He is being charged with Wire and Bank Fraud. Seemingly he engaged in significant financial malfeasance on top of which most recently he attempted to extort NIKE for 20 million dollars threatening to damage the company’s reputation if the company did not agree to make multi-million dollar payments to Avenatti and a co-conspirator, as well as $1.5 million to a client of Avenatti’s. Avenatti supposed stated in a phone call with lawyers for NIKE that if his demands were not met "I’ll go take ten billion dollars off your client’s market cap ... I’m not f___ing around."