On March 24, 2019, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged Michael Avenatti—lawyer to presidential accuser Stephanie Clifford (a/k/a Stormy Daniels)—with federal extortion and conspiracy charges. According to the DOJ, Avenatti threatened to expose Nike’s involvement in a college basketball corruption scheme akin to the Adidas-related scheme that, in Fall 2017, resulted in federal indictments of 10 coaches, shoe company executives and player advisers.

The criminal complaint against Avenatti charges that he threatened to make certain damaging revelations about Nike on the eve of Nike’s quarterly earnings call and the annual NCAA basketball tournament, which he predicted would severely injure Nike’s reputation (and its stock price). According to the complaint, Avenatti promised to refrain from holding a press conference disclosing this damaging information if Nike paid Avenatti’s client (a high school basketball coach) $1.5 million, and also agreed to hire Avenatti to conduct an internal investigation of Nike for a pre-set fee of many millions more.

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