Disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti has been sentenced to four years in prison for defrauding his former client, Stormy Daniels.
Mr Avenatti was convicted in February of cheating Ms Daniels, an adult film actress, out of almost $300,000 in proceeds from her memoir. Mr Avenatti had represented the actress in multiple high-profile, drawn-out legal battles against former president Donald Trump, with whom Ms Daniels claimed she had had an affair. (Mr Trump denies this.)
At his sentencing, Mr Avenatti expressed remorse for his actions.
“I have destroyed my career, my relationships and my reputation,” the lawyer told US District Judge Jesse Furman, according to Reuters.
Prosecutors say that in 2018 and 2019, Ms Daniels repeatedly asked Mr Avenatti why she had not yet received advance payments for her book, Full Disclosure, totalling $297,500. Mr Avenatti allegedly told her the publisher hadn’t paid them yet. Later, Ms Daniels says she learned Mr Avenatti had secretly diverted the money to an account that he controlled.
“I felt very betrayed and stupid,” Ms Daniels testified. “Michael had been lying and stealing from me.”
On 4 February, Mr Avenatti was found guilty of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The latter charge required a sentence of at least two years.
The lawyer is also currently serving a 30-month prison sentence for his extortion attempt against the sportswear company Nike, which he was convicted of in 2020.
Mr Avenatti will serve 18 months of his new sentence concurrently with the Nike sentence. In total, he is expected to spend five years in prison.
Speaking just before the sentencing, Mr Avenatti tearfully told the judge he had “disappointed scores of people and failed in a cataclysmic way,” according to the Associated Press.
But prosecutors did not believe he was truly sorry.
“The defendant certainly had every right to defend himself at trial,” the prosecution wrote in a sentencing submission. “But he is not entitled to a benefit for showing remorse, having done so only when convenient and only after seeking to humiliate his victim at a public trial.”
