(NEW YORK) — Disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti was sentenced on Monday to 14 years in federal prison for defrauding his clients and for obstructing IRS efforts to collect payroll taxes from his coffee business.
He was also ordered to pay $7 million in restitution.
The sentence will run consecutively with his combined five-year sentence in New York for stealing from Stormy Daniels and for extorting Nike.
The punishment, imposed by a federal judge in Los Angeles, is a few years shy of what prosecutors sought.
Avenatti pleaded guilty in June to stealing money from clients, including one who is a paraplegic, and one count of obstructing collection of federal payroll taxes from his coffee business.
Avenatti skyrocketed to celebrity status in 2018 alongside Daniels, his then-client and an adult film star, who filed multiple lawsuits — unsuccessfully — against then-President Donald Trump.
For a time, the brash lawyer was a fixture on cable news shows and the topic of flattering magazine pieces. Reporters asked him about his skin-care routine and Tom Ford suits while he and Daniels posed for photographer Annie Leibovitz.
Avenatti also briefly dipped his toe into the presidential candidacy pool, dining with potential donors and forming a political action group to accept donations.
Then a series of charges revealed a series of crimes — derailing his career and resulting in lengthy prison terms.
In the federal case carrying the 14-year sentence, “Mr. Avenatti received money on behalf of clients into client trust accounts, misappropriated the money and lied to the clients about receiving the money,” U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said in 2019.
An indictment against Avenatti stated that he stole millions of dollars from clients after they received settlements in various cases. Those funds were supposed to only flow through Avenatti but stayed with him instead, according to prosecutors.
One of the clients who said he was never paid was Geoffrey Johnson, who is paraplegic. Johnson won a $4 million settlement against Los Angeles County in 2015. Prosecutors said that money was paid to Avenatti but was never given to Johnson.
Authorities said that Avenatti told Johnson the money was not yet available and that he was “advancing” Johnson money to pay rent. Yet the entire time, according to prosecutors, Avenatti had the $4 million and was using it for personal and business expenses.
“Mr. Johnson is the victim of an appalling fraud perpetrated by the one person who owned him loyalty and honest most of all: his own lawyer,” Johnson’s attorney Josh Robbins told ABC News in 2019.
ABC News’ Lucien Bruggeman, Stacy Chen, Kaitlyn Folmer, Josh Margolin and Alex Stone contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A Manhattan jury began deliberations Monday on whether to convict former President Donald Trump’s namesake real estate company of criminal tax fraud.
The deliberations began Monday morning following lengthy instructions on the law by Judge Juan Merchan, who reminded jurors that they pledged to set aside their personal opinions about Trump himself.
“You promised the attorneys for the defendants, the prosecution, and this court that you would set aside any personal opinions you may have about Donald Trump and his family,” Merchan said. “You also stated that you understood that Donald Trump and his family are not on trial here.”
Two entities of the Trump Organization — the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation — are on trial for paying the personal expenses of some executives without reporting them as income, and for compensating them as independent contractors instead of full-time employees.
The jury sent one note to the judge asking about the elements required to prove conspiracy, before deliberations ended for the day. The jury is scheduled to reconvene on Tuesday.
Although Trump is not a defendant, his name came up repeatedly during the trial, and the jury saw checks he signed and memos he endorsed. The former president has publicly denied any wrongdoing.
Defense attorneys asked witnesses roughly 60 times about Trump’s knowledge of the tax scheme that his company is charged with, as they sought to show that Trump was in the dark about the fraud being committed by his top executives, primarily Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer who pleaded guilty in August to charges that he skirted taxes on nearly $2 million in company-provided perks that included the rent on his Manhattan apartment, the leases on cars for himself and his wife, and tuition for his grandchildren.
Defense attorney Michael van der Veen said in his closing statement Friday that jurors “heard no evidence in this case that Mr. Trump or any of his children were aware of anything improper.”
But prosecutors contended that Trump explicitly sanctioned tax fraud when he signed off on part of the scheme.
“This whole narrative that Donald Trump is blissfully ignorant is just not true,” assistant district attorney Josh Steinglass said during his closing statement.
Prosecutors believe the Trump Organization is guilty because the arrangements that Weisselberg and other company executives made to evade taxes included some intent to help the company pay less in salaries, bonuses and payroll taxes.
The defense argued the executives never intended to benefit the company and that the scheme the executives hatched was motivated solely by personal greed.
