Hollywood Hustler: Glitz, Glam, Scam (2025) s01e02 Episode Script
Episode 2
1
This is my dressing room.
It's basically like a Barbie suite.
[Malory plays "Barbie Cake" ]
I'm definitely pretty extra.
But that's okay.
I'd rather be too much than too little.
The real world is so cruel, so
I just created my own world,
and I live in my own world here. [laughs]
♪
[whistles]
I'm originally from Pennsylvania,
in the middle of nowhere,
and I hated it there, and everyone's ugly.
And I was like,
"I have to get out of here.
I don't belong here."
Vegas is somewhere where you can just be
whoever you want to be.
That's why Zach loved it.
And I will tell you,
when he came here, he was a star.
We really bonded over music.
He's a huge hip-hop fan.
He loved Eminem.
He told me he had a degree
in sociology and psychology.
And I have a degree in sociology, too.
I knew we had a special connection.
I just didn't think it would go
as far as it did
and we would have a relation
for five years.
♪
[Osnos] What is amazing
is the degree to which
Zach was participating in,
performing in completely separate worlds.
[Stefan] There really was a stream
of girls in Zach's life from day one.
He was always breaking someone's heart
while Mal was always in the background.
[intriguing music playing]
Some of them, Zach would
have a relationship, some of them,
we were just meeting
for the first time, but it was constant.
[Chaiklin] Why didn't you ever
tell Mallory what was going on?
I could never tell Mal anything.
I love Mallory, but the loyalty
was just too high to ever rat
and break that code.
That's just the way we were raised.
I came from a very, very blue-collar,
low-income family.
And so Zach showed me a lifestyle
that I could not
in a million lifetimes fathom.
[upbeat music playing]
Zach and I's favorite movie by
a million miles was Wolf of Wall Street.
[whispering] Was all this legal?
Absolutely fucking not,
but we were making more money
than we knew what to do with.
- We had literally a fuckload of money.
- [grunts]
[Stefan] That's how it felt
while we were in Vegas. [laughing]
[Dom Kennedy sings "My Type of Party"]
Yeah, yeah ♪
- Yo, girl got a cute face ♪
- Face ♪
- Her friend got a nice body ♪
- Body ♪
- They just want to have fun ♪
- Fun ♪
- This my type of party ♪
- Party
[Stefan] Whenever we'd go out,
prepping and getting ready
was a big thing.
We would all, like, gather,
drink and take drugs,
and then we would finish getting ready.
[laughing]
- Twenty bitches in the lobby ♪
- Lobby ♪
- It's plenty bitches in the lobby ♪
- Lobby ♪
- And they all drinking, they smoking ♪
- Smoking ♪
- This my type of party ♪
- Party, party, party
[Bexxx] Zach was a great host.
A lot of times, the potential investors
and people he was trying to impress
were out with us,
but he would just introduce them
as a "friend."
"Can you just make sure
my friend has a good time?"
I mean, we spent a lot of time in Vegas
getting to know Jake and Zach,
just gambling and partying.
Zach leveraged the reputation of Hollywood
as a source
of almost inexhaustible wealth,
and then he sold that idea.
[Bexxx] And he really liked a ratio
of probably ten girls to one guy there.
We had the top penthouse suite.
Went out to the club. Bottle service.
[Bexxx] The investors would be overwhelmed
by the situations
that Zach would put them in.
I would've given him all my money,
like, without even thinking about it.
[crowd chatter]
[Osnos] Zach clearly relished
giving somebody
a moment that they would never forget.
Jake had told me that he would
have no problem spending
$30,000 or $40,000, reserving a table
and drinking with a bunch of girls.
[intriguing music playing]
[Bexxx] Zach would actually
make everyone sign NDAs.
He was always very paranoid.
He wanted new girls every time,
because he didn't want anyone
too close asking questions.
He said, "Just tell everyone
you're not allowed on the phone,
you're not allowed to take any pictures."
And I remember asking him once,
"So you want me to sign it?"
And he goes, "I trust you.
I don't trust anyone else."
[dramatic music playing]
What happens in the strip club
stays in the strip club.
They used to say,
"Curtain closed, anything goes."
The ones with the most money
come back here.
Get your own pole, you get your own bar.
If you're gonna be a scammer,
Vegas might be a good place for you.
We don't ask a lot of questions
around here.
- [ticking]
- [Mallory] Zach was gone all the time.
I could never sleep. I was always worried.
Especially when he would go out
with Dan and Howard.
I would get, like, sick to my stomach.
If you imagine Leonardo DiCaprio
and Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street,
those two
were the personalities that Zach told me
Howard and Dan had.
So they were these
very successful billionaire
men that had to keep it all together
at all times,
and there was only a few people
that they could trust
that they could let these demons out.
[Stefan] He wasn't really
partying with Howard.
That was just me and Zach
with some of his buddies.
I would just be sitting
on the couch next to him
while he was having all of these
natural conversations with his wife.
It was weird.
Uh, th-there's no way to get around it.
It was weird. It was a weird dynamic.
But he was a-a big brother to me, so
I-I thought it was all right.
[Osnos] One of the more amazing details
of his scheme was that he mastered
the use of an app
that allowed him to create text messages
to arrive at precisely the right moment
from whoever he wanted it to be from.
[Mallory] One time, we were in bed
- [dings]
- and he gets a text from Howard Schultz.
"All right, we're here. Time to get up."
And I was like,
"Babe, just, like, don't answer."
Zach got out of the bed
and he started pacing the room.
And he started screaming.
"They control me!
I'm so sick of them controlling me!"
And then he went out with them.
He's like, "I-I have to go."
And then I got a text from Howard Schultz.
"Don't tarnish his career."
[chimes]
[Osnos] He could build the illusion
of an entire relationship
by just showing his phone to somebody.
And, all of a sudden, that would be lodged
indelibly in their memory.
[Craig] He'd pull out his phone, show me
live texts from Howard Schultz.
You know, he'd show me his response,
and then he'd show me Howard Schultz's
response, you know, five minutes later.
He was like, "Oh, Howie."
You know, he'd call him "Howie."
[Osnos] He would find little bits of
language from Howard Schultz's books
or the speeches he gave.
And so he would graft
that kind of inspirational language,
and it got people to do things
that they might not have otherwise done.
[Scott] We would get calls
that deals were coming through the pipe
in which Jake said to me,
"Look, I have a half a million dollars
for you."
I would go out and raise that capital
with a group of other investors.
[Loftus] Every time the JJMT fellas
brought in new investment,
JJMT would get a cut of the action.
About half the money that came into
the One in a Million scheme
came through JJMT.
At one point, Zach chartered a jet
to bring Jake and his friends
down to Miami.
We had a mansion on the water.
