An aspiring actor was charged Tuesday in Los Angeles on suspicion of operating a large Ponzi program that noticed buyers request a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for faux Hollywood movie licensing offers, federal prosecutors mentioned.
Zachary Joseph Horwitz, who has appeared in low-budget movies beneath the stage identify Zach Avery, has been charged by a federal grand jury on a number of expenses, together with securities fraud, cable fraud and identification theft, the Los Angeles Occasions reported.
It was not instantly recognized whether or not Horwitz had a lawyer.
From 2014 to 2019, Avery allegedly lied to buyers about $ 690 million in loans to its movie agency 1inMM Capital, prosecutors mentioned.
Greater than 200 buyers, together with three of Horwitz’s closest school pals and their relations, misplaced roughly $ 230 million, in response to the Occasions.
Prosecutors mentioned Horwitz had instructed buyers that their cash could be used to purchase movie distribution rights, which might then be licensed on platforms like HBO and Netflix.
However as an alternative of utilizing the funds on distribution offers, Horwitz reportedly ran his enterprise as a Ponzi scheme, utilizing victims’ cash to repay earlier buyers and fund his personal life-style, together with shopping for a $ 6 million residence, so the prosecutor.
Representatives from Netflix and HBO have denied that their corporations did enterprise with Horwitz, in response to an affidavit.
Horwitz was arrested on April 6 on preliminary fraud expenses and, in response to the newspaper, spent greater than two weeks in jail earlier than being launched on a $ 1 million bond.
