Michael Avenatti says he will plead not guilty. I'd be surprised if he wasn't, because they seem to be throwing an awful lot of charges at him. If found guilty on all charges, he faces a maxium 335 years in prison. Via the Daily Beast:
The celebrity lawyer has been accused by California prosecutors of stealing $1.6 million from a client’s settlement to cover his own expenses, and defrauding a bank in Mississippi. He is also facing charges from federal prosecutors in New York, who have accused him of trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike Inc. Avenatti denies the charges, and was released from jail on a $300,000 bond after his arrest in New York.
“The case paints an ugly picture of lawless conduct and greed,” Nick Hanna, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said last month.
Avenatti didn't file tax returns for years and obstructed IRS efforts to collect millions in unpaid taxes from himself personally, and his Newport Beach law firm and Seattle-based coffee company, a California complaint against the lawyer alleges.
The complaint laid out how Avenatti allegedly spent the millions he kept from the IRS on luxe personal expenses, including watches, an “elite private action club,” and Porsches.
[...] The indictment also details how Avenatti allegedly hid a $4 million legal settlement in favor of a mentally ill paraplegic client, Geoffrey Johnson, and hid a $2.75 million settlement for another client. Avenatti then allegedly used the money to help pay for the purchase of a private jet, according to the Times.
