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Crime United States

SEC Accuses Actor of $690 Million Fraud Based on Fake Netflix Deal (bloomberg.com) 32

Posted by msmash from the ponzi-scheme dept.
Zachary Horwitz never made it big on the Sunset Strip -- there was the uncredited part in Brad Pitt's "Fury" and a host of roles in low-budget thrillers and horror flicks. But federal charges suggest he had acting talent, duping several financial firms out of hundreds of millions of dollars and enabling him to live the Hollywood dream after all. From a report: That meant chartered flights and a $6 million mansion -- replete with wine cellar and home gym. Horwitz even included a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, which retails for more than $200, as a gift to investors along with his company's "annual report."

The claims are outlined in legal documents that U.S. prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission released this week alleging Horwitz, 34, was running a massive Ponzi scheme. His scam: a made-up story that he had exclusive deals to sell films to Netflix and HBO. Dating back to 2014, the SEC said he raised a shocking $690 million in fraudulent funds. On Tuesday, Horwitz was arrested. Horwitz, who went by the screen name "Zach Avery," used fabricated contracts and fake emails to swindle at least five firms, according to the government. Investors were issued promissory notes through his firm 1inMM Capital to acquire the rights to movies that would be sold to Netflix and HBO for distribution in Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and other locations.
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SEC Accuses Actor of $690 Million Fraud Based on Fake Netflix Deal More

SEC Accuses Actor of $690 Million Fraud Based on Fake Netflix Deal

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  • There's no business like show business. Ask Mel Gibson.

  • Odd article for Slashdot. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday April 09, 2021 @09:47AM (#61255134)

    Is it just because Netflix has the word Net in it, it is considered a technology company that this would vaguely be considered a Tech news?
    It seems like he was just doing crappy criminal activity that he now got caught doing.

    What is next, that person using e-mail to promote a multi-level-marking scheme?

    • Indeed, apart from the Netflix association this has zero fuck to do with tech news and it doesn't matter to anyone except Zachary Horwitz and the SEC.

    • Is it just because Netflix has the word Net in it, it is considered a technology company that this would vaguely be considered a Tech news?

      I ask in all seriousness - are you really new here? Geeks like to watch movies plus Netflix does stream video, so that does actually make them a "tech" company. Netflix has been covered here for years. Plus there was recently an article on the Russian TV version of Lord Of The Rings and that has even less to do with "tech" than Netflix does. So yeah, we have articles like this all the time here on Netflix and TV and movies.

  • The end of all this (Score:3)

    by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Friday April 09, 2021 @09:48AM (#61255148)
    Some day you'll be watching a film or miniseries about his life and crimes. So does that make him retroactively to have been telling the truth? The investors were actually part of the story they were financing?
  • more than half a billion that easily. You could literally just contact Netflix and determine it. Something stinks in Denmark. This is either a Greater Fool scam and this guy is taking the fall for somebody else ($200 bottle of booze? I worked in a call center a knew people who drank a bottle of that once or twice a year).

    We need way, way more oversight on Wall Street. These kinds of losses have a way of adding up and working their way into our economy. This is a sign of investors having way too much cas

    • more than half a billion that easily. You could literally just contact Netflix and determine it. Something stinks in Denmark. This is either a Greater Fool scam and this guy is taking the fall for somebody else ($200 bottle of booze? I worked in a call center a knew people who drank a bottle of that once or twice a year).

      It does not sound easy from the description. It sounds like an elaborate con.

    • You hit the nail on the head. There is stupid money (or rather, perfectly ordinary money in the hands of stupid people) piling up so fast that they can't think of anything to even invest it in or spend it on.

      • The problem is when someone has a lot of money, they think they are Smarter than Everyone else. While many of them were either trust fund babies, know the right person at the right time, or really sacrificed their life for just wealth.

        However they figured because they had to put in a lot of work either to maintain or build their wealth, they are automatically must be smart enough to make these decisions.
        Often they are not, and scammers know this, and use it to often take a lot of money from them.

    • You would be surprised how many million dollar scams succeed. Bernie Madoff ran a billion dollar Ponzi scheme for decades that would have been exposed if anyone did a little research. Hedge funds were fooled because they did not due the bare minimum of checking. For example he supposedly made trades on the Chicago Merchantile Exchange that were more than the entire value of the exchange. No one looked at the numbers and said, "That cannot be right."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jabuzz ( 182671 )

      What gets me is you have to be a fool to think any bottle of "Johnnie Walker" is worth 200USD. They are all blended whisky. Premium Scotch is all about the single malts.

  • Many a true Hollywood story is functional an act of fraud or deception, but this guy is going to jail for it not working.
  • Id think if you manage to steal over half a billion you would have the foresight to hide the money, fake your own death and live like a king somwhere.

    • The problem is greed and over confidence. He could have easily cashed out and moved to a country without extradition. But nope he had to see how long he could keep the game running.

  • Then, indeed he was a good actor

  • Legitimate businessman turns evil in act 2. (Score:4, Informative)

    by archatheist ( 316491 ) on Friday April 09, 2021 @01:21PM (#61256088)

    1inMM did, in fact, make films: Curvature (2017), Hell is Where the Home Is (2018). "The actor" in question was also in two films during this time: The White Crow and Last Moment of Clarity. He is slated to be in some upcoming films, too. In short, it looks like this all started off completely legitimately*, and then, when things didn't quite pan out (the two films mentioned at top were not blockbusters) it shifted into what seems to be "grift mode." I point all this out because the article makes it seem that the company was never anything but a grift, and that Mr. Horowitz was not really an actor.

    * As legitimately as one might expect for the film industry.

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