It's, like, a 120-foot yacht.
[Stefan] That right there
had to have cost him,
you know, easily a million
just for that one trip.
[Osnos] Jake and Zach got on paddleboards
and paddled out
into the middle of the bay.
And Zach said to his friend, he said,
"I have so much money,
I don't even know what to do with it."
He said, "It's like Monopoly money."
Jake was explaining to me
that Zach typically makes
$10 to $20 million a month
in this business.
[Osnos] The returns they were getting
were huge.
Why wasn't that a red flag?
[Loftus] It was too good to be true,
but it just
kept paying, so everybody kept coming.
[Steven] My dream was always
to be involved with film.
I am a lawyer by trade
and also a film producer.
I've produced two independent films.
It takes years to recoup your money
on a distribution deal.
[Loftus] But the One in a Million scheme
paid out like clockwork
in such a short term.
You put in your money, six months later,
- you'd get 35% profit.
- [bell dings]
That doesn't ever happen!
Especially in six months.
Off of movies like
The Hottie & the Nottie? [laughs]
[Osnos] There is a missing piece
of this puzzle that we may never know,
which is how much
did Zach's friends figure out
about this fraud
before the moment
when it became indefensible?
Even when Zach explained to me
One in a Million,
I didn't really understand.
I-I kind of-- I tried to explain it
to my friends and, like, my family,
because I could just see the skepticism.
But I never confronted Zach about it.
[Osnos] Was there a point along the way
when they knew in their heart of hearts
that something was wrong
and either didn't allow themselves
to recognize it or carried on?
[dramatic music playing]
[Loftus] One of the JJMT members,
Tyler Crookston, said,
"Hey, we're raising
tens of millions of dollars.
We should probably be operating
with full due diligence."
And his partners wanted none of it.
"We're getting paid. It's making money.
Why screw this thing up?"
They told him, you know,
"Put your pencil down."
[Osnos] These guys were coming from
the finance world,
in which one of the ways
you might make a great fortune
is by getting as close as you possibly can
to the line between what's legal
and what's not without stepping over it.
The truth is that that is rewarded
sometimes in the world of finance.
[Loftus] Not long after that,
Tyler left the organization.
The other guys were happy to get rid of
Tyler 'cause they could make more money.
'Cause they only need to split it
three ways instead of four.
And when Tyler left,
he was paid out millions of dollars.
He didn't feel good about it, apparently,
'cause he held on to that money,
paid his taxes on it,
and let it sit there
until the scheme collapsed.
[Chaiklin] Wouldn't the fact that he put
the money aside indicate that he knew
the Feds were gonna come around
at some point
and he knew that there was something
really off with this?
- [phone chimes]
- [Loftus] Tyler knew
JJMT wasn't doing it right.
And he knew JJMT wasn't interested
in doing proper due diligence.
On behalf of our clients, we sued Tyler,
alleging that he breached his duty
to tell the investors what JJMT was doing.
Tyler communicated his exit
very carefully.
So he didn't say that all was well,
but he didn't say that it was bad.
He just said that we disagree
on how to operate the business.
What made people feel good is that
he communicated he was still invested.
I think that's a key fact.
And I think everyone involved
was just happy
to keep the money train on the tracks.
[Scott] The returns were great.
They were big, and they were always
sent back to us like clockwork.
But in around 2018, Bank of America,
with no warning
or anything, they basically told me,
"We're closing your account."
They wouldn't tell me a single thing.
I did speak to Jake about it and explained
to him what was going on with me.
But, interestingly enough, months later,
Chase shut him down.
[Loftus] Chase Bank wrote a letter to JJM
that says, "We're terminating
our relationship with you."
The folks at Chase know it's too hot
for Chase to handle.
JJMT's left with two months
to find a bank.
And the first place JJMT goes
is Zach's bank, City National Bank.
And City National Bank says, "No,
we don't want to do business with you."
Meanwhile, City National is already doing
all the banking for One in a Million.
[Steven] City National Bank
is known for being
Hollywood's bank, the bank of the stars.
They obviously know what legitimate
distribution transactions would look like.
[Loftus] City National has a customer
that's telling them,
"I'm doing business with HBO and Netflix."
And then they have
the customer's bank records
that show no business with HBO or Netflix.
There was all sorts of big red flags.
And City National didn't take
any action to stop this,
besides refusing to let JJM
open an account.
Instead of protecting their investors,
JJMT just find a new bank.
And they keep putting money
in the toxic pool,
and then they let it just keep running.
Yes, it was weird,
but the banks don't tell you anything.
And they can close you for any reason
at any time-- part of your contract.
So the idea that you would know
something is really bad going on
because the bank closed you down, I talked
to a dozen people that it happened to
that weren't involved in a Ponzi scheme.
This was a series of--
I'm not even gonna say red flags--
burning houses that should have
raised an alarm.
Just think of all of the people
whose life savings
would have been saved
had JJMT or the banks acted on that.
[Loftus] What's really sad is that,
as the scheme progressed,
what started off as a bunch of rich people
playing with money
turned into normal people
playing with their whole life savings.
Because the problem with a Ponzi scheme is
that it can never end.
You have to keep bringing in new investors
to pay off the old ones.
[Shawn Goggin] I first met Zach
when we were sophomores in high school.
What's up, dude? Going skydiving.
- [man] You're nuts.
- I know. It's gonna be awesome.
- We're crazy.
- [man] Crazy.
We're pretty much just crazy.
We're crazy people.
[Shawn] Years later, I happened to be
traveling with the Air Force,
and I was down in South America,
which is where Zach was allegedly
selling these movies.
And I remember I mentioned this movie
that I watched, and Zach's like,
"Oh, yeah, I-I sold 'em that one!"
Zach explained it to me as,
"I buy it for $200,
but I already know
I have it sold for $400."
And I'm like, "Okay, you know,
so where are the downfalls here?"
'Cause, like, there seemingly weren't any.
Who wouldn't be interested in
investing with your friends
on such a gravy train?
I saw, you know, some of my friends,
they were investing money
and they were getting their returns.
And I finally told my wife,
I said, "Let's do it."
I'm pumped about it.
You know, I tell my parents about it.
Like, "Oh, I'm investing in this thing
with, you know, Howard Schultz."
And, you know, they're from Seattle
and they're-- "Oh, my God."
Then my parents decide to take out their
savings and retirement and invest as well.
Some of my closest friends
ended up investing.
[Loftus] Ryan Spiegel was old friends
with Craig Cole,
and then Ryan got his dad involved.
And his dad is a successful accountant.
Hi. I'm Jeff Spiegel.
[Loftus] So, Ryan makes this pitch video
to bring in new investors
to One in a Million.
[Ryan] We are Jeff and Ryan Spiegel.
