Hollywood Hustler: Glitz, Glam, Scam (2025) s01e01 Episode Script
Episode 1
1
[pensive music playing]
♪
[Zach] I get that there's
a ton of shit that's
in a gray area, looks weird,
this and that.
The money went to
acquire film rights
for Latin America,
and to pay back your investors.
That is where the money went.
[Jake] You've gotta be tired of
lying and spinning this.
We go way back, man.
Way back.
And I'm questioning a lot of things.
What has been real?
I think a lot of people were blinded
by dollar signs.
But that's easy to do, right?
[Stefan Cooper] Zach would always say,
"Eventually, it has to stop.
Eventually, it's got to stop
at some point in time,
and we'll just know when that day comes.
But until then, like,
why not just ride it out?"
I'm no businessperson, and I'm just now
learning about investing, but
if it's too good to be true, obviously,
I'm sure it's too good to be true.
You stop thinking about the risk
when something continues to be successful
year over year.
It's not like people were investing
ten dollars.
You're talking about people investing
hundreds of millions of dollars.
Man, that's an expensive lesson to learn.
[laughing]
[siren wailing]
[newswoman] Beverlywood man has been
arrested by the FBI.
A heinous Hollywood hoodwink.
[newswoman] A $650 million Ponzi scheme.
[Evan Osnos] By any measure,
this is the largest Ponzi scheme
in the history of Hollywood.
And it went on and on and on
for eight years.
♪
[Trudy Hagedorn] The floor
just dropped out.
I mean, we were just like, "What?"
[Stefan] My best friend had been running
Hollywood's biggest Ponzi scheme,
and I was right in the middle of it.
[Osnos] He went to the people
who knew him best,
and he said, "I have something
that will change your life."
[Justin Scheffel] I feel like
it was one of those things
you just
don't ask questions.
[Stefan] That's the thing about Zach.
There was, like, this mystery about him
all the time.
But you just go on the trips. [laughs]
[Bexxx] Zach was a high roller, for sure.
Flying around on a private jet,
hanging out with a bunch of celebrities
in Hollywood.
I just had no idea it was with
other people's money. [chuckles]
[Steven Kozlowski] What I do question is:
What happened to the over $200 million
still unaccounted for?
[Stefan] If Zach knew
that this was going down,
I think he would have hid money
and stowed it away.
[Craig Cole] If it were me, I would.
[Alex Loftus] I mean,
Zach Horwitz couldn't do this alone.
I believe that he's protecting someone
in his inner circle.
[Bexxx] A lot of people were benefiting
off of what he was doing
and spending his money.
So I don't know
if they looked the other way.
I don't know if other people knew.
There's a lot of mysteries.
[music ends]
[birds chirping]
- [Grits featuring Tobymac sings
"Ooh Ahh (My Life Be Like)"]
- My life be like, ooh, ah ♪
- Yeah ♪
- Ooh, ooh ♪
My life be like, ooh, ah, ooh-ah ♪
- Yeah ♪
- Ooh, ooh ♪
- Ooh, ah ♪
- Yeah ♪
Ooh, ooh ♪
My life be like, ooh, ah, ooh-ah ♪
- Yeah ♪
- Ooh, ooh
As an outsider looking in,
you just thought that everything
was rainbows and butterflies.
Zach's killing it,
making just money hand over fist
with this whole film industry thing.
[gunfire]
[Mallory Hagedorn] He was bringing in
millions of dollars a year,
which is an insane amount of money.
[Craig] He's got a $6 million mansion,
beautiful wife, two kids,
successful business.
I mean, there's not a lot of people who
would say they wouldn't want that life.
[Stefan] We all looked up to him so much.
[laughs] Shit, like, we wanted to be Zach.
The last couple years,
you've had a real big jump
-in your career.
- Yeah.
If you could tell your ten-years-ago self
one thing, what would that be?
Trust your gut.
My life be like ♪
[Osnos] This person,
who was a pretty mediocre actor,
somehow pulled off
this Oscar-worthy deception.
As a writer, I always know if I have
a story that I want to do because
it just ignites something in you,
where you say,
"How can this be? How can this be?"
There was something about Zach Horwitz
that just pulled the people in
to such a bewitching extent.
Over the course of this reporting process,
I've been in touch with his friends,
his wife, and people that he encountered
over the course of his acting career.
And what's amazing about it
is the degree to which
the people closest to him were caught
completely unaware.
Or so they say.
[train whistle blowing]
[birds chirping]
[Mallory] There's so many parts
where I kind of beat myself up
about not asking more questions.
How deep do these lies go?
Psychologically,
it's a real mindfuck.
I don't know if I can say "fuck,"
but I'll probably say it a lot. [laughs]
I'm trying to piece together
the last decade of my life.
When Zach and I first met,
I was 19 and he was 21.
I went to Indiana University.
My sophomore year, we were at a house
party, and that's when I first saw Zach.
Well, actually,
he was making out with a girl
whenever I first saw him
for the first time.
But
I mean, when I did see his face,
I was like, "Wow, he's really attractive."
And he had these beautiful green eyes.
The next time,
we saw each other at a tailgate.
He was like, "Hey, you want
to come out with us to the bars?"
With him and his two roommates.
It was a huge deal when Zach met Mal.
She was like the perfect girl for him.
Small-town country girl.
She was really soft-spoken. She was sweet.
Everybody loved Mal.
[Mallory] Whatever Zach wanted to do,
all of his friends followed.
All of his friends look the same.
All have shaved heads.
They're all in shape.
It was "gym, tan, laundry."
You know, like Jersey Shore-ish.
[Wiz Khalifa sings "No Sleep"]
[Justin] They kind of referred to us
as the Wolfpack.
Last night I let the party
get the best of me ♪
Waking up in the morning,
two hoes laying next to me ♪
plus I heard a officer arrested me ♪
Good weed and cold drinks,
that's the motherfucking recipe
[Stefan] Want to do some squats,
show 'em that booty.
Zach would always tell me
I didn't have pecs.
And Justin would always tell me
I didn't have arms.
Me, Zach, Jake and Justin created
a really strong friendship,
which became almost a brotherhood.
[Mallory] I mean, he would, like,
shave Justin's back.
There was no filter.
I'm not saying that shit on camera.
- [Rebecca Chaiklin] Come on.
- No.
No sleeping,
live it up like it's the weekend ♪
When the deejay play the right song ♪
gonna drink,
gonna party all night long ♪
Party all day, party all night ♪
Say you want to party,
let's party, all right ♪
[song slows, stops]
[Trudy] Mallory told us
that she's met this guy,
and he was
so kind and genuine and thoughtful.
[Mallory] Two weeks after
we started dating,
I turned 20.
And I had an 8:00 a.m. class,
and I run down the stairs
and there were three dozen roses.
I mean, I never had flowers bought for me,
much less three dozen roses.
Then I was just in love.
Like, so in love. I mean, I remember
I wanted to tell him I loved him.
And it was like my heart felt
like it was gonna, like, burst.
[gentle music playing]
I remember the first time
I met his family.
I was driving through the town,
and he was like, "That's my house,
right in front of the stop sign."
I was like, "Holy shit.
Okay."
[chuckles] And then, automatically,
I was insecure.
I was so insecure about
what car I was pulling
into the driveway, my outfit,
everything.
I mean,
it looked like it was someone that had
tens and tens of millions of dollars.
[Mallory] They had a custom home built.
It was huge.
You could tell his mom was really proud
of what she had.
