Michael Avenatti allegedly threatened Nike with a press conference to secure a $12 million investigator role and extorted payments

If the company didn't agree, Avenatti threatened an immediate press conference amid the NCAA basketball tournament about Nike making payments to youth players and their families, prosecutors said, an event he promised would snowball into more bad press and people coming forward with claims of recruiting malfeasance. In a recorded phone call, Avenatti told Nike attorneys that if the company tried to negotiate a cap on the investigation fees, he would go public and "take a billion dollars off your client's market cap," according to the complaint. At a March 21 meeting in New York, Avenatti allegedly continued to wield threats and press for the investigator role, at one point asking Nike attorneys if they'd ever had "the balls of a client in [their] hands." "Michael Avenatti may be the best lawyer in the world, according to Michael Avenatti, but there are appropriate courses of conduct to address an alleged wrongdoing, and I don't see how a demand of, 'Give me a job and pay me $12 million,' is ever going to make the client whole," Saland said. Adam Felsenstein, a white collar defense specialist at Gallet Dreyer & Berkey LLP, called the prosecutor's narrative "very extortive," particularly on the allegation regarding Avenatti's demand to be hired directly by the company. If that element of the charges is well-founded, it would effectively leave Avenatti without a "cloak of legitimacy" that he was acting solely to resolve a dispute on behalf of his client. The complaint "doesn't even refer to anticipated litigation. It's just, 'I'm going to reveal embarrassing information unless you pay me.' And once you start asking for money for yourself like that, you trend into extortion," Felsenstein said. Barry Temkin of Mound Cotton Wollan & Greengrass LLP similarly characterized the alleged scheme as "brazen," and voiced doubt Avenatti would be able to argue that he could pressure Nike to hire him as an investigator and stay within the legal lines. "He's going to them with a demand that they hire him even as he's threatening them with this press conference, which is screwed up on a lot of levels," he said. "It's ambulance chasing, which is unethical. It's a conflict of interest, and who would want to hire someone to do an internal investigation who is also shaking them down?" Avenatti was arrested Monday just after he announced via Twitter an impending press conference about a "major high school/college basketball scandal" and criminal conduct "at the highest levels of Nike." In an unrelated action, federal officials in California charged Avenatti on Monday with defrauding a client out of a $1.6 million settlement and lying to a Mississippi bank to secure loans for his firm and a coffee business. Avenatti was released in New York later in the day after posting a $300,000 bond. He is due in court on the California case on Monday. He did not respond to multiple requests HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_031777