Actor Zach Avery, whose real name is Zachary Joseph Horwitz, was arrested Tuesday for allegedly defrauding investors out of $227 million in a scheme based on false claims that their money would be used to acquire licensing rights to films that HBO and Netflix had agreed to distribute abroad, particularly in Latin America.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said late Tuesday that it obtained an asset freeze and other emergency relief in an emergency enforcement action against Horwitz, 34, and his company, 1inMM (one in a million) Capital LLC, for conducting an alleged Ponzi scheme that raised over $690 million.
Horwitz has appeared in films including "The Devil Below," "The White Crow" and "Farming."
The criminal complaint filed Monday charges Horwitz with wire fraud, a crime that carries a statutory maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
The Los Angeles-based actor and 1inMM allegedly told investors that they were buying film rights, purportedly to resell them to Netflix and HBO, according to the SEC's complaint. In fact, 1inMM actually had no business relationship with either company.
Since March 2014, until at least December 2019, Horwitz raised over $690 million from investors by selling promissory notes issued by 1inMM, "using fabricated agreements and fake emails" with Netflix and HBO, according to the complaint.
In late 2019, Horwitz began defaulting on outstanding notes issued by 1inMM, leaving investors with more than $234 million in unreturned principal, the complaint states.
Horwitz, the complaint states, "falsely blamed his default on refusals by HBO and Netflix to pay for distribution rights they had licensed from 1inMM and claimed he was engaged in promising negotiations with them to obtain past-due payments."
