Demands & Recorded Exchanges?…
It’s also being reported that Avenatti demanded Nike hire him to conduct an internal investigation for the enormous salary.”:
Via TMZ- The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York says Avenatti was representing a client who was the coach of an AAU Youth Club basketball team.
Prosecutors say Avenatti gave Nike an option … don’t hire him but pay $22.5 million to resolve the dispute and buy his silence. The complaint says Avenatti claimed the AAU coach had evidence that one or more Nike employees had funded payments to the families of top high school basketball players and attempted to conceal those payments.
A phone call, which was recorded, was apparently the last straw. According to prosecutors involved in the case, Avenatti and Nike had a phone convo’ on March 20, 2019, in which Avenatti reportedly said:
“I’m not f**king around with this, and I’m not continuing to play games … you guys know enough now to know you’ve got a serious problem … So if you guys think that you know, we’re gonna negotiate a million five, and you’re gonna hire us to do an internal investigation, but it’s gonna be capped at 3 or 5 or 7 million dollars, like let’s just be done.”
Then came Avenatti’s phone threat, says prosecutors:
“I’ll go and I’ll go take 10 billion dollars off your client’s market cap. But I’m not f**king around.”
Then came video of a March 21st meeting between Michael Avenatti and Nike attorneys, according to the CA U.S. Attorney:
TMZ- In that meeting, Avenatti allegedly said, “If [Nike] wants to have one confidential settlement and we’re done, they can buy that for $22.5 million and we’re done.” During that same meeting, prosecutors say Avenatti set a March 25 deadline and said, “If this is not papered on Monday, we are done. I don’t want to hear about somebody on a bike trip. I don’t want to hear that … somebody’s grandmother passed away or … the dog ate my homework, I don’t want to hear — none of it is going to go anywhere unless somebody was killed in a plane crash.” Avenatti allegedly told Nike he had them by “the balls.”