[Loftus] The video starts out
with Ryan and his dad high-fiving
to celebrate this great opportunity.
[Ryan] Let me explain in more detail.
[Loftus] And he claims that,
if you invest in One in a Million,
you get 59% annual returns.
The video itself really screams
"too good to be true."
[Ryan] Where are the risks?
So our main risk:
What if all the platform companies
go out of business
and there's no one to sell the rights to?
I highly doubt that.
[Loftus] But, you know, imagine
if you're a customer of Jeff Spiegel,
so you've known him forever.
So, like, of course, if you trust Jeff,
then you can trust his son.
And if you can trust his son,
then you can trust his old buddy
that he went to college with.
Craig seemed to really like being
in the middle of the deals.
The SAC Advisory Group loved saying that
Craig was a cofounder of the organization.
$75 million came in as a result of Craig.
And Craig got a percentage of every dollar
that went back out to SAC.
[camera clicks]
[Mallory] It was just continuing to grow.
I was like, "Wow, we have a lot of money."
[Osnos] Business was booming
for One in a Million.
And if you showed up at their office
in that period,
what you would have found is that Julio
was working over his laptop.
He was the intense business guy. Nervous.
And Zach was a slightly curious figure.
Honestly, he was at the gym
most of the time.
And so there was a way in which Julio
especially seemed constantly on edge.
Somebody who worked on one of their films
said that he'd never been involved
in a production
in which the money was so opaque.
They would go to Julio and they'd say,
"We need new equipment to make this work."
And, Julio, he almost never said no.
It seemed as if there was
inexhaustible resources available.
But it wasn't at all clear
where the money was really coming from.
Meanwhile, Zach was beginning to gain
some traction as an actor.
[Steven] Julio and Diego,
all of us made a short
that Zach starred in regarding the Joker.
[whirring]
Mommy always said I was different.
And in the weird way
that things can online, that took off.
It was a genuine success.
[Craig] That might have been
the best role he played,
and he played an absolute psychopath.
[Zach] As an actor, I feel like
part of the mystique of what we do is that
you don't want people to know
who Zach is as a person.
I want people to be able to see me
on a screen
and say, "That character
is someone I'm believing."
I feel like he really wanted
everyone to love him.
He's very convincing,
and he's very persuasive,
but in the end,
you realize he was very manipulative.
[Chaiklin] Did you get the sense
he enjoyed manipulating people?
Looking back, I would say absolutely.
Our junior year of college at IU,
Zach took us on a cruise.
[Zach] Keep going.
That's two full bags.
[Stefan] We were pretending to be
college football players
to help us pick up girls. [laughs]
[crowd cheering, whistling]
Zach would create this, like,
elaborate story, uh, behind it all.
"This is my buddy. He's a football player
from D1 college at IU."
[crowd] IU! IU!
[Stefan] And I would just be like,
"Yeah. Yep. That's me."
[panting]
I started hearing this more
when he started doing interviews.
Interestingly, Zach actually had
a kind of burgeoning career in football.
[Evan Rogers] You started at
- Indiana University playing football.
- [Zach] Mm-hmm.
Zach was never on the IU football team.
What was your position
when you were playing?
Uh, free safety and slot receiver.
Yeah, so I was always quick.
And I'm like,
"Well, why don't you correct them?"
He's like, "I mean, whatever, Mal.
Who cares?"
My kneecap was over on the left side.
Like, it was-- it was rough.
But, yeah, it was basically a ACL, MCL,
PCL, meniscus, like, the whole thing.
- Oh, my gosh.
- Just-- Yeah.
And I was like, "Okay, well, if anyone
asks me if you played football at IU,
I'm not lying, so you better hope
that nobody asks me."
[chuckles]
[Loftus] The big question is, is who's
in the fantasy world with Horwitz.
So who's an actual participant
in the fantasy world
versus who is believing the bullshit
coming out of fantasy world?
[Steven] This goes out to investors.
And here he's bragging about taking Fül
from inception to a multimillion-dollar,
multi-pronged fitness brand
in less than 24 months.
Fül fitness apparel sold in Target,
Dick's Sporting Goods
and Sports Authority.
Fitness supplements sold at GNC.
This sounds great.
None of that is true.
If you knew his history in Chicago,
you would know that calling his business
a successful fitness brand was nonsense.
And this could apply to Mallory,
it could apply to the guys in Chicago.
But the line between
what's known in business
as puffery-- which is a defensible form
of exaggeration
to talk up your success--
and outright fraud
is a bit more malleable
than people like to acknowledge.
[crowd chatter]
[Mallory] People should know
I'm a very inquisitive person,
so I did ask a lot of questions.
But at the end of the day, he was working
with people that I also trusted.
These are our friends from college,
and they're legitimate money people.
And there was always paperwork
to back up what he told me.
[upbeat music playing]
And then we started to plan
for our family,
and I was, like, so focused
on that happening that, like,
I really just got in my own zone.
When we found out we were having a boy,
we were so full of joy and excitement.
Fourteen hours of unmedicated labor later,
- our son came into the world.
- [baby crying]
Zach was there for every moment
of that experience.
But then, ten days later, he left
to go shoot for a Ralph Fiennes movie.
So he was like, "I'll pay for
your parents to come out, stay with you."
I did not want him to go
after I had the baby.
I was so vulnerable,
and I was an anxious new mom.
I didn't want him to leave,
but I knew he had to go.
He acted like he had no choice.
It was his job.
[Stefan] I flew out to Serbia with him
for about a week
and saw him acting.
The scene was basically him
and a group of, like, 50 reporters
just yelling at the same time.
That was the only extent of the role.
[Chaiklin] And was this in multiple scenes
or was this
One scene.
That we shot for probably,
like, four hours.
And it was a two-second scene
in the movie.
[Osnos] And he kind of basks
in the memory.
[Zach] Ralph is just a master.
I mean, like, a true master
in front of and behind the camera.
He would say, you know,
"Zach, this was perfect,
but if you turn a little bit to the"--
like, technical things--
"turn a little bit to the left and say
the line in that way instead of this way,
the camera will catch it
a little bit better and we'll be great."
"Perfect. Let's do that."
[Osnos] And there's a piece of watching it
now that you wonder as you look at him:
How much was he sort of telling
that story to himself
and asking himself how much is this real?
I mean, really?
Like, what kind of man leaves his wife
and newborn baby to be an extra?
He wanted to make it so bad in Hollywood.
He obviously was willing to do anything.
[Osnos] Zach even hired a publicist
who could help him get on
to these fairly obscure magazines.
And when he got on there,
he could make it sound
like he was really a part of something.
Zach told me he was paying a producer,
a prominent producer,
to get him in roles.
