On Monday, Zachary Horwitz, a minor actor who admitted to running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison by a federal judge.
According to a news release from the Department of Justice, Horowitz "raised at least $650 million through bogus claims that investor money would be used to acquire licensing rights to films that HBO and Netflix purportedly had agreed to distribute abroad."
HBO, like CNN, is owned by the WarnerMedia corporation.
Horowitz entered a guilty plea to a federal securities fraud charge in October, admitting that he was the mastermind behind the Ponzi scheme.
According to a press release issued on Monday, he was sentenced to 240 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $230 million in restitution. For more information, CNN has reached out to Horwitz's attorney.
Horwitz, 35, was accused of putting some of the money in his personal accounts and using the money for purchasing a personal residence for approximately $5.7 million in cash, taking trips to Las Vegas and flying on chartered jets, according to a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
He has spent the past decade acting in around a dozen mostly low-budget films, including "Trespassers" and "The White Crow," according to his IMDb profile. Horwitz is better known by his stage name "Zach Avery." He also had a minor uncredited role in the film "Fury," in which Brad Pitt appeared.
By fLEXI tEAM
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