[Stefan] No one was more intimidating
than Sue.
She had this class and, like,
this wealth that just exuded from her.
[Mallory] But when Zach was growing up,
they didn't have a lot of money.
[Osnos] Zach's parents split up
when he was young.
He and his sister were raised
by his mother Susan.
And he was not a particularly happy kid.
But by the time he got to high school,
his mother had remarried.
And she married a prosperous man,
Robert Kozlowski,
who was a manufacturing executive.
[Steven Kozlowski] My dad was
really well-off.
He had been very successful.
And so when they got married,
they lived a very, very comfortable life.
Zach was much younger than me,
but we'd go on family trips together.
[Osnos] Zach gained the reputation
for being a wealthy kid in town.
That became part of his understanding
of how you gain access and attention
and respect.
Suddenly, you've got a nice car,
you've got a vacation house.
That gives you a kind of celebrity
that very few other things can
at that age.
[Steven] His mom put him on a pedestal
at all times.
That put a lot of pressure
on Zach to be the best.
He had this need to be in the spotlight
and to be the golden child.
[Osnos] Zach came to believe
his stepfather
was a sort of model.
That he could be a success in business,
just like him.
And so his next step was becoming the
protégé of a great business tycoon
in Chicago.
[upbeat music playing]
[Mallory] Right after college,
his mom had bought him a condo
up there in Chicago,
so I just moved right in with him,
and that was our first time
living together.
One day, we were leaving
the gym, and there was
an empty building across the street.
And he was like,
"Wouldn't that be great
if that was a healthy smoothie bar?"
And
next thing you know, he's going
to these business conferences.
He would present his idea.
And then someone approached him and said,
"You need to speak with my boss,
who is Howard Schultz,
the founder of Starbucks."
They went downtown to a fancy steakhouse.
Shortly after that, an article came out--
Starbucks is looking to add smoothies.
I was like, "Oh, my gosh.
And Zach has an in with this guy."
So he had this idea
that he was gonna bring us all on board
and move us all to Chicago,
and we're gonna, you know,
make it big in the restaurant industry.
[Stefan] When Zach asked me
to jump, my only answer would be,
"How high?"
I quit my job and I moved to Chicago
and helped start Fül.
- Is that gonna be all for you? All righty.
- Yeah.
[reporter] Low self-esteem as a kid
motivated Zach Horwitz to change his life.
Growing up, I, uh
I wasn't in the best shape.
I was always the, quote, unquote,
like, "fat kid."
[reporter] In middle school, Horwitz
discovered working out and eating healthy.
[Zach] Even if I wasn't
the most in-shape kid
or the best kid on the sports team when
I was younger, eventually, you can be.
[Osnos] Zach told his friends
they had to think of themselves
as if they were the next
Starbucks, and that
if they thought that way,
that that would help them
actually achieve it.
[Mallory] And we all received emails
from Howard Schutlz.
[intriguing music playing]
[Justin] He basically said that
he was interested in growing the brand.
Scaling it out to building
hundreds of Füls throughout the country.
[Osnos] This is the kind of moment
that only comes around
in life maybe once, maybe twice.
Howard Schultz has
written you an email saying,
"Come and follow in my footsteps.
I think you have it within you."
[Stefan] We sat there and just
talked about how we're gonna be set
for the rest of our lives.
[crowd cheering]
[Osnos] And they gave themselves
these grand titles.
Zach was called CEO,
and Jake was called CFO.
Jake had left his job at JP Morgan
to go work,
essentially, as the business guy
at this juice bar.
There was a piece of him that thought
this is a bit of a wild thing to do,
but, on the other hand,
Zach told his friends that Howard Schultz
was prepared to put $30 million into Fül.
[Stefan] He was paying the four of us
six-figure salaries to run Fül.
Wait, what? [laughs]
This-- I'm hearing this
for the first time. What?
Five people at a sandwich bar
were making a six-figure salary?
And none of us had experience
in the food industry, really.
[Chaiklin] Who do you think
was paying for all that?
I don't know.
I asked myself the same question.
I don't know where the money came from.
[Mallory] He got a good chunk of money
from when his stepfather passed away,
and he was reinvesting that.
But I was cleaning and working
and not getting paid.
[Zach] Is this gonna be
for here or to go, guys?
[Justin] There was just a lot
of long hours, long days,
and I think that's when Zach realized,
"This isn't what I want to do.
This isn't for me."
[Mallory] He told me that
the overhead for this
is too much and we need to get out.
[Justin] So we shut the doors.
It kind of caught me off guard, because
the restaurant wasn't open long enough
to be successful.
We'd been open for, like,
two or three months
by the time we ended up
shutting the doors.
[Steven] A Yelp reviewer gives one star
and says, "Eff these guys.
I drive for 15 minutes, park,
walk to the door, only to see
a sign that says, 'We're closed
for the winter months.'
Is this some kind of euphemism for
'We're bleeding money
and whoever invested in this place
has pulled the plug?'
Plus, it's very sad to watch
the plants die through the windows."
[Osnos] But Howard Schultz,
evidently, was not holding it
against Zach.
[Mallory] Howard was like, "You remind me
of a young version of myself.
We would be interested in hiring you
to work for Maveron,"
Howard Schultz's venture capital group
with Dan Levitan.
It was a big salary.
I want to say $400,000.
That would happen to Zach.
He would get the best job, like, possible
out of nowhere from a billionaire.
[Trudy] We started going to Starbucks
because we thought,
you know, Zach is with Howard Schultz.
But I have to admit,
I was not happy
that they were moving to L.A.
[Arden Jones sings "either way"]
[Mallory] We loaded up our stuff.
We had our dog Lucy.
And we did the whole road trip
to California.
Wake up every day,
smile on my face like, "Hell yeah!" ♪
One day I'll be flying private planes
out of Bel Air ♪
And the sky is the limit,
I'm-a tell you when I get there ♪
Flying with the birds,
I already smell the fresh air ♪
Even out the atmosphere,
ain't folding under pressure
Then Zach was going to work
in Century City.
I had taken him there a couple times.
Zach was posting tweets
about Howard taking him under his wing.
[Mallory] I just couldn't believe
that we were living in Hollywood.
[song ends]
I am just this Midwestern,
small-town girl,
and I was like,
"Oh, my God, this is crazy."
I grew up in Santa Claus, Indiana.
It was a very innocent upbringing.
To a fault, almost,
you're kind of shielded from
what else happens in the world
outside of a small town.
[gentle music playing]
I worked at Holiday World. [laughs]
That was my first job when I was 14.
At the duck races.
And here comes Zach
showing me this glamorous world
outside of a small town.
[Trudy] She called us one day and said,
"Mom, they're doing
a reality show up here,
and they're doing auditions."
I'm like, "Mallory,
you don't want to do that."
My name's Mallory. I'm here
for the internship starting today.
I just moved to the city
from Santa Claus, Indiana.
[bells jingling]
One of the storylines
was gonna be two interns
competing for a job.
And I was casted
as the naive, small-town girl.
Go figure.
[supervisor] Mallory clearly knew nothing.
- It won't twist.
- Hey, I like that you're ambitious.
[Mallory chuckles]
When she was little, she'd say,
"I'm gonna do hair out in Hollywood.
I'm gonna do movie star hair" and stuff.
[Mallory] I always wanted to walk
on the red carpet, and Zach kept saying
he wanted to give me that experience.
