'Hollywood Hustler: Glitz, Glam, Scam' Explores Actor's $650M Tinseltown Ponzi Scheme (Exclusive Trailer) Christina CoulterOctober 1, 2025 at 1:00 AM 0 Amazon Studios Zachary Horwitz was arrested in 2021 and later pleaded guilty to securities fraud after prosecutors said he forged Netflix and HBO co...
- - 'Hollywood Hustler: Glitz, Glam, Scam' Explores Actor's $650M Tinseltown Ponzi Scheme (Exclusive Trailer)
Christina CoulterOctober 1, 2025 at 1:00 AM
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Zachary Horwitz was arrested in 2021 and later pleaded guilty to securities fraud after prosecutors said he forged Netflix and HBO contracts to lure investors
In 2022, he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $230 million in restitution; prosecutors said his scheme raised at least $650 million
Prime Video's "Hollywood Hustler: Glitz, Glam, Scam" features his wife, Mallory, and friends recounting the betrayal and devastation, and premieres Oct. 17.
Actor Zachary J. Horwitz — who worked under the stage name Zach Avery — is back on screen in a different way: as the subject of a new Prime Video docuseries chronicling one of the most brazen frauds in Hollywood history.
"Hollywood Hustler: Glitz, Glam, Scam" will stream globally beginning Oct. 17, 2025, Prime Video announced. PEOPLE has the exclusive trailer.
The three-part series, directed by two-time Emmy nominee Rebecca Chaiklin, traces Horwitz's double life — from a struggling actor with a modest résumé to the accused architect of a financial scheme that federal investigators said touched hundreds of victims and unraveled in spectacular fashion.
The trailer features raw interviews with those closest to Horwitz, including his wife, Mallory, who recalls the early days of their relationship with raw emotion: "I was just so in love. My heart felt like it was gonna burst," she said.
"We all looked up to Zach so much," a friend says in the trailer. "But my best friend was running up Hollywood's biggest Ponzi scheme."
Before the scandal, Horwitz — who worked under the stage name Zach Avery — was still chasing his Hollywood break, appearing in 2020's Last Moment of Clarity and the 2021 thrillers The Gateway and The Devil Below, according to IMDb.
PEOPLE previously reported that Horwitz was arrested in Los Angeles in April 2021 after federal investigators accused him of defrauding investors through his company, 1inMM Capital.
According to a Department of Justice press release announcing the charges, Horwitz founded the firm in 2013 and told investors it was buying foreign distribution rights to Hollywood films and reselling them to Netflix and HBO in Latin America. To back up the pitch, he mailed glossy annual reports and even bottles of Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch, boasting that 1inMM had distributed dozens of films "without incurring a single loss."
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For years, the illusion worked. Friends and colleagues poured in money, reassured by slick paperwork and what prosecutors later described as forged emails and contracts that appeared to come directly from Netflix and HBO.
Per the DOJ, he used investor funds to buy a $5.7 million Los Angeles home.
But by late 2019, court filings show, Horwitz had defaulted on more than 160 payments and owed investors more than $227 million in principal.
In October 2021, Horwitz pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud. Four months later, in February 2022, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said in a press release that he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $230,361,884 in restitution. Prosecutors told the court the scheme had raised at least $650 million and called it a classic Ponzi structure that fooled even Horwitz's closest friends.
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"Whatever Zach wanted to do, all of his friends followed," one friend said in the trailer.
Civil enforcement followed. In April 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said in a press release that a federal judge permanently barred Horwitz from selling securities and ordered about $74 million in disgorgement and interest — though the court deemed that amount satisfied by the criminal restitution already imposed.
According to filings from the court-appointed receiver in the Central District of California, recovery efforts continue. In late 2024, records show, American Express returned about $2.5 million, part of more than $15 million clawed back for victims so far."Hollywood Hustler: Glitz, Glam, Scam" premieres Oct. 17, 2025, on Prime Video.
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