Actor sentenced to 20 years in $650M Ponzi scheme

A judge this week sentenced an actor to 20 years in federal prison over his involvement in a $650 million Ponzi scheme.

U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi dealt out the sentence to actor Zachary Joseph Horwitz on Monday, ruling that he has to pay $230,361,884 to investors who bought into the scam, according to NBC News.

Horwitz reportedly convinced more than 250 people in five investor groups to lend him cash with the promise that he could secure them rights from producers and sell them to various entertainment companies including Netflix, Sony Pictures Entertainment and HBO for a profit.

He also provided fake documents to mislead investors into believing that he had worked on agreements to get the rights, NBC reported.

At the time of the scam, which began in the early 2010s, media companies were looking to gain the rights to web-based content. Horwitz created the firm 1inMM Capital LLC in 2013 to appear as though he was purchasing the rights to English-language films and then selling them to be streamed in Latin America, FBI special agent John Verrastro said in an affidavit secured by NBC News.

In 2019, investors alleged that Horwitz had begun to default on payments and sending doctored emails he claimed were from HBO that detailed the reason behind the cash flow issues, the affidavit reportedly said.