Hollywood filmmaker Carl Erik Rinsch has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison after being convicted of an elaborate scheme that defrauded streaming entertainment giant Netflix out of approximately $11 million.
The 48-year-old director, widely recognized for helm-directing the 2013 action fantasy film 47 Ronin, was found guilty during a federal jury trial in December on severe criminal charges including wire fraud and multi-tiered money laundering.
According to official federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, Netflix initially funded Rinsch with about $44 million between 2018 and 2019 to produce a highly anticipated science-fiction series originally titled White Horse, which was later rebranded as Conquest.
In March 2020, Rinsch requested and secured an additional capital injection of $11 million under the strict pretense of finalizing production.
Instead of allocating the public capital toward the series development, the director consolidated the massive funds into his personal brokerage account, losing nearly half the capital through high-risk stock options before shifting the remainder into speculative cryptocurrency markets.
"Carl Erik Rinsch orchestrated a scheme to steal millions by seeking $11 million from a subscription streaming service, falsely claiming that money would be used to finance a television show... Instead, he made risky bets and spent millions on luxury goods," U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton declared in a formal brief.
The scale of the asset diversion became evident when investigators traced Rinsch's extravagant expenditure trail, which included the cash purchase of five luxury Rolls-Royces, a red Ferrari, over $652,000 in high-end Swiss watches and fashion clothes, and nearly $295,000 on luxury bedding, linens, and bespoke mattresses.
Presiding U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff remarked during the New York sentencing that while the filmmaker's documented mental health struggles and medical complications explained some behavioral excesses, they did not excuse his calculated, repetitive fabrications designed to extract corporate funds and conceal the fraud.
Along with his two-and-a-half-year prison term, Rinsch was slapped with three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit the entire $11 million sum.
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