one more problem for Avenatti

https://www.edhat.com/news/law...ued-in-santa-barbara

Two former clients of attorney Michael Avenatti filed a lawsuit Monday against him, his law firms, and lawyers associated with him in Santa Barbara Superior Court.

The lawsuit alleges professional negligence and breach of fiduciary duty over the mishandling of a settlement, misuse of settlement funds, and conflicts of interest. It was filed by Cappello & Noël LLP on behalf of William Parrish and Timothy Fitzgibbons.

In 2006, Parrish and Fitzgibbons (plaintiffs) left their employment at the Goleta-based FLIR Systems to start a new business venture and were subsequently sued by FLIR. The former employees won the trial against FLIR and retained three law firms, including Eagan Avenatti LLP and Stoll, Nussbaum & Polakov (SNP) to sue their former employer for malicious prosecution.

The case settled and the parties and lawyers all agreed that the settlement funds would be wired directly into the Eagan Avenatti (EA) trust account. Robert Stoll of SNP objected to the deposit of settlement funds, including the attorney fee portion, into EA's trust account, and EA did not advise the plaintiffs that they faced potential legal exposure from Stoll and SNP.

The complaint alleges that without the plaintiff's knowledge, Avenatti and EA transferred the settlement funds from the EA trust account into the EA operating account, refused to pay Stoll any attorney fees, and, instead, spent the money.

In a very layered and complicated case, the plaintiffs were then represented by Avenatti and his firm over the mishandling of the settlement after Stoll sued to collect his fees. The lawsuit alleges that Avenatti and his firm failed to give competent advice, failed to disclose numerous conflicts of interest, failed to keep the clients informed of significant developments, failed to account for the missing funds, and failed to return the plaintiffs' complete files after being terminated in late summer 2018.

The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory and punitive damages and attorneys' fees.

Good luck collecting the $2 million. He’s bankrupt.

“A California judge has slapped down embattled attorney Michael Avenatti’s attempts to dodge his debts of more than $2 million in unpaid child and spousal support in a new ruling, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Avenatti, 48, vehemently denied the claims saying he owes nothing to his wife and filed motions last month asking an Orange County judge to toss the $2,053,332 writ.
……
But in a judgment handed down last week, Judge Nathan Vu confirmed the multi-million debt and, besides some minor adjustments of the interest stacked on top of his debt, dismissed Avenatti’s legal arguments.

https://mol.im/a/6902943

Apparently this swindler owned a couple of jets....but not anymore..


Feds seize $4.5 million Avenatti plane amid tax scandal

https://www.foxnews.com/us/fed...ane-amid-tax-scandal

It is getting hard to keep track of the charges, but these were announced today

https://abc7.com/irs-justice-t...st-avenatti/5243249/

The Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service on Thursday announced the filing of a 36-count grand jury indictment against Michael Avenatti, the attorney famous for representing porn actress Stormy Daniels in legal battles against President Donald Trump.

The indictment filed against attorney Michael Avenatti alleges he stole millions of dollars from clients, didn't pay his taxes, committed bank fraud and lied in bankruptcy proceedings. Avenatti said Thursday he will plead not guilty.

The new charges say he embezzled from a paraplegic man and four other clients and shuffled money between several accounts to deceive them.

The charges also say Avenatti pocketed payroll taxes from employees of the Tully's coffee chain that he owned.

Avenatti appeared in a Santa Ana courtroom April 1 after being charged with filing bogus tax returns to fraudulently obtain $4 million in loans from a Mississippi bank and pocketing $1.6 million that belonged to a client.

The high-profile lawyer had been arrested a week earlier in New York, where he was charged in a separate case with trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike. He posted $300,000 bail and said he expects to be exonerated.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
It is getting hard to keep track of the charges, but these were announced today

https://abc7.com/irs-justice-t...st-avenatti/5243249/

The Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service on Thursday announced the filing of a 36-count grand jury indictment against Michael Avenatti, the attorney famous for representing porn actress Stormy Daniels in legal battles against President Donald Trump.

The indictment filed against attorney Michael Avenatti alleges he stole millions of dollars from clients, didn't pay his taxes, committed bank fraud and lied in bankruptcy proceedings. Avenatti said Thursday he will plead not guilty.

The new charges say he embezzled from a paraplegic man and four other clients and shuffled money between several accounts to deceive them.

The charges also say Avenatti pocketed payroll taxes from employees of the Tully's coffee chain that he owned.

Avenatti appeared in a Santa Ana courtroom April 1 after being charged with filing bogus tax returns to fraudulently obtain $4 million in loans from a Mississippi bank and pocketing $1.6 million that belonged to a client.

The high-profile lawyer had been arrested a week earlier in New York, where he was charged in a separate case with trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike. He posted $300,000 bail and said he expects to be exonerated.

Easy to see why so many felt he was a leader in the DNC.

quote:

Apparently this swindler owned a couple of jets....but not anymore..

Welcome to steerage, bitch.

this article explains some of the confusion about the multiple charges

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u...t-california-n993391

The lawyer was arrested March 25 on some of the counts, but the 61-page indictment filed by a federal grand jury late Wednesday " significantly broadens the scope of the case ," according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California.

The criminal charges in the indictment "are all linked to one another because money generated from one set of crimes appears in other sets — typically in the form of payments to lull victims and to prevent Mr. Avenatti’s financial house of cards from collapsing,” said U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna.

The charge involving the paraplegic client says Avenatti drained a $4 million settlement paid out to the client by Los Angeles County, using "portions of the settlement to finance his coffee business or pay personal expenses,"

Avenatti is also accused of embezzling millions of dollars from four other clients, using the money to fund the purchase of a jet, his coffee business and his own legal and personal expenses.