[Osnos] He told a friend,
"Andrew Levitas is the guy
who's gonna help me become a star."
And Zach and Levitas started a company
called Rogue Black.
The idea was that, by moving
millions of dollars into Rogue Black,
Zach could buy his way onto screen.
I've gotten a chance to become
quite friendly with all the actors,
and I really enjoyed my time with Zach
because he was one of the few actors
I've come across
that just really cares about the work.
No ego, no nothing.
[Osnos] What's strange about
that interview is the idea that
they're just meeting each other
for the first time.
In fact, they were business partners.
Andrew Levitas, who has said
he's not involved in any wrongdoing
and has not been charged with anything,
he'd been involved with Zach
for a long time.
Zach ended up investing
roughly $20 million in Rogue Black
that came out of the Ponzi scheme.
He was suddenly getting into these movies
with real actors,
like Brian Cox from Succession.
Do me a favor.
Try something new, hmm?
[Osnos] If one of these movies
actually worked and became a huge hit,
then he could pay back the investors
in his fraudulent scheme.
No matter what,
every new project you go into,
I start thinking like,
"Am I gonna be good in this?"
or, "Do I know what I'm doing?"
You have that impostor syndrome,
where it's like,
"Am I supposed to be here?
Are they gonna find out
that I'm this fraud the whole time?"
[pensive music playing]
[Mallory] When he landed the lead role
of Last Moment of Clarity,
it was a big moment for him.
I flew out there to Virginia with our son.
[gasps] Say hi!
It was, like, a romantic thriller.
It was his first, like,
sex scene with somebody.
[clanging]
And it was just a really dark time for me.
[Georgia] Do you think
you could love another woman?
When, now?
No, ever.
No, not if I have you.
You're one in a million.
[music stops]
[Mallory] Zach was constantly busy,
whether he was running lines
with other actors
or he was going out to dinner
after the shoots.
I got really depressed and insecure.
And he would say, like,
"Mal, we need to get you in therapy,
because you're supposed to be
my escape from all of this,
and I can't handle this from you."
- It's okay. It's okay.
- No. No.
I-I said no!
- I left in the middle of work to be here.
- [grunts]
Have you ever thought about anyone
besides yourself?
The whole world doesn't revolve
around you, Emma.
That's how he talked to me.
[Bexxx] When you're young
and you choose to date
a young actor,
you have to understand that their career
comes first, because they only have
so much of a period of time to make it.
And so I think he really appreciated
the fact that I understood
when he said he was on set, you know,
for weeks at a time.
I let him be him and he let me be me.
Hi, baby.
[Bex 702 sings "Boss Life"]
- Hit it from the back like ♪
- Back like ♪
- Make 'em all mad like ♪
- Make 'em all mad like ♪
Bitch so bad and she get that bag
then rub my back like ♪
And we never gonna stop
this boss life
And then from that first night
that he heard me rap,
I'm telling you, he fell in love with me.
♪
[Stefan] She was laying in between
me and Zach in bed.
She just started rapping,
like rapping rapping.
And Zach loved that shit.
Zach had things for a lot of girls,
but I think it went deeper with Bexxx.
[Bexxx] Zach has a way of not only
making eye contact with you but holding it
and then leaning in and engaging with you.
And I think that's how
he would just put a spell on everybody.
I have not been in love with anyone since.
It's hard. He set the bar high.
He was a super gentleman.
He would always encourage me
to follow my dreams
and to continue to make music.
And he's like, "You got to get out there.
Like, people got to see you."
And I knew that he was in Hollywood
and he was obviously doing well,
so I was like, "Well, come on, Zach,
like, hook it up. Like, what's up?"
Then he would always shy away.
I had no idea what was going on
behind the scenes
that could have been stressing him out.
Or his secret family and his secret
life that he had without me.
I figured he was, like, a playboy,
but I never thought he was marr--
He never wore a ring.
And when you meet someone that young,
you're not thinking they're married.
I thought that he was just always
stressed out from being on the road
and doing his acting stuff,
so he wanted to come to Vegas
and just, like, go crazy. [laughs]
Like, just go crazy
and go wild and have fun.
[upbeat music playing]
[Stefan] I was always the crazy partier.
That's why Zach always loved
to have me around.
[Zach] Here's Coop.
I promised him that it wouldn't hurt,
but it would just shock him.
Here we go.
- [zaps]
- [cries out]
[Stefan] One of the scariest things
about Adderall and drinking
is you'd black out
but you are fully functional.
We were just taking
whatever was put in front of us--
cocaine, Molly.
There weren't really many questions asked.
We were introduced to GHB,
the date-rape drug.
[Stefan] GHB fucks you up,
but it also lets you keep,
like, a rock-hard dick.
[laughs] It's pretty fun
to date-rape yourself, it turns out.
♪
It just feels like you're fucking
each other's souls. [chuckles]
Lots of oil. Lots of massage.
You just feel like you're going into
a different world.
[breathy gasping]
[intense music playing]
But there was one time
where Zach almost died.
We were at a Miley Cyrus concert,
front row,
in Vegas on a two-day bender.
- [Miley Cyrus sings "We Can't Stop"]
- It's our party,
we can say what we want ♪
Mike Will Made It
[Stefan] After we had flown home,
one of our buddies ordered drugs
to the house.
And we can't stop ♪
And we won't stop ♪
Someone had snorted this drug
and said, "It's heroin. Don't do it."
And then I heard Zach snort it.
- [sniff]
- And he looked right through me
and he went like this
and he went to the back.
He was doing this deep breathing.
It was like
[deep, wheezing breathing]
It still, like, when you replay it
It was just one of the scariest moments,
like, of my life
that I've ever been involved in.
I curled up in the fetal position
on their kitchen floor
'cause I thought he was dead.
And Mallory walked in the front door
like an angel out of heaven
to save their lives.
- [monitor beeping]
- [sirens whooping, wailing]
[whooshing]
And-- Oh, God.
I was so scared after everything happened
because I just didn't understand
who he was.
I didn't tell anyone about that.
I was just so relieved he was alive.
I was angry. I was so confused.
I should've left after that.
But when you start a relationship
in this, like, extreme high high,
then you're constantly looking for
that hit to get back up there,
because you know it can be that good.
And all I wanted was the genuine Zach,
and it showed up.
There was remorse. There was appreciation.
So I stayed.
[Zach] So I fell in love with you 14 days
before you turned 20.
[guests laughing]
[man] Whoo!
[woman] Whoo!
And now I've been with you
- ten years and 14 days.
- [laughter]
And I promise you,
I'm gonna love you every fucking day
for the rest of my life.
[guests exclaiming and applauding]
- Happy birthday.
- [chuckling]
Cheers to 30.
[guests whooping]
Roses everywhere, flowers everywhere.