The distinction is important because the judge told jurors that the Trump Organization is only guilty if a high managerial agent of the company acted in behalf of the company and within the scope of his employment.
“An agent’s acts are not in behalf of the corporation if they were undertaken solely to advance the agent’s own interests,” Merchan said. “If the agent’s acts were taken merely for personal gain, they were not in behalf of the corporation.”
The Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation are each charged with scheme to defraud, conspiracy, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records.
A conviction would carry fines of up to $1.7 million. But collateral consequences of a conviction may be more significant to Trump, who is seeking a second term in the White House. Banks could call in loans and business partners could cancel contracts if their internal policies prevent them from doing business with felons.
Even absent a conviction, the trial revealed potentially embarrassing details about Trump, including that he reported nearly $1 billion in operating losses over a two-year period in 2009 and 2010.
Trump’s outside accountant also testified that Trump reported losses each year for eight years from 2009 to 2018, some of the same years Trump was touting his business acumen on reality television and on the campaign trail.
(NEW YORK) — A North Carolina couple are calling a state trooper their “angel” and a hero for helping save their daughter’s life when she stopped breathing due to RSV.
Victoria O’Neal told “Good Morning America” her 9-week-old triplet daughters first started to get sick last Sunday, and by Tuesday, her daughter Amelia’s condition had grown worse.
“At 1:00 when I went to feed them, she just sounded so weak and sick and it freaked me out,” O’Neal recounted. “So I called [my fiancé] Derrick, told him to come home, asked him to take her to the hospital.”
O’Neal said she asked her fiancé Derrick Stroud to take Amelia to the children’s hospital in Greenville, North Carolina, about 34 miles northeast of their home in Kinston. “It’s where they were born,” O’Neal said.
When Stroud got the call at work, he rushed home and wasted no time getting his daughter out the door. However, he was stopped on the way to the hospital after being pulled over for speeding.
Stroud described that moment as divine intervention.
“As I’m rushing to the hospital, it’s almost like God placed the trooper and the ambulance within 2 miles of us when we got pulled because as I was going to the hospital, the trooper pulled me at about 100 miles an hour,” Stroud told “GMA.” “When he pulled me over, I was frantically hanging out the window, letting him know that my baby was having problems at that time breathing.”
That person who pulled Stroud over was Trooper Matthew Brown of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, who recounted the unusual sight to “GMA.”
“I had an SUV coming up behind me at a really high rate of speed, four-way flashers going, which I knew was kind of odd because most folks, if they’re gonna be speeding like that are trying not to get attention rather than having their four ways on,” Brown recalled. “When I got up to the driver … he was visibly distraught and upset. He said he was on his way to the hospital, which confused me because he had already passed the exit to go to the local hospital, which would be the hospital in Kinston. And when I asked him that, he said his daughter was having trouble breathing and he was taking her to the hospital in Greenville, which was about another 30 minutes away from where we were at.”
Brown, a state trooper since 2017 and a twin himself, told “GMA” he was previously a firefighter EMT and trained in emergency medical services.
“I opened the door and turned her towards me, I realized that she was having extreme difficulty breathing, had paradoxical breathing going on, which is basically where the chest and the stomach are actually going off each other. It’s just the obvious sign of infants struggling to breathe and her lips and face were starting to get some cyanosis, which is that blue color,” Brown said.
Brown said he got Amelia out of her car seat, started taking her vital signs and patting her on the back to wake her back up, which Stroud said he observed.
“I was just trying to get something out of her and she finally did come out and open her eyes and start interacting and I could tell whenever she started breathing more normally that she was still having some kind of, something going on with her lungs because her lung sounds weren’t very clear,” Brown said. “I knew RSV has been a really prevalent thing going on and actually told the father … ‘I would be surprised if she doesn’t have RSV.’ “
Brown then called in a medical unit backup and an ambulance quickly arrived on scene to transport Amelia to the local hospital in Kinston.
According to her parents, Amelia was later transferred to Maynard Children’s Hospital in Greenville. Doctors confirmed Amelia did have RSV and treated her with additional oxygen. After three days, Amelia was well enough to be discharged while her sisters took their turns getting checked out at the hospital for their RSV symptoms as well.
O’Neal and Stroud told “GMA” they’re grateful for Brown’s quick actions and help.
“It’s very crazy how everything works because like I say, for him to pull us over with triplets, and he’s a twin himself expecting twins and everybody was just in the right spot at the right time. It’s just really a blessing and I just wanted everybody to know that he is the reason that [we] still have Amelia,” Stroud said.
