In 2018, Zachary Joseph Horwitz, trading as Zach Avery, bought a $ 6 million home in Los Angeles.
He was subsequently arrested earlier this week and charged with fraud.
The house, which is now marked for sale with an offer pending, is listed on Zillow as a six-bedroom, eight-bath, 7,670 square foot “re-designed traditional estate by renowned designer Lonni Paul.”
The home features a pool and adjoining Jacuzzi, cabana with fireplace, chefs kitchen, “a private master suite with custom closets and a spa-like master bath,” and a “chilled wine cellar with 1,000 bottles,” the report said. Zillow. list.
Photos at Zillow show a living room that opens onto a covered terrace; a grand piano under a beautiful chandelier and a huge abstract work of art; a home theater with ten plush armchairs and a section; and a home gym worthy of a luxury hotel.
According to his IMDb profile, Horwitz has 15 acting credits to his name. Four of them are for shorts; about half for unnamed extras.
Still, after Horwitz bought the house, Horwitz also “made two payments of $ 70,000 to Lonni Paul Design for a commission / bank / side table,” according to a criminal complaint filed in court by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Monday. from the US district. for the Central District of California.
And a week before Horwitz bought his beautiful Beverlywood estate, he paid off nearly $ 300,000 in credit card debt, the complaint said.
Horwitz quickly paid American Express in three installments: first, he put in $ 70,328.05, then $ 57,351.25, and finally $ 164,241.06, the indictment said.
The inflow of money, prosecutors said, belonged to investment groups. Horwitz had reportedly told them that their money would multiply risk-free because it would buy distribution rights to movies, which he said would “license to major online platforms such as Netflix or HBO,” the criminal charges said.
Horwitz, 34, is accused of defrauding five investor groups, even though most of the funds he raised came from a private company. He would send false annual reports to the investors of his fraudulent company, 1inMM Capital, complete with an image of a nonexistent movie library, prosecutors claim.
Some of the money Horwitz earned in the alleged $ 227 million “was used to repay investors for previous investments … in accordance with a Ponzi scheme,” the affidavit said. “In some cases, the investors were repaid with their own money,” the complaint said.
He had to pay them something, prosecutors said, because in 2019 investors started to complain.
But when Horwitz was unable to pay investors’ dividends, he showed the emails as if they were from HBO and Netflix executives explaining the delay in the funds, the indictment said. Netflix and HBO have denied their companies were doing business with Horwitz or 1inMM Capital, the affidavit said.
Netflix sent a cessation letter to Horwitz in February demanding that he “stop misrepresenting its agreements with Netflix,” prosecutors said. But he reportedly continued to falsify emails to look like they came from Netflix, and apologize to investors for why they weren’t paid back.
Horwitz was taken into custody by FBI special agents on a fraud charge Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in California’s Central District said in a statement.
Federal authorities requested that the criminal complaint be sealed, arguing that since Horwitz started selling his home and “not all proceeds from his fraud plan have been traced,” he is at risk of flight.
But court documents show that a judge on Tuesday ordered the case to be dismissed.
Although the house is for sale, Horwitz still lives in it, according to the charges. And Horwitz has not set up email forwarding, the complaint said.
He is due to appear in court on April 19.
His attorney, Anthony Pacheco, did not respond to repeated requests for comment Wednesday and Thursday.