Think he had the same party planner
that does
the Kardashians' birthday parties.
Then out comes Miguel,
a super famous R&B singer.
Happy birthday ♪
- To ♪
- [woman whooping]
- You, you, you, you, you ♪
- [Zach] Oh, God.
- [whooping]
- You ♪
[Craig] That birthday had to cost
a couple hundred thousand dollars.
[cheering, applause, chattering]
[seat scraping on floor]
[knuckles cracking]
[piano playing "Für Elise"]
[Bexxx] I really don't know
too much about Mallory
other than she was, like, a kept woman
and I think she did hair.
♪
And she was either
extremely naive to the situation
or looked the other way.
♪
But one of Zach's best friends said
that she turned a blind eye
because of the money that was coming in.
♪
[music ends]
[Mallory laughing]
[Mallory] We purchased a home
in Beverlywood.
There was a little park up the street,
and it had a little playground.
Walking distance.
That was quite a house.
[Mallory] I think we purchased it
for $5.7 million.
[Osnos] To the outside world, Zach
and Mallory had built the dream scenario.
Zach started luxuriating in the idea
that he was actually becoming
a sort of secondary movie star.
And in a strange irony,
he was making movies
that were an almost perfect reflection
of what was happening in his own life.
Cops came to see me last night.
They think you're involved
in some kind of drug murder shit.
Tell me this isn't happening again.
It's not. All right? I swear.
You can't put me in jeopardy
of losing Ashley.
I would never do that.
[Osnos] Here he was, playing on-screen
somebody torn between being a criminal
and being a father.
And, actually, in his own personal life,
that's exactly what was happening.
Zach, at this point, is kind of in a race
against the clock.
He needed a huge amount of money
to keep the con going.
So, step by step, he was expanding this
illusion that he was close to big money.
Zach starts communicating a lot
with Ted Sarandos.
[Craig] Ted Sarandos
essentially runs Netflix.
Like, he's as big as it gets.
He would constantly tell me about this
relationship he has with Ted Sarandos.
[Mallory] Zach always told me
his goal was to build
his film library of all the movies
he owned so big that some company
would come in
and just purchase the library.
We're talking about
an over billion-dollar offer for a library
of, I believe, it was 400 or 500 films.
And then one night we go out,
having some drinks, and I was like,
"Like, dude, like, what's going on?"
Every couple minutes,
he's showing me a response from Ted.
And it ends with, "I'll have the offer
on your desk tomorrow morning."
So when Zach reads that to me,
he drops to his knees, he begins crying.
Right in the middle of a bar in Hollywood.
You know, I'm almost crying.
Like, it was this, like, joyous event.
Like, I'm excited, too,
'cause I'm thinking
something's gonna be
coming my way out of it.
It was almost like
that was the performance
that he could never actually
give on camera.
Lo and behold,
that was just a setup the whole time.
Now, looking back,
who's the person he went to last
to help "keep" One in a Million,
essentially, alive?
He went to me. He's like, "Craig,
we need to keep these relationships.
'Cause if we want to sell the company,
we got to keep it going."
So I was like, "Yeah, dude, I'll give you
the rest of my life savings."
[Mallory reading]
And I'm rereading it now
knowing it's Zach texting himself.
It's just-- It's creepy.
"I cannot express
how impressed I am with you.
Netflix is on the receiving end
of good fortune."
Being a Midwesterner,
that sounds too good to be true.
Everything that was going on in California
at that time was, um
[car alarm beeping in distance]
alarming.
- Like that. [laughs]
- [alarm stops]
- [crickets chirping]
- [intense music playing]
- [howls]
- [Osnos] At a certain point
in every Ponzi scheme,
you simply run out of new people
to give you new money.
And that's why Ponzi schemes always fail.
[Craig] Zach started giving hints
that there were some problems
with the payments.
"Hey, we're having some challenges
with HBO."
[message whooshes]
[Mallory] HBO was supposed to pay
and they didn't pay.
And I was like, "Well, that's weird.
They've always paid on time."
It had to do with AT&T's acquisition
of Time Warner.
AT&T wanted to completely redo
their accounting, redo their agreements.
[Mallory] I was seeing emails
from the CEO of HBO Latin America
apologizing for the delay.
I'm talking, like, 30-page,
sophisticated documents.
[Doug] When a month
turned into three months,
people were starting to get worked up
and they want answers.
[Osnos] Zach had, in effect, sworn his
friends in Chicago to a kind of secrecy,
where he had said,
"You can't contact these companies--
HBO, Netflix and Sony-- directly.
You have to go through me."
And so when they raised concerns, he said,
"I'll let you talk to one of them."
And so, at one point, he connected them
to a woman he said
was named Jennifer Bowen,
who was an executive at HBO.
- [phone vibrating]
- And a member of their team
spoke to this person.
[Loftus] Whoever participated
in those calls,
the fake HBO people, should be in jail.
That's the definition of an accomplice.
Because they clearly weren't
somebody from HBO,
and it wasn't Zach,
unless he was a really good ventriloquist.
It's clear that there was
somebody else involved.
I'm fascinated by Jennifer Bowen.
- [Chaiklin] Me, too.
- [laughs]
Who do you think it was?
It's interesting,
'cause there were so many women
- in Zach's life
- Yeah. Right.
- Could've been anybody.
- but none o--
I-I have yet to come across one
who could pull off playing an executive.
I can think of one.
[upbeat music playing]
♪
♪
♪
This is my dressing room.
It's basically like a Barbie suite.
[Malory plays "Barbie Cake" ]
I'm definitely pretty extra.
But that's okay.
I'd rather be too much than too little.
The real world is so cruel, so
I just created my own world,
and I live in my own world here. [laughs]
♪
[whistles]
I'm originally from Pennsylvania,
in the middle of nowhere,
and I hated it there, and everyone's ugly.
And I was like,
"I have to get out of here.
I don't belong here."
Vegas is somewhere where you can just be
whoever you want to be.
That's why Zach loved it.
And I will tell you,
when he came here, he was a star.
We really bonded over music.
He's a huge hip-hop fan.
He loved Eminem.
He told me he had a degree
in sociology and psychology.
And I have a degree in sociology, too.
I knew we had a special connection.
I just didn't think it would go
as far as it did
and we would have a relation
for five years.
♪
[Osnos] What is amazing
is the degree to which
Zach was participating in,
performing in completely separate worlds.
[Stefan] There really was a stream
of girls in Zach's life from day one.
He was always breaking someone's heart
while Mal was always in the background.
[intriguing music playing]
Some of them, Zach would
have a relationship, some of them,
we were just meeting
for the first time, but it was constant.
[Chaiklin] Why didn't you ever
tell Mallory what was going on?
I could never tell Mal anything.