“He was an angel or a hero,” O’Neal added. “I don’t want to imagine the level of panic I would have had if that had been me, if I had been the trooper and I had pulled someone over and there was a little baby turning blue in the backseat, like to have been able to keep a level head and do what he needed to do to help her, it’s just amazing and I’m so grateful to him.”
Brown said he was just doing his job that day. “Part of the reason that I joined the highway patrol was so I would be able to be out there and have access to do this kind of stuff and help people,” he said.
“I’m a father myself and I can understand what he was trying to do. He was just not going about it necessarily the right way. But I mean, anybody who has a kid is going to do what they think they need to do to try to get it taken care of,” Brown added. “So I wasn’t going to penalize him for that. Plus, I wanted him to go to the hospital with the baby so I had him go with the medical unit.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Homeland Security has delayed the deadline for air travelers to have a REAL ID another two years, the agency announced Monday.
The program, which was to begin in May 2023, will now not go into effect until May 7, 2025.
This is the third time the deadline has been extended.
The house where four University if Idaho students were found dead on Nov. 13, 2022. – Heather Roberts/ABC News
(MOSCOW, Idaho) — The two University of Idaho roommates who survived a mysterious quadruple homicide in their off-campus house are speaking out for the first time.
Roommates Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, and Xana Kernodle, 20, as well as Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death in the girls’ off-campus house in the early hours of Nov. 13. No suspects have been identified.
“They all lit up any room they walked into and were gifts to this world. I wish every day that I could give them all one last hug and say how much I loved them,” one of the roommates said in a statement read by a pastor at a memorial service over the weekend.
She said Mogen, who was her “big sister” in the Pi Beta Phi sorority, was the older sister she “always wanted.”
“You always gave me the best advice,” she said.
The second surviving roommate said “Maddie and Kaylee were like second moms to me” and “changed the way I look at life.”
Goncalves and Mogen were “the inseparable duo,” she said, describing Mogen as compassionate and happy-go-lucky and Goncalves as strong and driven.
Chapin and Kernodle were the “perfect pair” who had an “unstoppable, loving relationship,” she said.
“They both would look at each other with so much love,” she said.
She added, “I know somewhere Xana and Ethan are together keeping each other company watching us and telling us it’s OK.”
The two surviving roommates — who police said are not suspects — likely slept through the attacks, according to authorities. They were on the ground floor while the four students killed were on the second and third floors. Police have not identified the surviving roommates.
The murders likely took place around 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., according to officials. In the morning, the two roommates called friends over because they thought one of the victims on the second floor had passed out and wasn’t waking up, police said.
At 11:58 a.m., a 911 call from one of the roommate’s phones requested help for an unconscious person, police said. The 911 caller’s identity has not been released but police said “multiple people talked with the 911 dispatcher.”
Responding officers found the four victims on the second and third floors, police said.
Police said they do not believe anyone at the house at the time of the 911 call was involved.
Police urge anyone with information to upload digital media to fbi.gov/moscowidaho or contact the tip line at tipline@ci.moscow.id.us or 208-883-7180.
(LOS ANGELES) — Jury selection in the trial of Tory Lanez is set to begin on Monday as the rapper faces charges for allegedly shooting and injuring hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion on July 12, 2020 in the Hollywood Hills.
Opening statements and testimony are expected to begin on Dec. 12, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office told ABC News.
According to prosecutors, Lanez “personally inflicted great bodily injury” upon Megan Thee Stallion, whose legal name is Megan Pete, after the two got into an argument while riding in an SUV in the Hollywood Hills, resulting in an injury in her foot for which she received medical treatment.
Lanez, a popular rapper whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, was charged in Oct. 2020 with one felony count each of assault with a semiautomatic firearm (personal use of a firearm), and carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle, according to charging documents obtained by ABC News. “Personal use of a firearm” is not a separate charge but a sentencing enhancement linked to the first count that increases Lanez’ possible sentence.
Lanez pleaded not guilty on both counts. If he is convicted as charged, he faces up to 22 years and 8 months in prison, according to prosecutors. ABC News has reached out to his attorney Shawn Holley for additional comment.
Megan Thee Stallion, a Grammy-winning rapper who is known for chart-topping hits like “Savage” and “WAP” with Cardi B, first spoke out about the shooting in a since-deleted July 15, 2020 Instagram post, but she did not name Lanez as her alleged shooter until months later and said that she had initially tried to protect him.
