An actor who faked Netflix and HBO film deals in a shocking Hollywood Ponzi scheme worth $650million has been sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.
The 25-year-old actor, Zachary Horwitz has been a part of several films under the alias of Zach Avery, namely Fury, Hell Is Where the Home Is, Curvature as well as the TV show, Last Moment of Clarity. However, the actor has run a notorious Ponzi scheme for seven years wherein he has been ordered by a judge to pay $230million in restitution to more than 250 victims who have been subjected to this scam.
Called the biggest of its kind in the history of Hollywood, it has been discovered that Horwitz spent a considerable portion of the stolen money on his lavish lifestyle, including a $5.7million Beverlywood home with $706,000 interior decorations.
Horwitz splurged a whopping $605,000 on Audi and Mercedes Benz luxury cars while spending $345,000 on private yachts and jets, $136,000 at Las Vegas nightclubs and casinos and around $174,000 on a Los Angeles party planner and consultant.
In all, on his American Express card, he has amassed $6.9million charges. The actor pleaded guilty to security fraud in October.
He had begun the Ponzi scheme in 2014 where he told investors about his company, 1inMM Capital reportedly using the money to buy foreign distribution rights to films like Satanic Panic and Slasher Party. He promised to resell them at high profits to streaming companies like HBO and Netflix.
Although he initially began to pay his old investors at a profit of 25 to 40 per cent for seven years, around $230million was missing at the brink of the scheme’s collapse. Even his wife, Mallory has sought a divorce talking about how Horwitz was “deceiving and manipulating me and everyone around him, and he is not the person that I believed he was”.
Horwitz reportedly ran his scheme at the very base level, conning his friends first, who believed him blindly and could not imagine having been swindled of their life savings by him.
A professional conman, Horwitz is reportedly feeling “deep remorse” for the kind of jeopardy he has put the future of so many people in.