I love Mallory, but the loyalty
was just too high to ever rat
and break that code.
That's just the way we were raised.
I came from a very, very blue-collar,
low-income family.
And so Zach showed me a lifestyle
that I could not
in a million lifetimes fathom.
[upbeat music playing]
Zach and I's favorite movie by
a million miles was Wolf of Wall Street.
[whispering] Was all this legal?
Absolutely fucking not,
but we were making more money
than we knew what to do with.
- We had literally a fuckload of money.
- [grunts]
[Stefan] That's how it felt
while we were in Vegas. [laughing]
[Dom Kennedy sings "My Type of Party"]
Yeah, yeah ♪
- Yo, girl got a cute face ♪
- Face ♪
- Her friend got a nice body ♪
- Body ♪
- They just want to have fun ♪
- Fun ♪
- This my type of party ♪
- Party
[Stefan] Whenever we'd go out,
prepping and getting ready
was a big thing.
We would all, like, gather,
drink and take drugs,
and then we would finish getting ready.
[laughing]
- Twenty bitches in the lobby ♪
- Lobby ♪
- It's plenty bitches in the lobby ♪
- Lobby ♪
- And they all drinking, they smoking ♪
- Smoking ♪
- This my type of party ♪
- Party, party, party
[Bexxx] Zach was a great host.
A lot of times, the potential investors
and people he was trying to impress
were out with us,
but he would just introduce them
as a "friend."
"Can you just make sure
my friend has a good time?"
I mean, we spent a lot of time in Vegas
getting to know Jake and Zach,
just gambling and partying.
Zach leveraged the reputation of Hollywood
as a source
of almost inexhaustible wealth,
and then he sold that idea.
[Bexxx] And he really liked a ratio
of probably ten girls to one guy there.
We had the top penthouse suite.
Went out to the club. Bottle service.
[Bexxx] The investors would be overwhelmed
by the situations
that Zach would put them in.
I would've given him all my money,
like, without even thinking about it.
[crowd chatter]
[Osnos] Zach clearly relished
giving somebody
a moment that they would never forget.
Jake had told me that he would
have no problem spending
$30,000 or $40,000, reserving a table
and drinking with a bunch of girls.
[intriguing music playing]
[Bexxx] Zach would actually
make everyone sign NDAs.
He was always very paranoid.
He wanted new girls every time,
because he didn't want anyone
too close asking questions.
He said, "Just tell everyone
you're not allowed on the phone,
you're not allowed to take any pictures."
And I remember asking him once,
"So you want me to sign it?"
And he goes, "I trust you.
I don't trust anyone else."
[dramatic music playing]
What happens in the strip club
stays in the strip club.
They used to say,
"Curtain closed, anything goes."
The ones with the most money
come back here.
Get your own pole, you get your own bar.
If you're gonna be a scammer,
Vegas might be a good place for you.
We don't ask a lot of questions
around here.
- [ticking]
- [Mallory] Zach was gone all the time.
I could never sleep. I was always worried.
Especially when he would go out
with Dan and Howard.
I would get, like, sick to my stomach.
If you imagine Leonardo DiCaprio
and Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street,
those two
were the personalities that Zach told me
Howard and Dan had.
So they were these
very successful billionaire
men that had to keep it all together
at all times,
and there was only a few people
that they could trust
that they could let these demons out.
[Stefan] He wasn't really
partying with Howard.
That was just me and Zach
with some of his buddies.
I would just be sitting
on the couch next to him
while he was having all of these
natural conversations with his wife.
It was weird.
Uh, th-there's no way to get around it.
It was weird. It was a weird dynamic.
But he was a-a big brother to me, so
I-I thought it was all right.
[Osnos] One of the more amazing details
of his scheme was that he mastered
the use of an app
that allowed him to create text messages
to arrive at precisely the right moment
from whoever he wanted it to be from.
[Mallory] One time, we were in bed
- [dings]
- and he gets a text from Howard Schultz.
"All right, we're here. Time to get up."
And I was like,
"Babe, just, like, don't answer."
Zach got out of the bed
and he started pacing the room.
And he started screaming.
"They control me!
I'm so sick of them controlling me!"
And then he went out with them.
He's like, "I-I have to go."
And then I got a text from Howard Schultz.
"Don't tarnish his career."
[chimes]
[Osnos] He could build the illusion
of an entire relationship
by just showing his phone to somebody.
And, all of a sudden, that would be lodged
indelibly in their memory.
[Craig] He'd pull out his phone, show me
live texts from Howard Schultz.
You know, he'd show me his response,
and then he'd show me Howard Schultz's
response, you know, five minutes later.
He was like, "Oh, Howie."
You know, he'd call him "Howie."
[Osnos] He would find little bits of
language from Howard Schultz's books
or the speeches he gave.
And so he would graft
that kind of inspirational language,
and it got people to do things
that they might not have otherwise done.
[Scott] We would get calls
that deals were coming through the pipe
in which Jake said to me,
"Look, I have a half a million dollars
for you."
I would go out and raise that capital
with a group of other investors.
[Loftus] Every time the JJMT fellas
brought in new investment,
JJMT would get a cut of the action.
About half the money that came into
the One in a Million scheme
came through JJMT.
At one point, Zach chartered a jet
to bring Jake and his friends
down to Miami.
We had a mansion on the water.
It's, like, a 120-foot yacht.
[Stefan] That right there
had to have cost him,
you know, easily a million
just for that one trip.
[Osnos] Jake and Zach got on paddleboards
and paddled out
into the middle of the bay.
And Zach said to his friend, he said,
"I have so much money,
I don't even know what to do with it."
He said, "It's like Monopoly money."
Jake was explaining to me
that Zach typically makes
$10 to $20 million a month
in this business.
[Osnos] The returns they were getting
were huge.
Why wasn't that a red flag?
[Loftus] It was too good to be true,
but it just
kept paying, so everybody kept coming.
[Steven] My dream was always
to be involved with film.
I am a lawyer by trade
and also a film producer.
I've produced two independent films.
It takes years to recoup your money
on a distribution deal.
[Loftus] But the One in a Million scheme
paid out like clockwork
in such a short term.
You put in your money, six months later,
- you'd get 35% profit.
- [bell dings]
That doesn't ever happen!
Especially in six months.
Off of movies like
The Hottie & the Nottie? [laughs]
[Osnos] There is a missing piece
of this puzzle that we may never know,
which is how much
did Zach's friends figure out
about this fraud
before the moment
when it became indefensible?
Even when Zach explained to me
One in a Million,
I didn't really understand.
I-I kind of-- I tried to explain it
to my friends and, like, my family,
because I could just see the skepticism.
But I never confronted Zach about it.