At the time, news of Lanez’s arrest sparked rumors about his involvement in the incident. Although Megan received an outpouring of support, she was also subjected to a barrage of attacks on social media from fans jumping to his defense and casting doubt about her injury.
Megan named Lanez as her alleged shooter in an emotional Instagram Live post on Aug. 21, 2022, saying she initially “tried to spare” him.
“Yes … Tory shot me. You shot me and you got your publicist and your people going to these blogs lying,” she said in the emotional video. “Stop lying. Why lie? I don’t understand.”
‘Protect Black women’: How Megan Thee Stallion’s story became part of a movement
Before he was charged, Lanez denied shooting Megan in a lyric on his album, “Daystar,” released on Sept. 25, 2020.
“I ain’t do it,” he claims on the the album’s opening song, “Money Over Fallouts,” and claims, “Megan people tryna frame me for a shootin’.”
Megan had said in the Instagram Live video that she initially didn’t report getting shot to police or that they had a gun in the car — which became a part of the defense’s line of questioning during pretrial hearings — because amid a string of police-involved shootings of unarmed Black men and women in the U.S., she had a fear and mistrust of police.
Los Angeles Police Detective Ryan Stogner testified during pretrial hearings that Megan was initially hesitant to report the incident to police because as a Black woman, she feared the police and was worried of the force they could use against Lanez, who is a Black man, according to court transcripts obtained by ABC News.
“She was afraid that there had been recent police shootings, and she described her concern for the police possibly shooting the defendant since he had just committed a shooting,” Stogner said, according to the transcripts.
Since sharing her story Megan has faced intense public vitriol and attacks on social media, with fans questioning her account, accusing her of lying and even making jokes about her injury.
“Even as a victim, I have been met with skepticism and judgment,” Megan wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times published on Oct. 13, 2020. “…There’s not much room for passionate advocacy if you are a Black woman.”
This case has sparked intense debates over society’s treatment of women and Megan’s account of the incident — and the intense public vitriol she faced after sharing her story — has spotlighted the Protect Black Women movement, which addresses the two-front battle of sexism and racism that Black women experience in their own communities and in society at large.
Most recently, hip-hop star Drake prompted backlash when he appeared to target Megan and cast doubt on her account of the shooting in a controversial lyric on his latest album, “Her Loss.”
“This b—- lie about getting shots, but she still a stallion / She don’t even get the joke but she still smiling,” Drake raps in the song, “Circo Loco,” featuring 21 Savage, which appears on his newest album, “Her Loss.”
While some fans have suggested on social media that the lyric could be referencing plastic surgery, others have accused Drake of questioning Megan’s allegation that she was shot in the feet by Lanez.
“Despite the irrefutable evidence that Megan was a victim of gun violence, the ignorant continue to support her attacker,” Megan’s attorney, Alex Spiro, told ABC News in a statement amid backlash over Drake’s lyric.
Drake has not addressed the backlash in connection to his lyric publicly and his representatives declined to comment for this story.
Megan, who has used her platform to spotlight the stories of Black women, has become one of the most visible voices in the movement.
“… it’s ridiculous that some people think the simple phrase ‘Protect Black Women’ is controversial. We deserve to be protected as human beings,” she wrote in her October 2020 op-ed.
“We are entitled to our anger about a laundry list of mistreatment and neglect that we suffer,” she also wrote.
(WASHINGTON) — Vandals are suspected of causing a major power outage across a North Carolina county that plunged about 45,000 customers into darkness amid freezing temperatures, according to authorities.
Evidence of sabotage was found at multiple electrical substations following the massive blackout Saturday night, prompting the Moore County Sheriff’s Office to investigate the incident as a “criminal occurrence.”
The power outages began at about 7 p.m. Saturday, and thousands of Duke Energy customers remained without electricity on Sunday after enduring freezing temperatures overnight.
“As utility companies began responding to the different substations, evidence was discovered that indicated that intentional vandalism had occurred at multiple sites,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
No arrests have been announced.
Duke Energy officials said utility crews are working to restore power by 10 p.m. Sunday. Several law enforcement agencies in Moore County were providing security as crews worked to repair the damage.
A spokesperson for Duke Energy told ABC News the outages are likely to extend beyond Sunday as crews work to fix what were described as “indications of public interference and vandalism.”
The sheriff’s office has scheduled a news conference for Sunday afternoon to update the public.
Mike Cameron, Southern Pines’ assistant town manager and fire chief, told the Raleigh News and Observer that Duke Energy officials informed him that two substations were hit with gunfire.