[cheering, applause]
He had a Rolls-Royce pick us up
to take us to the American Music Awards.
He always tried to act unfazed,
but it definitely triggered
something inside of him.
[Stefan] I think he had a deep desire
to be important and to be famous.
[Mallory] Shortly after that, Zach
expresses to me that he wants to start
doing acting classes.
Next thing you know, he's making a reel.
I'm the man of the house now.
You know why?
'Cause you're just a fucking child.
It was hard to watch.
Yeah, it was so mediocre.
He was always so embarrassed
with that later in life,
and he tried to get that down.
For obvious reasons.
I always said
I was glad he had his real job.
[Mallory] His first role was a commercial,
and that's where he met Craig.
[Craig] When I moved down to California,
I started pursuing acting.
And I got this military role
for a commercial.
There's about, I don't know, ten dudes
dressed in military getup.
And I kid you not--
I'm seeing these, like,
full gown nun-type of outfit
moving forward on these Segways.
Like that. I'm looking at it like,
"What is going on?"
[Chaiklin] What was the commercial for?
It was for Scientology.
Yeah, I found out pretty quick.
This was, like,
the headquarters of Scientology.
And that's where I met Zach Horwitz.
We just connected right way.
We're literally crawling through mud.
And as we were talking,
I tell Zach my experience in Hollywood
felt like it was just a nonstop rat race--
going to audition, audition, audition.
I was telling him, to really
make it, I think you got to create
something yourself.
The next time we'd hang out, he's like,
"Craig, how much do you think
it would take to make a movie?"
And I was like, "Dude, I don't know.
You know, a couple million."
And he tells me that he started
an organic, healthy smoothie shop.
And then he leans over--
you know, he tells me
to not tell Mallory
and I did think
that was a little bit weird
at the time--
and he goes, "I sold for $11 million."
"Wow. Like, that's-that's awesome.
Looks like you're my new best friend.
You want to make a movie
and you got 11 million bucks, you know?"
I mean, that's the name of the game.
[Osnos] And so his job at Maveron
seemed to morph.
Howard and Dan were going to set up a fund
to get into the moviemaking business.
[Trudy] That's when he came up
with his company called One in a Million.
[Osnos] Zach adopted a kind of mantra.
"If the odds are one in a million,
be that one."
He was always talking about his dreams.
[Zach] Especially these kind
of dream-type careers,
you really have to be able
to, like, take a step back from everyone
telling you, you know, "This is crazy.
Are you really gonna move across country
and try to make this happen?"
and say like,
"Look, I have to give it a shot.
Because if I don't,
I'm gonna be kicking myself forever."
[Mallory] I was under the impression
his partners were Howard and Dan.
[Osnos] And they formed this partnership
with the Hallivis brothers.
Julio and Diego Hallivis were operating
in the world of low-budget
thrillers and horror movies.
And, all of a sudden,
Zach wandered into their lives,
and he seemed to have access
to everything that they needed
to make it in Hollywood.
Julio and Diego would be the filmmakers,
and then Zach would be the person that
they would build these projects around.
Oh, shit. A drone just spotted me.
- It's now or never!
- Fuck it.
[whirring]
[dramatic music playing]
He wanted to be Brad Pitt,
like, right away.
He just wanted to be on the big screen.
[Osnos] One of the first things they did
was they set about
building the architecture of success.
They rented this very cool office
in a part of town
that would instantly tell you
this is somebody who is going places.
He loved the television show Entourage.
And now he had an entourage of his own--
Julio and Diego.
And so Zach rented them
three beautiful black Mercedes
that they could all drive together,
show up to meetings
in this kind of armada,
just like Entourage.
And they showed it off
with their social media presence.
I mean, they had matching leather jackets,
enacting every conceivable cliché
of the Hollywood wannabe.
He watched Entourage
over and over and over again.
You can't afford this house, Vince.
Can't afford anything we have.
Never stopped me before.
It's always worked out.
- [phone rings]
- [Mallory] I got a little nervous
for him maybe, like, just not keeping
a great track of finances.
Because Dan and Howard said, "We're gonna
give you 60 days to make bigger profits.
And if it doesn't happen, that's it."
[engine revving]
[Osnos] He needed money,
and he needed to move fast.
But it just so happened
Julio and Diego's friend
was a seasoned film
and television executive,
somebody who had the experience,
the connections.
He seemed like the perfect partner.
[Gustavo] I worked for 20th Century Fox
for 27 years,
and then I decided to go independent
and set up a company
by the name of Alebrije.
And we started working with Netflix.
And we would go out to the markets
and buy the movies they were looking for.
I was introduced to Zach
at the American Film Market.
We started talking,
and he wanted to join us in buying films.
[Mallory] Next thing I know,
there's an article in Variety magazine
that says they're doing a partnership.
This piece that appeared in the trade
press suddenly established a new reality.
So instead of being described as
a aspiring actor with a failed juice bar,
he was a man who had
succeeded in business.
[Gustavo] Zach really didn't have
any skill set in the film industry,
but, I mean, he was young
and he was making a lot of money.
For us, it was an easy deal.
I mean, they just put
50% of the money down,
and we run half the risk
that we were running before.
[Mallory] They went
to Berlin Film Festival.
They went to South by Southwest, Cannes.
You know,
I see Zach posting on his Instagram,
going to film festivals,
making things happen.
I'm like, "Goddamn.
You know, he's doing it."
[Gustavo] We ended up buying
five, six movies with Zach and Julio.
And then he moved on to other things.
[Osnos] And now that
he had gained Howard's trust,
they began expanding this new venture.
[Stefan] Zach took me and all the boys
to Aspen.
That is when he dropped the bug
in the ear of Jake
about this investment opportunity
that he had with films.
[Osnos] He went back to Jake,
who had gone into finance
after the failure of the juice bar.
And Zach said to Jake,
"I can let you in on a deal.
If you can give me $37,000,
I can get you $9,000 back as profit."
And it worked. Jake is thinking
to himself, "My old friend Zach
actually seems to have tapped into some
kind of powerful business opportunity."
[Mallory] This was when streaming
started getting really big.
And so
all these streamers are just dying
for content.
And Zach basically would buy
all these movies that weren't very good,
dub it in Spanish, and sell it
to the Latin America market
with Netflix and HBO.
[Osnos] Jake started talking
to some of their other buddies
from Indiana University, and he said,
"Look, Zach has gone to L.A.
and he has found something extraordinary.
And if we can find the money, we can begin
to get a piece of this action."
And they formed a company they called
JJMT, after their first names--
Joe deAlteris, Jake Wunderlin,
Matt Schweinzger, and Tyler Crookston--
created for the sole purpose
of raising money
for Zach Horwitz's
One in a Million Capital.
And they all had backgrounds in finance,
so nobody would have ever questioned
that part.
They understood how to talk about it
to wealthy people
who might want to give them money.
And so they started building these
kind of growing communities
of sub-investors
all across the country.
[Scott Cohen] I grew up
as a competitive tennis player.
Jake Wunderlin was a guy
that reminded me a lot of me.
He went to undergraduate
at Indiana University.
Super analytical.
Amazing with follow-up
and details.
So we hit it off immediately.
[Doug Pacht] Scott used to be
in the information technology business
and then became a point person
in investments.
[Scott] But I was definitely not familiar
with the film industry.
[Doug] The original pitch
and the rate of return
seemed interesting and sexy.
We asked Jake,
"Can you arrange for Scott and I to meet
with Zach directly
on one of our destination trips
to visit our cannabis investment?"
