During the intoxicating early days of the Streaming Wars , Netflix spent more than $ 55 million on a sci - fi show make by the guy who directed the forgotten Keanu Reeves box office bomb47 Ronin . According to afederal indictment , the conductor stole $ 11 million from the streaming colossus and spent it on Dogecoin and Rolls Royces .
The saga of managing director Carl Erik Rinsch and Netflix sight has beengoing on for years . The pennant has been trying to claw its money back from the guy for a long meter and Rinsch has spent a lot of the last five years in and out of court hearings relate to his divorcement and arbitration way pertain to curdled Netflix deal . Now the FBI is commove him with humbug .
“ Carl Rinsch allegedly stole more than $ 11 million from a prominent cyclosis platform to finance munificent purchase and personal investments instead of completing a promised boob tube series , ” FBI Assistant Director Leslie Backschies said in a press release about the pillow slip . “ The FBI will continue to reel in any soul who seeks to defraud businesses . ”
Director Carl Erik Rinsch attends New Directors' Showcase In Los Angeles presented by Team One, Saatchi LA on 14 April 2025 in Los Angeles, California.© Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images for Team One, Saatchi LA
The FBI also released a transcript of its indictment against Rinsch which has some new detail about the case and some coarse-grained screenshots of what the manager did finagle to nail .
The account begins in 2018 . Rinsch was five years out from the failure of47 Ronin , but streamers were tossing money at every half - broil estimation on the satellite , desperate to fulfil their service with content . Rinsch ’s idea was White Horse .
“ White Horse was a science fable television show about a scientist who created a radical of superintelligent clones , ” the bill of indictment said . “ Those ringer were relegate to a walled area in a Brazilian city , where they began developing advanced technology and came into difference with humans and each other . ‘ White Horse ’ is a reference to one of four horsemen of the apocalypse , who rides a white knight . ”
© FBI photos.
Death . The horseback rider who sits upon a wan horse is Death .
After a bidding state of war , Netflix sign a deal with Rinsch . The plan was to make a 13 - installment show that would go about two and a half hours and air as instalment that ran 4 to 10 minutes long . Rinsch did shoot some footage , and there are screenshots of the show in the indictment . But he also allegedly got weird .
According to attestor and his divorce minutes , Rinsch was abusing prescription upper and get paranoid . He perforate holes in the wall and would vanish . He neglect meetings with execs and blew deadline . Yet , somehow , he convert Netflix to give him another $ 11 million .
And it ’s this 2d injectant of Netflix money that ’s at the heart of the fraud case . The forensic tracking on those zillion is well documented . According to the lodge documents , Rinsch move the funds out of his yield company and into personal bank accounts before consolidate them into a cartel . Then he made bad investment and lost one-half of it . “ While [ Rinsch ] was in the process of drop off most of the $ 11 million mean to complete White Horse , he incorrectly informed [ Netflix ] that White Horse was ‘ awesome and displace forward really well , ' ” the bill of indictment said .
He took the $ 4 million he had remaining from the Netflix money and bet it all on Dogecoin . It paid off and he pocketed a nerveless $ 27 million . “ Thank you and god bless crypto , ” he say in anonline chatwith a crypto - central repp as he pulled the money out of Doge and into his bank report .
Then , according to the FBI , Rinsch went on a spending fling . concord to the bill of indictment , he burned through $ 10 million and spent $ 1,787,000 on credit card bills , $ 2,417,000 on five Rolls Royces and a Ferrari , $ 638,00 on two mattresses , and $ 1,073,000 for lawyers to litigate Netflix and to avail him with a divorce . At the clock time , he claimed Netflix owed him $ 14 million .
The feds charged Rinsch with one count of conducting wire impostor , one count of money laundering , and five tally of “ engaging in monetary transactions in property infer from stipulate unlawful activity . ” The first two charge bear a maximum conviction of 20 years , the last five expect a max of 10 years each .
The pullulate wars are over and we ’ll never see White Horse . It sucks that the laborious employment of the cast and crew will go up in smoke , but Rinsch ’s antics are probably more entertaining than a sci - fi epic made from 10 - second - foresighted episodes about super - sound ringer .
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