A low-budget film actor was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of running a $ 227 million Ponzi scheme, which asked investors for false licensing agreements for the film, federal prosecutors said.
Zachary Joseph Horwitz, whose screen name is Zach Avery, has been charged with wire fraud, which carries a maximum legal sentence of 20 years in prison, according to a statement from the US Prosecutor’s Office. It was not immediately known if Horwitz had a lawyer.
Prosecutors said Horwitz, 34, told investors the money would be used to buy the film’s distribution rights, which would then be licensed to platforms such as HBO and Netflix.
But instead of using the funds to make distribution transactions, Horwitz allegedly operated his company 1inMM Capital as a Ponzi scheme, using the victims’ money to repay previous investors and finance their own lifestyle, including the purchase of a house. $ 6 million, prosecutors said.
Representatives for Netflix and HBO denied that their companies had engaged in any business with Horwitz, according to a statement on their own responsibility.
Horwitz is scheduled to be tried on May 13.
Horwitz’s credits as an actor include low-budget features such as “Trespassers”, “The Devil Below” and “Last Moment of Clarity”.
The latter introduced Horwitz (Avery) as a pilot in Paris, who believes that an actress he saw in a movie could be his dead girlfriend. “He won pretty well,” one reviewer wrote. Samara Weaving and Brian Cox also starred in the film.
Here is a trailer for the film, which would have been released digitally in May 2020:
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