And we got a call that Jake and Zach had
just landed at a private airstrip
and they were gonna be at the facility
in 15 minutes.
And we thought, "Makes perfect sense.
This is what Hollywood type do.
They fly in on a private plane."
[Scott] And we just had a crazy,
fun weekend as just a bunch of buddies
at this large cannabis farm.
[Doug] It was understood that
we weren't really going to pepper Zach
with any questions about the business
and that Jake was really the point person.
The investment went remarkably well.
The rate of return was exactly
what we had spoken about.
On the day that it was due to come in,
it came in.
And on that very day, the question was,
"Would you like to
take the money
or would you like to reinvest?"
[Chaiklin] What did you do?
We reinvested.
But Zach, sadly, was not the guy
that he presented himself to be.
[Loftus] I represent 111 investors
who lost money in the Ponzi scheme.
In his own mind, Zach knows
all the right people in Hollywood,
and he had this unique relationship
that enabled him to double his money.
The reality is
he's just a handsome kid from Indiana
that somehow convinced his friends
and family
he was business partners
with Howard Schultz.
But he never even met the guy.
This was always a fraudulent business
from the start.
There were never any deals with HBO,
never any deals with Netflix.
Everything had to be this ruse
from the start.
[Loftus] When Zach developed
One in a Million,
he called up the bank
about getting a line of credit.
He tells them he's in business
with HBO and Netflix,
and they said, "No. You better have
your mom cosign the loan."
Which doesn't make any sense.
If you're in business with Howard Schultz,
you're gonna have access
to all kinds of lines of credit.
Why would you go to your mother to get it?
[Loftus] But his mom cosigned
the million-dollar line of credit.
He really imagined that he might be able
to hack the Hollywood system.
And that was the origins of the con.
[Loftus] The way a Ponzi scheme works
is the Ponzi schemer just takes money from
new investors to pay off old investors.
So the way this worked for Horwitz was
that he would time it
so that payments were due
right when money was coming in.
And then investors got paid back
their principal plus their interest.
Then he'd offer them another deal, and
they'd give him their money right back.
I had a guy paying me without asking once.
And he wasn't paying me
ten grand or 20 grand.
He'd be wiring me hundreds of thousands
of dollars like clockwork.
[Osnos] And when the investors got
their money back--
in full, on time, with interest--
they effectively became the scheme's
greatest walking advertisements.
And I think we quickly
came to the realization,
based on the consistency of the return,
that we were gonna
just reinvest the money.
[Loftus] No money ever came in
from HBO, Netflix, Sony.
It was all just money coming
from other investors.
If anybody did that due diligence
and called HBO--
"You ever heard of Zach Horwitz?"--
Ponzi scheme over.
Nobody made that call.
But if you're bros with somebody,
you're gonna start
from a position of trust.
And then once you're deeper in,
then you ask for some proof,
then he fakes something
and forges something
and it pacifies you a bit.
And because there were some real movies
done with Gustavo,
he had real paperwork that looked like
a real movie distribution deal.
He was able to take those real contracts
and photoshop them with the name
of whatever fake movie he wanted.
It was very helpful to Zach that, frankly,
nobody really understands
how the movie business works.
[Trudy] Zach bought films and--
You know what? It was something
that I never really could understand.
I would ask a question
but just kind of pretended I knew
what he was talking about,
but I really didn't get it.
My assumption is that Zach's game plan
is that reality would catch up to fantasy.
If he would have succeeded
in becoming a great movie star,
he could use his fame and fortune
to pay everyone back.
[Osnos] There is this very tempting idea
that you can fake it till you make it,
that somehow there can be
all of these lies along the path to truth.
And we've created these tools
all around us on social media
that are ultimately instruments
of creating an illusion about who we are.
Zach circulated photos of himself
in front of a sign at the Golden Globes.
The truth was he never attended
the Golden Globes ceremony.
Nobody really talks about this,
but you can just rent a hotel room,
put on a tuxedo and walk around.
And as far as the world knows,
you were at the Golden Globes.
[Craig] For the people looking outside in,
he's really embodying
that kind of Hollywood dream, if you will,
and-and he's making it happen.
And-and during this time, Zach's lifestyle
had really began to change.
[Stefan] Don't mind his biceps.
He's just opening up a 3K fucking bottle.
[Mallory] I remember Zach came home,
and he was, like, so excited.
So he tells me, "Come in
the parking garage," and he walks up
to this black matte Lamborghini.
And he's like,
"What do you think of this?"
Like, "Well, it's nice."
And he was like, "It's mine."
And I was like, "Wow."
He said Howard just wanted him
to drive it around and look like somebody.
[Mallory] He said,
"Howard gave it to me as a signing bonus.
It's better for tax purposes."
[Chaiklin] How much does
a Lamborghini cost?
Uh, probably about $250,000.
[Craig] He would take me out
to the best of the best restaurants,
front row seats at the Lakers.
[Mallory] He would rub shoulders
with Ashton Kutcher and Zac Efron.
One time, he sat by Jack Nicholson.
And he said that Jack's inviting us over.
And then they went through a drive-through
at McDonald's because
Jack likes the McDonald's fries.
[paparazzo] Jack! What up, baby?
[Osnos] Each one of these little,
tiny details became a brick
in this edifice of total fabrication.
But you would have to know
that each step along the way was fake.
[Mallory] I fell into the whole fairy-tale
love story that he put in my head.
One day, he said he found, like,
this really cool private beach
and he wants to show me.
I was like, "Okay."
Then he got down on a knee and said,
"Will you marry me?"
I was so, so excited.
[gentle music playing]
[Greg Hagedorn] Zach asked
for my permission
to marry Mallory, and I was
very happy to say yes.
We were elated, because that's
what you want for your children.
You want them to be with their person.
Of course, they wanted a fancier wedding
[laughing] than what we usually had.
[Mallory] Everyone in Santa Claus,
my family, they were like, "Is Howard
Schultz gonna be at the wedding?"
[Trudy] Zach said, "Oh, no.
Howard doesn't mix personal with work."
[Greg] I remember saying something
pretty silly
prior to going down the aisle
to get her to laugh,
and she did and off we went.
[Chappell Roan sings "Pink Pony Club"]
♪
[Mallory] I promise to endlessly give you
my heart and soul.
No dream is too big,
and I never want you to let go of this.
I promise to honor and respect you
as my wife.
And every story I tell throughout my life,
I want to tell it with you.
Our love is truly one in a million.
♪
I'm having wicked dreams
of leaving Tennessee ♪
Hear Santa Monica,
I swear it's calling me ♪
Won't make my mama proud,
it's gonna cause a scene ♪
She sees her baby girl,
I know she's gonna scream ♪
God, what have you done? ♪
You're a Pink Pony girl ♪
and you dance at the club, oh, Mama ♪
I'm just having fun ♪
on the stage in my heels ♪
It's where I belong down at the ♪
Pink Pony Club ♪
I'm gonna keep on dancing
at the Pink Pony Club ♪
I'm gonna keep on dancing
down in West Hollywood ♪
I'm gonna keep on dancing
at the Pink Pony Club
[Bexxx] I'm Bexxx. B-E-triple-"X."
[chuckles]
I do like Versace,
because Armani dresses the wife
and Versace dresses the mistress.
And everybody knows
that the mistress has more fun.
[chuckles]
♪
I'm gonna keep on dancing
I hold the key to many people's secrets.
