Director Faces 90 Years for Allegedly Defrauding Netflix

A director expected to make a TV series for Netflix could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted of defrauding the streamer. Carl Erik Rinsch, director of 47 Ronin starring Keanu Reeves, had pitched a science-fiction series about artificial humans called White House, later renamed Conquest. A streaming service, which we know to be Netflix, paid $44 million to Rinsch's company for the unproduced show in 2018 and 2019, according to an indictment. It then paid another $11 million in March 2020 to answer Rinsch's alleged claims that the initial amount was "not sufficient" to cover pre- and post-production, the indictment reads, per NBC News.

Rinsch pocketed that $11 million, according to prosecutors. He "used those funds to make a number of personal and speculative purchases of securities" and lost $5.5 million in two months, an indictment reads. He then used the remaining funds "to speculate on cryptocurrency, and on personal expenses and luxury items," including five Rolls-Royces, a Ferrari, and various antiques, prosecutors say. He allegedly used $638,000 to buy exactly two mattresses and another $1 million to pay lawyers to sue Netflix, claiming he was owed another $14 million, per Deadline. But an arbitrator ordered him to pay Netflix nearly $8.8 million in damages, per the New York Times.

Rinsch—who started behaving erratically around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming he could predict lightning strikes, per the Times—appears not to have paid the penalty, per Deadline. Nor did he deliver any episodes of the show, which was canceled in 2021. The streamer wrote off over $55 million in costs. Rinsch, 47, was arrested Tuesday in Los Angeles. He faces one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. He also faces five counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity, each of which carries a 10-year maximum sentence, per Deadline. (More Netflix stories.)