He used some clients' money to pay previous clients he had swindled and "pay some of his law firm’s bankruptcy creditors, including the IRS," according to the U.S. attorney's office.

Nineteen tax-related charges against Avenatti include accusations he has not filed personal income tax returns since 2010, and didn't file some tax returns for his two law firms. He is also accused of failing to pay more than $3 million in payroll taxes while he was the owner Global Baristas US LLC, which operated Tully’s Coffee.

"Avenatti allegedly attempted to obstruct the IRS’s efforts to collect the taxes" by lying and directing funds from credit card transactions at Tully's coffee shops to a new bank account, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Two bank fraud charges against Avenatti allege he secured bank loans by submitting tax returns that had never been filed with the IRS and by claiming that the Eagan Avenatti law firm had $508,200 in its operating account when it had only a little more than $43,000

Avenatti is also charged with four counts of bankruptcy fraud for allegedly failing to report all of Eagan Avenatti’s accounts receivable, under penalty of perjury, and falsely testifying under oath during a bankruptcy hearing by denying the firm had received more than $1.3 million in fees when it had.

If Avenatti is convicted of all 36 counts, he could face a potential 335 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. attorney's office. He is currently free on $300,000 bond, and is scheduled to be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana on April 29.

quote:

If Avenatti is convicted of all 36 counts, he could face a potential 335 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. attorney's office. He is currently free on $300,000 bond, and is scheduled to be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana on April 29.

They had better keep a close eye on him... he may want to disappear between now and April 29.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
They had better keep a close eye on him... he may want to disappear between now and April 29.

That would be just fine with me. I'm serious. Just fucking disappear, asshole.

This dude is such a congenital weasel that I seriously wonder at what point shit has gotten real for him? Does the possibility of 335 years in prison pierce his consciousness - or is he still assuming he can shuck and jive his way to a good place? Truly a bit of a study. Strong psychopathic tendencies.

Maybe he could go to prison on the buddy system and take a few bus loads of liberal career politicians with him.

This article explains one of the client accounts that Avenatti stole from to buy the jet.

https://www.latimes.com/politi...-20190421-story.html

When Hassan Whiteside of the Miami Heat wired $2.75 million to Michael Avenatti in January 2017, the pro basketball player intended most of the money to go to his former girlfriend, Alexis Gardner.

Avenatti was Gardner’s attorney. An actress and barista, she’d hired him just a few weeks before to negotiate a settlement of a potential lawsuit against Whiteside. It’s unclear what she would have alleged. Avenatti quickly struck a $3-million deal, and the $2.75 million was Whiteside’s first payment.

Avenatti, prosecutors say, was entitled to take just over $1 million in legal fees, leaving the rest for Gardner.

a few weeks of work and he gets 33% of a 3 million settlement

Instead, they allege, Avenatti hid Whiteside’s payment from her and immediately took $2.5 million to buy a share of a private jet.

Gardner’s settlement with Whiteside — Avenatti never gave her a copy — required the basketball player to pay her $2.75 million in January 2017, then the remaining $250,000 on Nov. 1, 2020, the indictment says.

Whiteside wired the $2.75 million on Jan. 25, 2017, to a client trust account at Eagan Avenatti. Rather than taking his fee of about $1 million, plus expenses , Avenatti kept all the money and misrepresented the settlement’s terms to Gardner, according to the indictment.

He told her the initial payment was entirely for attorney fees, and her money would be split into 96 monthly payments over the next eight years, prosecutors say.



The full story of Avenatti’s alleged embezzlement from Gardner came to light in bank records and in the April 10 indictment of the Los Angeles lawyer by a federal grand jury in Santa Ana.

The 36-count indictment, which spans an array of alleged financial crimes, identifies Whiteside as “Individual 1” and Gardner as “Client 2.”

Gardner is one of five clients whose money prosecutors say Avenatti stole.

The grand jury alleges that Avenatti embezzled about $4 million from another client, Michelle Phan, a makeup artist with 8.8 million YouTube followers

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1 mil fee plus expenses. So Avenatti charged over 33%

average hourly rates billed by attorneys at his firm are $ 688

What a scumbag, he's worse than a common street criminal. To take advantage of a client that is relying on a settlement and has likely borrowed against those expected funds makes it ten times worse.

I hope they bury him under the jailhouse, either way he'll still have to face his maker at some point and will receive his final judgement.

The fee isn't necessarilly out of line for what looks like a contingency arrangement (I seriously doubt that a barista, even in LA, can afford anything like the firm's hourly fees). Playing games with the client's money, though, is a nuclear no-no.

We can only hope this arrogant asshole represents himself in court...that always ends well.

On another note, given the magnitude of his crimes), how is he not being considered an extreme flight risk? He should be wearing a fancy new bracelet on his leg and checking in every day of the week.

I wonder who'll play him in the movie.....

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
I wonder who'll play him in the movie.....

Alec Baldwin. It takes an ass to play an ass.

OKCGene for the win!

quote:

Originally posted by gearhounds:
We can only hope this arrogant asshole represents himself in court...that always ends well.

On another note, given the magnitude of his crimes), how is he not being considered an extreme flight risk? He should be wearing a fancy new bracelet on his leg and checking in every day of the week.

Psychologically he is too addicted to money and fame. He would be miserable hidden away in a third world country. Avenatti probably realizes this and would rather take his chance in court. Being the good liar that he is, Avenatti has probably convinced himself he will get off with a slap of the wrist.