[laughs]
[upbeat music playing]
♪
♪
♪
[pensive music playing]
♪
[Zach] I get that there's
a ton of shit that's
in a gray area, looks weird,
this and that.
The money went to
acquire film rights
for Latin America,
and to pay back your investors.
That is where the money went.
[Jake] You've gotta be tired of
lying and spinning this.
We go way back, man.
Way back.
And I'm questioning a lot of things.
What has been real?
I think a lot of people were blinded
by dollar signs.
But that's easy to do, right?
[Stefan Cooper] Zach would always say,
"Eventually, it has to stop.
Eventually, it's got to stop
at some point in time,
and we'll just know when that day comes.
But until then, like,
why not just ride it out?"
I'm no businessperson, and I'm just now
learning about investing, but
if it's too good to be true, obviously,
I'm sure it's too good to be true.
You stop thinking about the risk
when something continues to be successful
year over year.
It's not like people were investing
ten dollars.
You're talking about people investing
hundreds of millions of dollars.
Man, that's an expensive lesson to learn.
[laughing]
[siren wailing]
[newswoman] Beverlywood man has been
arrested by the FBI.
A heinous Hollywood hoodwink.
[newswoman] A $650 million Ponzi scheme.
[Evan Osnos] By any measure,
this is the largest Ponzi scheme
in the history of Hollywood.
And it went on and on and on
for eight years.
♪
[Trudy Hagedorn] The floor
just dropped out.
I mean, we were just like, "What?"
[Stefan] My best friend had been running
Hollywood's biggest Ponzi scheme,
and I was right in the middle of it.
[Osnos] He went to the people
who knew him best,
and he said, "I have something
that will change your life."
[Justin Scheffel] I feel like
it was one of those things
you just
don't ask questions.
[Stefan] That's the thing about Zach.
There was, like, this mystery about him
all the time.
But you just go on the trips. [laughs]
[Bexxx] Zach was a high roller, for sure.
Flying around on a private jet,
hanging out with a bunch of celebrities
in Hollywood.
I just had no idea it was with
other people's money. [chuckles]
[Steven Kozlowski] What I do question is:
What happened to the over $200 million
still unaccounted for?
[Stefan] If Zach knew
that this was going down,
I think he would have hid money
and stowed it away.
[Craig Cole] If it were me, I would.
[Alex Loftus] I mean,
Zach Horwitz couldn't do this alone.
I believe that he's protecting someone
in his inner circle.
[Bexxx] A lot of people were benefiting
off of what he was doing
and spending his money.
So I don't know
if they looked the other way.
I don't know if other people knew.
There's a lot of mysteries.
[music ends]
[birds chirping]
- [Grits featuring Tobymac sings
"Ooh Ahh (My Life Be Like)"]
- My life be like, ooh, ah ♪
- Yeah ♪
- Ooh, ooh ♪
My life be like, ooh, ah, ooh-ah ♪
- Yeah ♪
- Ooh, ooh ♪
- Ooh, ah ♪
- Yeah ♪
Ooh, ooh ♪
My life be like, ooh, ah, ooh-ah ♪
- Yeah ♪
- Ooh, ooh
As an outsider looking in,
you just thought that everything
was rainbows and butterflies.
Zach's killing it,
making just money hand over fist
with this whole film industry thing.
[gunfire]
[Mallory Hagedorn] He was bringing in
millions of dollars a year,
which is an insane amount of money.
[Craig] He's got a $6 million mansion,
beautiful wife, two kids,
successful business.
I mean, there's not a lot of people who
would say they wouldn't want that life.
[Stefan] We all looked up to him so much.
[laughs] Shit, like, we wanted to be Zach.
The last couple years,
you've had a real big jump
-in your career.
- Yeah.
If you could tell your ten-years-ago self
one thing, what would that be?
Trust your gut.
My life be like ♪
[Osnos] This person,
who was a pretty mediocre actor,
somehow pulled off
this Oscar-worthy deception.
As a writer, I always know if I have
a story that I want to do because
it just ignites something in you,
where you say,
"How can this be? How can this be?"
There was something about Zach Horwitz
that just pulled the people in
to such a bewitching extent.
Over the course of this reporting process,
I've been in touch with his friends,
his wife, and people that he encountered
over the course of his acting career.
And what's amazing about it
is the degree to which
the people closest to him were caught
completely unaware.
Or so they say.
[train whistle blowing]
[birds chirping]
[Mallory] There's so many parts
where I kind of beat myself up
about not asking more questions.
How deep do these lies go?
Psychologically,
it's a real mindfuck.
I don't know if I can say "fuck,"
but I'll probably say it a lot. [laughs]
I'm trying to piece together
the last decade of my life.
When Zach and I first met,
I was 19 and he was 21.
I went to Indiana University.
My sophomore year, we were at a house
party, and that's when I first saw Zach.
Well, actually,
he was making out with a girl
whenever I first saw him
for the first time.
But
I mean, when I did see his face,
I was like, "Wow, he's really attractive."
And he had these beautiful green eyes.
The next time,
we saw each other at a tailgate.
He was like, "Hey, you want
to come out with us to the bars?"
With him and his two roommates.
It was a huge deal when Zach met Mal.
She was like the perfect girl for him.
Small-town country girl.
She was really soft-spoken. She was sweet.
Everybody loved Mal.
[Mallory] Whatever Zach wanted to do,
all of his friends followed.
All of his friends look the same.
All have shaved heads.
They're all in shape.
It was "gym, tan, laundry."
You know, like Jersey Shore-ish.
[Wiz Khalifa sings "No Sleep"]
[Justin] They kind of referred to us
as the Wolfpack.
Last night I let the party
get the best of me ♪
Waking up in the morning,
two hoes laying next to me ♪
plus I heard a officer arrested me ♪
Good weed and cold drinks,
that's the motherfucking recipe
[Stefan] Want to do some squats,
show 'em that booty.
Zach would always tell me
I didn't have pecs.
And Justin would always tell me
I didn't have arms.
Me, Zach, Jake and Justin created
a really strong friendship,
which became almost a brotherhood.
[Mallory] I mean, he would, like,
shave Justin's back.
There was no filter.
I'm not saying that shit on camera.
- [Rebecca Chaiklin] Come on.
- No.
No sleeping,
live it up like it's the weekend ♪
When the deejay play the right song ♪
gonna drink,
gonna party all night long ♪
Party all day, party all night ♪
Say you want to party,
let's party, all right ♪
[song slows, stops]
[Trudy] Mallory told us
that she's met this guy,
and he was
so kind and genuine and thoughtful.
[Mallory] Two weeks after
we started dating,
I turned 20.
And I had an 8:00 a.m. class,
and I run down the stairs
and there were three dozen roses.
I mean, I never had flowers bought for me,
much less three dozen roses.
Then I was just in love.
Like, so in love. I mean, I remember
I wanted to tell him I loved him.
And it was like my heart felt
like it was gonna, like, burst.
[gentle music playing]
I remember the first time
I met his family.
I was driving through the town,
and he was like, "That's my house,
right in front of the stop sign."
I was like, "Holy shit.
Okay."
[chuckles] And then, automatically,
I was insecure.
I was so insecure about
what car I was pulling
into the driveway, my outfit,
everything.
I mean,
it looked like it was someone that had
tens and tens of millions of dollars.
[Mallory] They had a custom home built.
It was huge.
You could tell his mom was really proud
of what she had.
[Stefan] No one was more intimidating
than Sue.