[Osnos] Was there a point along the way
when they knew in their heart of hearts
that something was wrong
and either didn't allow themselves
to recognize it or carried on?
[dramatic music playing]
[Loftus] One of the JJMT members,
Tyler Crookston, said,
"Hey, we're raising
tens of millions of dollars.
We should probably be operating
with full due diligence."
And his partners wanted none of it.
"We're getting paid. It's making money.
Why screw this thing up?"
They told him, you know,
"Put your pencil down."
[Osnos] These guys were coming from
the finance world,
in which one of the ways
you might make a great fortune
is by getting as close as you possibly can
to the line between what's legal
and what's not without stepping over it.
The truth is that that is rewarded
sometimes in the world of finance.
[Loftus] Not long after that,
Tyler left the organization.
The other guys were happy to get rid of
Tyler 'cause they could make more money.
'Cause they only need to split it
three ways instead of four.
And when Tyler left,
he was paid out millions of dollars.
He didn't feel good about it, apparently,
'cause he held on to that money,
paid his taxes on it,
and let it sit there
until the scheme collapsed.
[Chaiklin] Wouldn't the fact that he put
the money aside indicate that he knew
the Feds were gonna come around
at some point
and he knew that there was something
really off with this?
- [phone chimes]
- [Loftus] Tyler knew
JJMT wasn't doing it right.
And he knew JJMT wasn't interested
in doing proper due diligence.
On behalf of our clients, we sued Tyler,
alleging that he breached his duty
to tell the investors what JJMT was doing.
Tyler communicated his exit
very carefully.
So he didn't say that all was well,
but he didn't say that it was bad.
He just said that we disagree
on how to operate the business.
What made people feel good is that
he communicated he was still invested.
I think that's a key fact.
And I think everyone involved
was just happy
to keep the money train on the tracks.
[Scott] The returns were great.
They were big, and they were always
sent back to us like clockwork.
But in around 2018, Bank of America,
with no warning
or anything, they basically told me,
"We're closing your account."
They wouldn't tell me a single thing.
I did speak to Jake about it and explained
to him what was going on with me.
But, interestingly enough, months later,
Chase shut him down.
[Loftus] Chase Bank wrote a letter to JJM
that says, "We're terminating
our relationship with you."
The folks at Chase know it's too hot
for Chase to handle.
JJMT's left with two months
to find a bank.
And the first place JJMT goes
is Zach's bank, City National Bank.
And City National Bank says, "No,
we don't want to do business with you."
Meanwhile, City National is already doing
all the banking for One in a Million.
[Steven] City National Bank
is known for being
Hollywood's bank, the bank of the stars.
They obviously know what legitimate
distribution transactions would look like.
[Loftus] City National has a customer
that's telling them,
"I'm doing business with HBO and Netflix."
And then they have
the customer's bank records
that show no business with HBO or Netflix.
There was all sorts of big red flags.
And City National didn't take
any action to stop this,
besides refusing to let JJM
open an account.
Instead of protecting their investors,
JJMT just find a new bank.
And they keep putting money
in the toxic pool,
and then they let it just keep running.
Yes, it was weird,
but the banks don't tell you anything.
And they can close you for any reason
at any time-- part of your contract.
So the idea that you would know
something is really bad going on
because the bank closed you down, I talked
to a dozen people that it happened to
that weren't involved in a Ponzi scheme.
This was a series of--
I'm not even gonna say red flags--
burning houses that should have
raised an alarm.
Just think of all of the people
whose life savings
would have been saved
had JJMT or the banks acted on that.
[Loftus] What's really sad is that,
as the scheme progressed,
what started off as a bunch of rich people
playing with money
turned into normal people
playing with their whole life savings.
Because the problem with a Ponzi scheme is
that it can never end.
You have to keep bringing in new investors
to pay off the old ones.
[Shawn Goggin] I first met Zach
when we were sophomores in high school.
What's up, dude? Going skydiving.
- [man] You're nuts.
- I know. It's gonna be awesome.
- We're crazy.
- [man] Crazy.
We're pretty much just crazy.
We're crazy people.
[Shawn] Years later, I happened to be
traveling with the Air Force,
and I was down in South America,
which is where Zach was allegedly
selling these movies.
And I remember I mentioned this movie
that I watched, and Zach's like,
"Oh, yeah, I-I sold 'em that one!"
Zach explained it to me as,
"I buy it for $200,
but I already know
I have it sold for $400."
And I'm like, "Okay, you know,
so where are the downfalls here?"
'Cause, like, there seemingly weren't any.
Who wouldn't be interested in
investing with your friends
on such a gravy train?
I saw, you know, some of my friends,
they were investing money
and they were getting their returns.
And I finally told my wife,
I said, "Let's do it."
I'm pumped about it.
You know, I tell my parents about it.
Like, "Oh, I'm investing in this thing
with, you know, Howard Schultz."
And, you know, they're from Seattle
and they're-- "Oh, my God."
Then my parents decide to take out their
savings and retirement and invest as well.
Some of my closest friends
ended up investing.
[Loftus] Ryan Spiegel was old friends
with Craig Cole,
and then Ryan got his dad involved.
And his dad is a successful accountant.
Hi. I'm Jeff Spiegel.
[Loftus] So, Ryan makes this pitch video
to bring in new investors
to One in a Million.
[Ryan] We are Jeff and Ryan Spiegel.
[Loftus] The video starts out
with Ryan and his dad high-fiving
to celebrate this great opportunity.
[Ryan] Let me explain in more detail.
[Loftus] And he claims that,
if you invest in One in a Million,
you get 59% annual returns.
The video itself really screams
"too good to be true."
[Ryan] Where are the risks?
So our main risk:
What if all the platform companies
go out of business
and there's no one to sell the rights to?
I highly doubt that.
[Loftus] But, you know, imagine
if you're a customer of Jeff Spiegel,
so you've known him forever.
So, like, of course, if you trust Jeff,
then you can trust his son.
And if you can trust his son,
then you can trust his old buddy
that he went to college with.
Craig seemed to really like being
in the middle of the deals.
The SAC Advisory Group loved saying that
Craig was a cofounder of the organization.
$75 million came in as a result of Craig.
And Craig got a percentage of every dollar
that went back out to SAC.
[camera clicks]
[Mallory] It was just continuing to grow.
I was like, "Wow, we have a lot of money."
[Osnos] Business was booming
for One in a Million.
And if you showed up at their office
in that period,
what you would have found is that Julio
was working over his laptop.
He was the intense business guy. Nervous.
And Zach was a slightly curious figure.
Honestly, he was at the gym
most of the time.
And so there was a way in which Julio
especially seemed constantly on edge.
Somebody who worked on one of their films
said that he'd never been involved
in a production
in which the money was so opaque.
