If irony had a taste, it would be delicious. The same man who went on CNN night after night and who told us that President Trump was a criminal, may spend the rest of his life in prison with all the charges being lodged against him and he will lose his law license the moment the first conviction comes through.
He is accused of trying to extort $20 million from Nike, stealing settlement money belonging to a client and soon will be charged with income tax evasion, even though he made millions of dollars. I’m lovin’ it.
Big tax problems: Avenatti has made a lot of money over the years. He reported $1.9 million in personal income in 2009 and $1.2 million in 2010.
Problem is, he kept it all for himself, leaving more than $800,000 in owed taxes unpaid for those two years. After that, we don’t know how much money Avenatti made—because he stopped filing taxes altogether after 2010.
Michael Avenatti earned millions of dollars as an attorney and had a habit of making six-figure purchases—all while failing to pay his sizable tax bills and, eventually, ceasing to file taxes at all, according to the Los Angeles Times.
That doesn’t even account for earnings from his law firm. According to the Los Angeles Times, Avenatti made bank deposits totaling about $18 million in personal income and $38 million in business income.
In 2015, Avenatti purchased the Seattle-based coffee chain Tully’s for $9 million dollars. The company was withholding tax money from employee paychecks, but not sending any of it to the IRS.
He wasn’t paying, but he was spending: The Los Angeles Times cited some big-time purchases by Avenatti while he was ducking the IRS, such as a $217,000 shopping trip at Neiman Marcus, $117,000 at a luxury watch store, and $277,236 at Porsche dealerships. He sometimes used business funds for his personal expenses.