She had this class and, like,
this wealth that just exuded from her.
[Mallory] But when Zach was growing up,
they didn't have a lot of money.
[Osnos] Zach's parents split up
when he was young.
He and his sister were raised
by his mother Susan.
And he was not a particularly happy kid.
But by the time he got to high school,
his mother had remarried.
And she married a prosperous man,
Robert Kozlowski,
who was a manufacturing executive.
[Steven Kozlowski] My dad was
really well-off.
He had been very successful.
And so when they got married,
they lived a very, very comfortable life.
Zach was much younger than me,
but we'd go on family trips together.
[Osnos] Zach gained the reputation
for being a wealthy kid in town.
That became part of his understanding
of how you gain access and attention
and respect.
Suddenly, you've got a nice car,
you've got a vacation house.
That gives you a kind of celebrity
that very few other things can
at that age.
[Steven] His mom put him on a pedestal
at all times.
That put a lot of pressure
on Zach to be the best.
He had this need to be in the spotlight
and to be the golden child.
[Osnos] Zach came to believe
his stepfather
was a sort of model.
That he could be a success in business,
just like him.
And so his next step was becoming the
protégé of a great business tycoon
in Chicago.
[upbeat music playing]
[Mallory] Right after college,
his mom had bought him a condo
up there in Chicago,
so I just moved right in with him,
and that was our first time
living together.
One day, we were leaving
the gym, and there was
an empty building across the street.
And he was like,
"Wouldn't that be great
if that was a healthy smoothie bar?"
And
next thing you know, he's going
to these business conferences.
He would present his idea.
And then someone approached him and said,
"You need to speak with my boss,
who is Howard Schultz,
the founder of Starbucks."
They went downtown to a fancy steakhouse.
Shortly after that, an article came out--
Starbucks is looking to add smoothies.
I was like, "Oh, my gosh.
And Zach has an in with this guy."
So he had this idea
that he was gonna bring us all on board
and move us all to Chicago,
and we're gonna, you know,
make it big in the restaurant industry.
[Stefan] When Zach asked me
to jump, my only answer would be,
"How high?"
I quit my job and I moved to Chicago
and helped start Fül.
- Is that gonna be all for you? All righty.
- Yeah.
[reporter] Low self-esteem as a kid
motivated Zach Horwitz to change his life.
Growing up, I, uh
I wasn't in the best shape.
I was always the, quote, unquote,
like, "fat kid."
[reporter] In middle school, Horwitz
discovered working out and eating healthy.
[Zach] Even if I wasn't
the most in-shape kid
or the best kid on the sports team when
I was younger, eventually, you can be.
[Osnos] Zach told his friends
they had to think of themselves
as if they were the next
Starbucks, and that
if they thought that way,
that that would help them
actually achieve it.
[Mallory] And we all received emails
from Howard Schutlz.
[intriguing music playing]
[Justin] He basically said that
he was interested in growing the brand.
Scaling it out to building
hundreds of Füls throughout the country.
[Osnos] This is the kind of moment
that only comes around
in life maybe once, maybe twice.
Howard Schultz has
written you an email saying,
"Come and follow in my footsteps.
I think you have it within you."
[Stefan] We sat there and just
talked about how we're gonna be set
for the rest of our lives.
[crowd cheering]
[Osnos] And they gave themselves
these grand titles.
Zach was called CEO,
and Jake was called CFO.
Jake had left his job at JP Morgan
to go work,
essentially, as the business guy
at this juice bar.
There was a piece of him that thought
this is a bit of a wild thing to do,
but, on the other hand,
Zach told his friends that Howard Schultz
was prepared to put $30 million into Fül.
[Stefan] He was paying the four of us
six-figure salaries to run Fül.
Wait, what? [laughs]
This-- I'm hearing this
for the first time. What?
Five people at a sandwich bar
were making a six-figure salary?
And none of us had experience
in the food industry, really.
[Chaiklin] Who do you think
was paying for all that?
I don't know.
I asked myself the same question.
I don't know where the money came from.
[Mallory] He got a good chunk of money
from when his stepfather passed away,
and he was reinvesting that.
But I was cleaning and working
and not getting paid.
[Zach] Is this gonna be
for here or to go, guys?
[Justin] There was just a lot
of long hours, long days,
and I think that's when Zach realized,
"This isn't what I want to do.
This isn't for me."
[Mallory] He told me that
the overhead for this
is too much and we need to get out.
[Justin] So we shut the doors.
It kind of caught me off guard, because
the restaurant wasn't open long enough
to be successful.
We'd been open for, like,
two or three months
by the time we ended up
shutting the doors.
[Steven] A Yelp reviewer gives one star
and says, "Eff these guys.
I drive for 15 minutes, park,
walk to the door, only to see
a sign that says, 'We're closed
for the winter months.'
Is this some kind of euphemism for
'We're bleeding money
and whoever invested in this place
has pulled the plug?'
Plus, it's very sad to watch
the plants die through the windows."
[Osnos] But Howard Schultz,
evidently, was not holding it
against Zach.
[Mallory] Howard was like, "You remind me
of a young version of myself.
We would be interested in hiring you
to work for Maveron,"
Howard Schultz's venture capital group
with Dan Levitan.
It was a big salary.
I want to say $400,000.
That would happen to Zach.
He would get the best job, like, possible
out of nowhere from a billionaire.
[Trudy] We started going to Starbucks
because we thought,
you know, Zach is with Howard Schultz.
But I have to admit,
I was not happy
that they were moving to L.A.
[Arden Jones sings "either way"]
[Mallory] We loaded up our stuff.
We had our dog Lucy.
And we did the whole road trip
to California.
Wake up every day,
smile on my face like, "Hell yeah!" ♪
One day I'll be flying private planes
out of Bel Air ♪
And the sky is the limit,
I'm-a tell you when I get there ♪
Flying with the birds,
I already smell the fresh air ♪
Even out the atmosphere,
ain't folding under pressure
Then Zach was going to work
in Century City.
I had taken him there a couple times.
Zach was posting tweets
about Howard taking him under his wing.
[Mallory] I just couldn't believe
that we were living in Hollywood.
[song ends]
I am just this Midwestern,
small-town girl,
and I was like,
"Oh, my God, this is crazy."
I grew up in Santa Claus, Indiana.
It was a very innocent upbringing.
To a fault, almost,
you're kind of shielded from
what else happens in the world
outside of a small town.
[gentle music playing]
I worked at Holiday World. [laughs]
That was my first job when I was 14.
At the duck races.
And here comes Zach
showing me this glamorous world
outside of a small town.
[Trudy] She called us one day and said,
"Mom, they're doing
a reality show up here,
and they're doing auditions."
I'm like, "Mallory,
you don't want to do that."
My name's Mallory. I'm here
for the internship starting today.
I just moved to the city
from Santa Claus, Indiana.
[bells jingling]
One of the storylines
was gonna be two interns
competing for a job.
And I was casted
as the naive, small-town girl.
Go figure.
[supervisor] Mallory clearly knew nothing.
- It won't twist.
- Hey, I like that you're ambitious.
[Mallory chuckles]
When she was little, she'd say,
"I'm gonna do hair out in Hollywood.
I'm gonna do movie star hair" and stuff.
[Mallory] I always wanted to walk
on the red carpet, and Zach kept saying
he wanted to give me that experience.
[cheering, applause]
He had a Rolls-Royce pick us up
to take us to the American Music Awards.
