jail time.