“Everything that I’m understanding is that it’s not an accidental cause,” Cameron told the newspaper.
Cameron said several vehicle accidents were being blamed on the power outage, including a multiple car crash that injured several people at an intersection in Southern Pines.
“The car wreck was totally because the stop lights were out,” Cameron told the News and Observer.
Moore Regional Hospital in Pinehurst, North Carolina, also lost power and was forced to switch to its backup generator, officials said.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said in a Twitter post that he has spoken with Duke Energy and state law enforcement officials about the crisis.
“They are investigating and working to return electricity to those impacted. The state is providing support as needed,” Cooper said.
(HOUSTON) — A 5-year-old boy is fighting for his life Sunday after being shot by an 8-year-old family friend inside a Houston home, police said.
Three people were detained for questioning following the shooting Saturday afternoon in the Trinity/Houston Gardens neighborhood in east Houston, police said.
Commander Jonathan Halliday of the Houston Police Department said at least one adult was present when the shooting occurred. Halliday said it was not immediately clear how the older boy got his hands on the gun.
Police officers went to the home around 12:30 p.m. Saturday after someone at the residence reported a shooting had just occurred there, Halliday said during a news conference.
“When they arrived, they learned that a 5-year-old had been shot one time reportedly by an 8-year-old,” Halliday said.
Before officers reached the home, the wounded child was taken by his father to Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in Houston, Halliday said. The boy was later flown by helicopter to Memorial Hermann Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition, Halliday said.
Halliday said the police department’s major assaults unit is investigating the shooting. He said no one has been arrested.
“We know that one adult was inside the house, but we’re not sure the total number of people,” Halliday said.
He said one of the children involved in the shooting was visiting residence when the incident occurred, adding, “they’re all family friends.”
He said the older boy who purportedly fired the gun suffered a laceration to his head following the shooting, but it was not clear how he was injured.
The shooting came a little over a month after an 8-year-old boy in a suburb of Houston was accidentally shot and killed by his 10-year-old brother, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities said the older boy was playing with a shotgun that went off inside their apartment, fatally striking the younger child in the torso.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, at least 299 children 11 years old or younger have been killed in shootings this year and another 648 have been injured.
(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — Four people, including two juveniles, were found dead in a Kentucky home in an apparent murder-suicide, police said.
Louisville officers responded around 8:45 a.m. local time Saturday to a call of a shooting “with multiple victims” at the home on the 4500 block of East Pages Lane, the Louisville Police Department said.
A man, woman and two juvenile females were found dead from apparent gunshot wounds inside the home, police said.
“Upon further investigation, it appears the adult male shot the adult female and the two juvenile females and then himself,” police said.
The victims and the shooter were related, according to police.
No further information has been released at this time.
The incident is under investigation by the police department’s homicide division.
(BOYD, Texas) — A FedEx driver confessed to abducting and killing 7-year-old Athena Strand after he delivered a package to her family’s home, Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin said at a press conference Friday night.
Police found Strand’s body southeast of Boyd, Texas. Digital evidence and interviews lead investigators to believe that Strand died within an hour of her abduction, according to Akin.
The driver, 31-year-old Taner Lynn Horner, is in jail and is being charged with capital murder and aggravated kidnapping. Horner, who is a resident of Lake Worth, is being held on a $1.5 million bond, according to Akin.
“The answers were not the answers that we would have hoped that we would have gotten. And we want to send our condolences out to the family of Athena Strand,” Akin said.
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Early on in their investigation, law enforcement officers knew that there was a FedEx delivery made at the same time Strand went missing, Akin said.
Horner, who was working as a contract FedEx driver, was not related to the family and did not know the family, Akin said.
Akin said law enforcement were able to get a confession from Horner, saying this has been one of the “toughest” investigations he has ever been involved in.
“Any time there’s a child that dies, it just hits you in your heart. You compare that child to your own children when they were at that age.”
Law enforcement officials said they were able to locate and find Horner through digital evidence and by partnering with FedEx.
Officials said they are unaware if Horner has a prior criminal history. The investigation is ongoing.
In a statement, FedEx expressed their condolences for Strand’s killing.
“Words cannot describe our shock and sorrow at the reports surrounding this tragic event. First and foremost, our thoughts are with the family during this most difficult time, and we continue to cooperate fully with the investigating authorities. At this time, any further questions should be directed to law enforcement,” FedEx said in a statement to ABC News.