He always tried to act unfazed,
but it definitely triggered
something inside of him.
[Stefan] I think he had a deep desire
to be important and to be famous.
[Mallory] Shortly after that, Zach
expresses to me that he wants to start
doing acting classes.
Next thing you know, he's making a reel.
I'm the man of the house now.
You know why?
'Cause you're just a fucking child.
It was hard to watch.
Yeah, it was so mediocre.
He was always so embarrassed
with that later in life,
and he tried to get that down.
For obvious reasons.
I always said
I was glad he had his real job.
[Mallory] His first role was a commercial,
and that's where he met Craig.
[Craig] When I moved down to California,
I started pursuing acting.
And I got this military role
for a commercial.
There's about, I don't know, ten dudes
dressed in military getup.
And I kid you not--
I'm seeing these, like,
full gown nun-type of outfit
moving forward on these Segways.
Like that. I'm looking at it like,
"What is going on?"
[Chaiklin] What was the commercial for?
It was for Scientology.
Yeah, I found out pretty quick.
This was, like,
the headquarters of Scientology.
And that's where I met Zach Horwitz.
We just connected right way.
We're literally crawling through mud.
And as we were talking,
I tell Zach my experience in Hollywood
felt like it was just a nonstop rat race--
going to audition, audition, audition.
I was telling him, to really
make it, I think you got to create
something yourself.
The next time we'd hang out, he's like,
"Craig, how much do you think
it would take to make a movie?"
And I was like, "Dude, I don't know.
You know, a couple million."
And he tells me that he started
an organic, healthy smoothie shop.
And then he leans over--
you know, he tells me
to not tell Mallory
and I did think
that was a little bit weird
at the time--
and he goes, "I sold for $11 million."
"Wow. Like, that's-that's awesome.
Looks like you're my new best friend.
You want to make a movie
and you got 11 million bucks, you know?"
I mean, that's the name of the game.
[Osnos] And so his job at Maveron
seemed to morph.
Howard and Dan were going to set up a fund
to get into the moviemaking business.
[Trudy] That's when he came up
with his company called One in a Million.
[Osnos] Zach adopted a kind of mantra.
"If the odds are one in a million,
be that one."
He was always talking about his dreams.
[Zach] Especially these kind
of dream-type careers,
you really have to be able
to, like, take a step back from everyone
telling you, you know, "This is crazy.
Are you really gonna move across country
and try to make this happen?"
and say like,
"Look, I have to give it a shot.
Because if I don't,
I'm gonna be kicking myself forever."
[Mallory] I was under the impression
his partners were Howard and Dan.
[Osnos] And they formed this partnership
with the Hallivis brothers.
Julio and Diego Hallivis were operating
in the world of low-budget
thrillers and horror movies.
And, all of a sudden,
Zach wandered into their lives,
and he seemed to have access
to everything that they needed
to make it in Hollywood.
Julio and Diego would be the filmmakers,
and then Zach would be the person that
they would build these projects around.
Oh, shit. A drone just spotted me.
- It's now or never!
- Fuck it.
[whirring]
[dramatic music playing]
He wanted to be Brad Pitt,
like, right away.
He just wanted to be on the big screen.
[Osnos] One of the first things they did
was they set about
building the architecture of success.
They rented this very cool office
in a part of town
that would instantly tell you
this is somebody who is going places.
He loved the television show Entourage.
And now he had an entourage of his own--
Julio and Diego.
And so Zach rented them
three beautiful black Mercedes
that they could all drive together,
show up to meetings
in this kind of armada,
just like Entourage.
And they showed it off
with their social media presence.
I mean, they had matching leather jackets,
enacting every conceivable cliché
of the Hollywood wannabe.
He watched Entourage
over and over and over again.
You can't afford this house, Vince.
Can't afford anything we have.
Never stopped me before.
It's always worked out.
- [phone rings]
- [Mallory] I got a little nervous
for him maybe, like, just not keeping
a great track of finances.
Because Dan and Howard said, "We're gonna
give you 60 days to make bigger profits.
And if it doesn't happen, that's it."
[engine revving]
[Osnos] He needed money,
and he needed to move fast.
But it just so happened
Julio and Diego's friend
was a seasoned film
and television executive,
somebody who had the experience,
the connections.
He seemed like the perfect partner.
[Gustavo] I worked for 20th Century Fox
for 27 years,
and then I decided to go independent
and set up a company
by the name of Alebrije.
And we started working with Netflix.
And we would go out to the markets
and buy the movies they were looking for.
I was introduced to Zach
at the American Film Market.
We started talking,
and he wanted to join us in buying films.
[Mallory] Next thing I know,
there's an article in Variety magazine
that says they're doing a partnership.
This piece that appeared in the trade
press suddenly established a new reality.
So instead of being described as
a aspiring actor with a failed juice bar,
he was a man who had
succeeded in business.
[Gustavo] Zach really didn't have
any skill set in the film industry,
but, I mean, he was young
and he was making a lot of money.
For us, it was an easy deal.
I mean, they just put
50% of the money down,
and we run half the risk
that we were running before.
[Mallory] They went
to Berlin Film Festival.
They went to South by Southwest, Cannes.
You know,
I see Zach posting on his Instagram,
going to film festivals,
making things happen.
I'm like, "Goddamn.
You know, he's doing it."
[Gustavo] We ended up buying
five, six movies with Zach and Julio.
And then he moved on to other things.
[Osnos] And now that
he had gained Howard's trust,
they began expanding this new venture.
[Stefan] Zach took me and all the boys
to Aspen.
That is when he dropped the bug
in the ear of Jake
about this investment opportunity
that he had with films.
[Osnos] He went back to Jake,
who had gone into finance
after the failure of the juice bar.
And Zach said to Jake,
"I can let you in on a deal.
If you can give me $37,000,
I can get you $9,000 back as profit."
And it worked. Jake is thinking
to himself, "My old friend Zach
actually seems to have tapped into some
kind of powerful business opportunity."
[Mallory] This was when streaming
started getting really big.
And so
all these streamers are just dying
for content.
And Zach basically would buy
all these movies that weren't very good,
dub it in Spanish, and sell it
to the Latin America market
with Netflix and HBO.
[Osnos] Jake started talking
to some of their other buddies
from Indiana University, and he said,
"Look, Zach has gone to L.A.
and he has found something extraordinary.
And if we can find the money, we can begin
to get a piece of this action."
And they formed a company they called
JJMT, after their first names--
Joe deAlteris, Jake Wunderlin,
Matt Schweinzger, and Tyler Crookston--
created for the sole purpose
of raising money
for Zach Horwitz's
One in a Million Capital.
And they all had backgrounds in finance,
so nobody would have ever questioned
that part.
They understood how to talk about it
to wealthy people
who might want to give them money.
And so they started building these
kind of growing communities
of sub-investors
all across the country.
[Scott Cohen] I grew up
as a competitive tennis player.
Jake Wunderlin was a guy
that reminded me a lot of me.
He went to undergraduate
at Indiana University.
Super analytical.
Amazing with follow-up
and details.
So we hit it off immediately.
[Doug Pacht] Scott used to be
in the information technology business
and then became a point person
in investments.
[Scott] But I was definitely not familiar
with the film industry.
[Doug] The original pitch
and the rate of return
seemed interesting and sexy.
We asked Jake,
"Can you arrange for Scott and I to meet
with Zach directly
on one of our destination trips
to visit our cannabis investment?"
