Hollywood Director Guilty of Scamming Netflix out of $11M, Spending It on Crypto

Filmmaker Carl Rinsch has been found guilty of defrauding streaming giant Netflix and using $11 million in misappropriated funds to buy cryptocurrencies and luxury goods.

Rinsch, the director of the 2013 film “47 Ronin,” was found guilty on one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering, and five counts of transacting with illicitly obtained property.

The 48-year-old had been commissioned by Netflix in 2018 to produce sci-fi series “Conquest” (originally titled “White Horse”), with the streaming company providing $44 million in funding to his production house between 2018 and 2020.

Rinsch then asked for an additional $11 million in 2020 in order to complete the series, yet prosecutors alleged that the director siphoned the extra money through numerous different bank accounts, before consolidating the $11m into a personal brokerage account.

He then proceeded to invest in securities, losing more than half of the $11 million within two months of receiving the money.

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York alleged that Rinsch then began to “speculate on cryptocurrency,” while also buying luxury items and paying off personal expenses.

This included $3.3 million on furniture, antiques and mattresses, $2.4 million on a red Ferrari and five Rolls Royces, $1.7 million on credit card bills, and $387,000 on a Swiss watch.

Represented by a mix of private lawyers and public defenders, Rinsch pleaded not guilty, but was found guilty by the jury within a matter of hours.

He will be sentenced on April 17, 2026, and faces up to 90 years in prison: up to 20 years for wire fraud, up to 20 years for money laundering, and up to 10 years each for the five counts of spending criminally obtained money.

Speaking at the end of the one-week trial, U.S. Attorney for SDNY Jay Clayton said, “Carl Erik Rinsch took $11 million meant for a TV show and gambled it on speculative stock options and crypto transactions […] Today’s conviction shows that when someone steals from investors, we will follow the money and hold them accountable.”

Netflix cancelled “Conquest” in 2021, after Rinsch and his company failed to meet any of its production milestones, with the streaming giant writing off the $55 million it had provided.

It has not received any of its money back from Rinsch, who according to a 2023 article in The New York Times had actually turned a $4 million investment in Dogecoin into $27 million in 2021.

It was with this windfall that Rinsch allegedly began buying the luxury goods detailed above, spending a total of $8.7 million, according to a forensic accountant hired by Rinsch’s now ex-wife, Gabriela Rosés Bentancor.