Director accused of $11 million fraud over Netflix series
Kyiv • UNN
Director Carl Erik Rinsch has been accused of $11 million fraud. He received money from Netflix for the series, but never shot a single episode, instead spending the money on luxury.
U.S. federal authorities have accused director Carl Erik Rinsch of $11 million in fraud over his unfinished Netflix show, which has been in production since 2023. Since then, the studio has not received a single finished episode. UNN writes about this with reference to Theverge.
Details
The director proposed a science fiction series about artificial people, which interested Netflix. The contract signed in 2023 amounted to more than $50 million. Mr. Rinsch received almost complete budgetary and creative freedom, but never provided the studio with a single finished episode of the show.
Shortly after signing the papers, the director's behavior became chaotic: he claimed to have discovered a secret mechanism for transmitting Covid-19, could predict lightning strikes, and lost a large portion of the money from Netflix on the stock market and cryptocurrencies, according to the NY Times.
Ultimately, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have charged the director with fraud.
The essence of the accusation is that Carl Erik Rinsch informed Netflix that he would need an additional $11 million to complete the series, which was originally called "White Horse" and was later renamed "Conquest." However, after Netflix sent the money in March 2020, Rinsch allegedly took the money for himself, depositing $10.5 million into a brokerage account and losing more than half of it in less than two months. He informed Netflix that the work on the series was "great and progressing very well".
He invested the rest of the money in cryptocurrency investments, starting in the spring of 2021. They, according to prosecutors, "eventually turned out to be profitable." Rinsch spent this money (about $10 million of it) "on himself," including paying for the services of lawyers who sued Netflix in an attempt to get more money. The artist also spent millions of dollars on a fleet of Rolls-Royces, furniture and designer clothing, and almost a million dollars on two mattresses, bedding and linen. As the Times writes, Rinsch claimed that they were props for the series, but a mediator who ruled last year that he owed Netflix $12 million decided that they were not needed for the production of the show.
"White Horse" is still not finished.
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