Zach Avery

Zachary Joseph Horwitz (born December 5, 1986), also known by his stage name Zach Avery, is a former actor and producer. In 2021, he pleaded guilty to securities fraud for his role in defrauding investors of $227 million through a Ponzi scheme and, as a result, in 2022, was sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Avery was born Zachary Joseph Horwitz to Susan Krupitsky in Berkeley, California. The Horwitz family is jewish. His parents separated by divorce when Avery was 10 years old. Avery grew up in Tampa, Florida, then Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Avery was raised by his mother and a step-father, Robert Kozlowski. He has a sister, Jessica Faye Horwitz.

Avery grew up in Tampa, Florida, and moved to Indiana after his first year in high school. In 2005, he graduated from Carroll High School (Fort Wayne, Indiana). Fellows classmates have described him as a "through and through" jock, who starred for the school football team, but had no known involvement in acting at school.

Avery attended Indiana University Bloomington), graduating in 2010. He played football for Indiana University, until an injury ended his National Football League aspirations.[10][11] During his college years, he met his future wife, Mallory Hagedorn (hair stylist).[12]

After college, Avery and Hagedorn moved to Chicago, where Avery started a Doctoral Program in the Chicago School of Professional Psychology,[10][11] but dropped out 3 months later. In 2011, whilst in Chicago Avery heavily invested his money into his first enterprise was a juice bar called "Fül" which was a business which went closed after just a few months of operation.[13] He supplemented his income by selling Quickbooks software door-to-door.[11][10]

A year after Fül was established, Avery used a fake email from Howard Schultz (Starbucks’ founder) reportedly offering him a lucrative job in Los Angeles as the leader of the "entrepreneur outreach" program for his venture capital firm "Mavron", as an excuse to close down "Fül" for good and moved to Los Angeles, and convince his wife to move to Los Angeles.[13] On New Year's Eve 2011, Avery moved to Los Angeles.[11]

In Chicago, Avery claims he begun attending underground comedy shows and joined local theatre groups as a way of meeting new friends,[11][13] but there is no proof of this. He soon started taking part in comedy shows, going to acting classes. Upon moving to Hollywood he started pursuing an acting career, in particular to pursue his dream of becoming a Hollywood A-lister.[13]

Hollywood publicist Nedda Soltani, who was assigned by the company "Entertainment Fusion Group" to help boost Avery's profile as an actor, stated that Avery's time in Hollywood was a split between acting and a "financial startup situation" where he "invested in emerging brands and companies".[14]

In 2013, Avery was a co-founder, along with the Hallivis brothers (Julio and Diego Hallivis), of the 1inMM Productions company (“One in a Million”).[15][16] The Hallivis brother said "“We created 1inMM Productions to produce high concept genre films with an edgy and unique approach to storytelling ... Together, we have a shared commitment of cultivating the rise of a new class of auteurs.”[15] One of the company's projects of note was a new film fund to produce and finance two-to-three elevated genre films under $5M per year for global audiences.[15]

In 2015[17][18] the company had purported to start to produce, acquire, and distribute content to mainstream audiences.[19] Avery had told investors that he had acquired and distributed dozens of films including titles, e.g. “Active Measures”, “Lucia's Grace”, “Blood Quantum (film)”, and "La Melodie",[14] particularly in Latin America.[17][18] In 2015, 1inMM's annual report touted that it had acquired and distributed 49 films “without incurring a single loss in the process.”

The scheme was promoted as a “safe” investment as it was one which acquired the rights to film titles prior to releasing funds for the film.[17][18] In total, investors had given him a combined $650 million for the fictitious movie deals with HBO and Netflix. However, instead the funds were used to repay previous investors, i.e. using the money he took from new investors to repay old ones, and to bankroll Avery's lifestyle. Avery's lifestyle expenses included, interior decorating ($706,000), Mercedes Benz and Audi cars ($605,000), private jet and yacht trips ($345,000), Los Angeles party consultant services ($174,000), Las Vegas casinos and nightclubs ($136,000), credit-card payments to American Express ($6.9 million), and a Beverlywood residence ($5.7 million[12][20]).[17][18]

In late 2019, Avery began defaulting on nearly every payment due to investors and blamed the problem on HBO and Netflix Inc, who Avery had claimed had refused to pay for movies they had licensed from his company.[14] In reality, neither Avery, nor his company, had ever done business with HBO or Netflix.[21] Avery had not secured any distribution rights, forged hundreds of distribution contracts and also forged correspondence between himself and both HBO and Netflix in order to allay concerns to the scheme's investors. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had estimated that Avery had defaulted around a total of $227 million in payments anticipated by investors.[14]

Avery was arrested on charges of wire fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343[22]) on 6 April 2021,[12] in connection with the alleged orchestration of a $690 million[20] Ponzi scheme that began in 2015, defrauding investors of over $227 million based on false claims that investor money would be used to acquire licensing rights to films HBO and Netflix had agreed to distribute abroad[17][18][23][24][25][26] On 4 October 2021, Avery pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud.[27] On 14 February 2022, Avery was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $230 million in restitution.[28][20]

Friends and fellow Indiana University graduates Jake Wundrelin, Joe deAlteris, Matthew Schweinzger, and Tyler Crookston formed JJMT Capital (first initials of the founders), which went out and found dozens of investors for Avery's promissory notes, including their family, friends and professional contacts. The largest source of investor funds for the scheme were raised by JJMT. In total, JJMT alone raised about $216 million, securities filings show, and entered into 500 promissory notes. JJMT alerted federal law enforcement to the scheme when Avery stopped making payments on 160 notes sold through JJMT ($160 million in principal and $59 million in returns). JJMT's principals were reported as having been duped by Avery, and cooperated with the federal investigators.[14]

Adam Ferrari, petroleum engineer, who bought nine of the promissory notes ($250,000) through JJMT with a promise of 25% interest, lost $100,000 and subsequently filed a lawsuit against JJMT.

The scheme had impacted over 250 investors. Some investors were financially ruined in what prosecutors called a crime of “staggering magnitude”. Avery's prosecutor stated that some of his victims had been those close to him.

Avery's screen debut was claimed to be in the 2009 film G.E.D. However, doubt has been cast on the veracity of this claim, with Ivan Parron, a lawyer for Cess Silvera, the director of G.E.D., saying that Silvera had never heard of Avery.[14]

Avery appeared in roles of movies being financed by 1inMM Productions, and being produced by Julio and Diego Hallivis, including The Shifter (2014),[29][10] The Laughing Man (2016),[30][31][32] Curvature (2017),[15] Hell Is Where the Home Is (2108),[33][34] and The Devil Below (2021)[33] etc. The Shifter marked Avery's first 'in front of the camera' role (outside of the theatre).[10] The Laughing Man (2016), based on the backstory of the Joker, was Avery's first film with a notable level of success, reaching the attention of 3 million viewers on YouTube in the first couple of weeks.

Real-life documentaries about Avery include:

Avery married hair stylist Mallory Hagedorn in 2014, who he had met in college.[12] Hagedorn petitioned for divorce the very same day her husband was arrested, filing for sole custody of their son, Jaxon.[12] Hagedorn stated that Avery was “deceiving and manipulating me and everyone around him, and he is not the person that I believed he was.”[13] They have two children,[12] the eldest being Jaxon Avery[12][50] who was born in 2017.[12]