Actor Zachary Joseph Horwitz, better known as Zach Avery in Hollywood, got sentenced for twenty years for a $650 million dollar Ponzi scheme with Hollywood films. Zachary created fraud contracts for HBO and Netflix film deals, which prosecutors said that this is Hollywood’s biggest fraud till date.
Apart from twenty years of sentence on Monday, the US district judge, Mark C. Scarsi has also charged him to pay $230 million to 250 victims, who have been financially ruined, which prosecutors called a crime of “staggering magnitude”. Zachary said in his statement to the judge, that he was being misguided and made awful decisions and he is sorry for causing the pain. His attorney claimed that Zachary is not mentally well.
While exposing the list, the US judge said, Zachary used the money to live a lavish lifestyle and spent the money on various stuffs like $706,000 on interior decorations, $605,000 on Mercedes Benz and Audi cars, $345,000 on private jets and yachts, $174,000 on Los Angeles parties and night clubs, $6.9 million on credit card payments to American Express, $5.7 million for a mansion with a screening room and wine cellar and many more.
Zachary is known for his films like ‘Fury’ (2014), ‘Curvature’ (2017), ‘Farming’ (2018), ‘The Devil Below’ (2021), ‘The Gateway’ (2021) among others.
According to prosecutors, Zachary gave each victim a note, promising a handful profit within six to twelve months. Starting from 2014, over seven years he kept doing the scheme by using new investors’ money and paying the old ones.