And we got a call that Jake and Zach had
just landed at a private airstrip
and they were gonna be at the facility
in 15 minutes.
And we thought, "Makes perfect sense.
This is what Hollywood type do.
They fly in on a private plane."
[Scott] And we just had a crazy,
fun weekend as just a bunch of buddies
at this large cannabis farm.
[Doug] It was understood that
we weren't really going to pepper Zach
with any questions about the business
and that Jake was really the point person.
The investment went remarkably well.
The rate of return was exactly
what we had spoken about.
On the day that it was due to come in,
it came in.
And on that very day, the question was,
"Would you like to
take the money
or would you like to reinvest?"
[Chaiklin] What did you do?
We reinvested.
But Zach, sadly, was not the guy
that he presented himself to be.
[Loftus] I represent 111 investors
who lost money in the Ponzi scheme.
In his own mind, Zach knows
all the right people in Hollywood,
and he had this unique relationship
that enabled him to double his money.
The reality is
he's just a handsome kid from Indiana
that somehow convinced his friends
and family
he was business partners
with Howard Schultz.
But he never even met the guy.
This was always a fraudulent business
from the start.
There were never any deals with HBO,
never any deals with Netflix.
Everything had to be this ruse
from the start.
[Loftus] When Zach developed
One in a Million,
he called up the bank
about getting a line of credit.
He tells them he's in business
with HBO and Netflix,
and they said, "No. You better have
your mom cosign the loan."
Which doesn't make any sense.
If you're in business with Howard Schultz,
you're gonna have access
to all kinds of lines of credit.
Why would you go to your mother to get it?
[Loftus] But his mom cosigned
the million-dollar line of credit.
He really imagined that he might be able
to hack the Hollywood system.
And that was the origins of the con.
[Loftus] The way a Ponzi scheme works
is the Ponzi schemer just takes money from
new investors to pay off old investors.
So the way this worked for Horwitz was
that he would time it
so that payments were due
right when money was coming in.
And then investors got paid back
their principal plus their interest.
Then he'd offer them another deal, and
they'd give him their money right back.
I had a guy paying me without asking once.
And he wasn't paying me
ten grand or 20 grand.
He'd be wiring me hundreds of thousands
of dollars like clockwork.
[Osnos] And when the investors got
their money back--
in full, on time, with interest--
they effectively became the scheme's
greatest walking advertisements.
And I think we quickly
came to the realization,
based on the consistency of the return,
that we were gonna
just reinvest the money.
[Loftus] No money ever came in
from HBO, Netflix, Sony.
It was all just money coming
from other investors.
If anybody did that due diligence
and called HBO--
"You ever heard of Zach Horwitz?"--
Ponzi scheme over.
Nobody made that call.
But if you're bros with somebody,
you're gonna start
from a position of trust.
And then once you're deeper in,
then you ask for some proof,
then he fakes something
and forges something
and it pacifies you a bit.
And because there were some real movies
done with Gustavo,
he had real paperwork that looked like
a real movie distribution deal.
He was able to take those real contracts
and photoshop them with the name
of whatever fake movie he wanted.
It was very helpful to Zach that, frankly,
nobody really understands
how the movie business works.
[Trudy] Zach bought films and--
You know what? It was something
that I never really could understand.
I would ask a question
but just kind of pretended I knew
what he was talking about,
but I really didn't get it.
My assumption is that Zach's game plan
is that reality would catch up to fantasy.
If he would have succeeded
in becoming a great movie star,
he could use his fame and fortune
to pay everyone back.
[Osnos] There is this very tempting idea
that you can fake it till you make it,
that somehow there can be
all of these lies along the path to truth.
And we've created these tools
all around us on social media
that are ultimately instruments
of creating an illusion about who we are.
Zach circulated photos of himself
in front of a sign at the Golden Globes.
The truth was he never attended
the Golden Globes ceremony.
Nobody really talks about this,
but you can just rent a hotel room,
put on a tuxedo and walk around.
And as far as the world knows,
you were at the Golden Globes.
[Craig] For the people looking outside in,
he's really embodying
that kind of Hollywood dream, if you will,
and-and he's making it happen.
And-and during this time, Zach's lifestyle
had really began to change.
[Stefan] Don't mind his biceps.
He's just opening up a 3K fucking bottle.
[Mallory] I remember Zach came home,
and he was, like, so excited.
So he tells me, "Come in
the parking garage," and he walks up
to this black matte Lamborghini.
And he's like,
"What do you think of this?"
Like, "Well, it's nice."
And he was like, "It's mine."
And I was like, "Wow."
He said Howard just wanted him
to drive it around and look like somebody.
[Mallory] He said,
"Howard gave it to me as a signing bonus.
It's better for tax purposes."
[Chaiklin] How much does
a Lamborghini cost?
Uh, probably about $250,000.
[Craig] He would take me out
to the best of the best restaurants,
front row seats at the Lakers.
[Mallory] He would rub shoulders
with Ashton Kutcher and Zac Efron.
One time, he sat by Jack Nicholson.
And he said that Jack's inviting us over.
And then they went through a drive-through
at McDonald's because
Jack likes the McDonald's fries.
[paparazzo] Jack! What up, baby?
[Osnos] Each one of these little,
tiny details became a brick
in this edifice of total fabrication.
But you would have to know
that each step along the way was fake.
[Mallory] I fell into the whole fairy-tale
love story that he put in my head.
One day, he said he found, like,
this really cool private beach
and he wants to show me.
I was like, "Okay."
Then he got down on a knee and said,
"Will you marry me?"
I was so, so excited.
[gentle music playing]
[Greg Hagedorn] Zach asked
for my permission
to marry Mallory, and I was
very happy to say yes.
We were elated, because that's
what you want for your children.
You want them to be with their person.
Of course, they wanted a fancier wedding
[laughing] than what we usually had.
[Mallory] Everyone in Santa Claus,
my family, they were like, "Is Howard
Schultz gonna be at the wedding?"
[Trudy] Zach said, "Oh, no.
Howard doesn't mix personal with work."
[Greg] I remember saying something
pretty silly
prior to going down the aisle
to get her to laugh,
and she did and off we went.
[Chappell Roan sings "Pink Pony Club"]
♪
[Mallory] I promise to endlessly give you
my heart and soul.
No dream is too big,
and I never want you to let go of this.
I promise to honor and respect you
as my wife.
And every story I tell throughout my life,
I want to tell it with you.
Our love is truly one in a million.
♪
I'm having wicked dreams
of leaving Tennessee ♪
Hear Santa Monica,
I swear it's calling me ♪
Won't make my mama proud,
it's gonna cause a scene ♪
She sees her baby girl,
I know she's gonna scream ♪
God, what have you done? ♪
You're a Pink Pony girl ♪
and you dance at the club, oh, Mama ♪
I'm just having fun ♪
on the stage in my heels ♪
It's where I belong down at the ♪
Pink Pony Club ♪
I'm gonna keep on dancing
at the Pink Pony Club ♪
I'm gonna keep on dancing
down in West Hollywood ♪
I'm gonna keep on dancing
at the Pink Pony Club
[Bexxx] I'm Bexxx. B-E-triple-"X."
[chuckles]
I do like Versace,
because Armani dresses the wife
and Versace dresses the mistress.
And everybody knows
that the mistress has more fun.
[chuckles]
♪
I'm gonna keep on dancing
I hold the key to many people's secrets.
[laughs]
[upbeat music playing]
♪
♪
♪