They would go to Julio and they'd say,
"We need new equipment to make this work."
And, Julio, he almost never said no.
It seemed as if there was
inexhaustible resources available.
But it wasn't at all clear
where the money was really coming from.
Meanwhile, Zach was beginning to gain
some traction as an actor.
[Steven] Julio and Diego,
all of us made a short
that Zach starred in regarding the Joker.
[whirring]
Mommy always said I was different.
And in the weird way
that things can online, that took off.
It was a genuine success.
[Craig] That might have been
the best role he played,
and he played an absolute psychopath.
[Zach] As an actor, I feel like
part of the mystique of what we do is that
you don't want people to know
who Zach is as a person.
I want people to be able to see me
on a screen
and say, "That character
is someone I'm believing."
I feel like he really wanted
everyone to love him.
He's very convincing,
and he's very persuasive,
but in the end,
you realize he was very manipulative.
[Chaiklin] Did you get the sense
he enjoyed manipulating people?
Looking back, I would say absolutely.
Our junior year of college at IU,
Zach took us on a cruise.
[Zach] Keep going.
That's two full bags.
[Stefan] We were pretending to be
college football players
to help us pick up girls. [laughs]
[crowd cheering, whistling]
Zach would create this, like,
elaborate story, uh, behind it all.
"This is my buddy. He's a football player
from D1 college at IU."
[crowd] IU! IU!
[Stefan] And I would just be like,
"Yeah. Yep. That's me."
[panting]
I started hearing this more
when he started doing interviews.
Interestingly, Zach actually had
a kind of burgeoning career in football.
[Evan Rogers] You started at
- Indiana University playing football.
- [Zach] Mm-hmm.
Zach was never on the IU football team.
What was your position
when you were playing?
Uh, free safety and slot receiver.
Yeah, so I was always quick.
And I'm like,
"Well, why don't you correct them?"
He's like, "I mean, whatever, Mal.
Who cares?"
My kneecap was over on the left side.
Like, it was-- it was rough.
But, yeah, it was basically a ACL, MCL,
PCL, meniscus, like, the whole thing.
- Oh, my gosh.
- Just-- Yeah.
And I was like, "Okay, well, if anyone
asks me if you played football at IU,
I'm not lying, so you better hope
that nobody asks me."
[chuckles]
[Loftus] The big question is, is who's
in the fantasy world with Horwitz.
So who's an actual participant
in the fantasy world
versus who is believing the bullshit
coming out of fantasy world?
[Steven] This goes out to investors.
And here he's bragging about taking Fül
from inception to a multimillion-dollar,
multi-pronged fitness brand
in less than 24 months.
Fül fitness apparel sold in Target,
Dick's Sporting Goods
and Sports Authority.
Fitness supplements sold at GNC.
This sounds great.
None of that is true.
If you knew his history in Chicago,
you would know that calling his business
a successful fitness brand was nonsense.
And this could apply to Mallory,
it could apply to the guys in Chicago.
But the line between
what's known in business
as puffery-- which is a defensible form
of exaggeration
to talk up your success--
and outright fraud
is a bit more malleable
than people like to acknowledge.
[crowd chatter]
[Mallory] People should know
I'm a very inquisitive person,
so I did ask a lot of questions.
But at the end of the day, he was working
with people that I also trusted.
These are our friends from college,
and they're legitimate money people.
And there was always paperwork
to back up what he told me.
[upbeat music playing]
And then we started to plan
for our family,
and I was, like, so focused
on that happening that, like,
I really just got in my own zone.
When we found out we were having a boy,
we were so full of joy and excitement.
Fourteen hours of unmedicated labor later,
- our son came into the world.
- [baby crying]
Zach was there for every moment
of that experience.
But then, ten days later, he left
to go shoot for a Ralph Fiennes movie.
So he was like, "I'll pay for
your parents to come out, stay with you."
I did not want him to go
after I had the baby.
I was so vulnerable,
and I was an anxious new mom.
I didn't want him to leave,
but I knew he had to go.
He acted like he had no choice.
It was his job.
[Stefan] I flew out to Serbia with him
for about a week
and saw him acting.
The scene was basically him
and a group of, like, 50 reporters
just yelling at the same time.
That was the only extent of the role.
[Chaiklin] And was this in multiple scenes
or was this
One scene.
That we shot for probably,
like, four hours.
And it was a two-second scene
in the movie.
[Osnos] And he kind of basks
in the memory.
[Zach] Ralph is just a master.
I mean, like, a true master
in front of and behind the camera.
He would say, you know,
"Zach, this was perfect,
but if you turn a little bit to the"--
like, technical things--
"turn a little bit to the left and say
the line in that way instead of this way,
the camera will catch it
a little bit better and we'll be great."
"Perfect. Let's do that."
[Osnos] And there's a piece of watching it
now that you wonder as you look at him:
How much was he sort of telling
that story to himself
and asking himself how much is this real?
I mean, really?
Like, what kind of man leaves his wife
and newborn baby to be an extra?
He wanted to make it so bad in Hollywood.
He obviously was willing to do anything.
[Osnos] Zach even hired a publicist
who could help him get on
to these fairly obscure magazines.
And when he got on there,
he could make it sound
like he was really a part of something.
Zach told me he was paying a producer,
a prominent producer,
to get him in roles.
[Osnos] He told a friend,
"Andrew Levitas is the guy
who's gonna help me become a star."
And Zach and Levitas started a company
called Rogue Black.
The idea was that, by moving
millions of dollars into Rogue Black,
Zach could buy his way onto screen.
I've gotten a chance to become
quite friendly with all the actors,
and I really enjoyed my time with Zach
because he was one of the few actors
I've come across
that just really cares about the work.
No ego, no nothing.
[Osnos] What's strange about
that interview is the idea that
they're just meeting each other
for the first time.
In fact, they were business partners.
Andrew Levitas, who has said
he's not involved in any wrongdoing
and has not been charged with anything,
he'd been involved with Zach
for a long time.
Zach ended up investing
roughly $20 million in Rogue Black
that came out of the Ponzi scheme.
He was suddenly getting into these movies
with real actors,
like Brian Cox from Succession.
Do me a favor.
Try something new, hmm?
[Osnos] If one of these movies
actually worked and became a huge hit,
then he could pay back the investors
in his fraudulent scheme.
No matter what,
every new project you go into,
I start thinking like,
"Am I gonna be good in this?"
or, "Do I know what I'm doing?"
You have that impostor syndrome,
where it's like,
"Am I supposed to be here?
Are they gonna find out
that I'm this fraud the whole time?"
[pensive music playing]
[Mallory] When he landed the lead role
of Last Moment of Clarity,
it was a big moment for him.
I flew out there to Virginia with our son.
[gasps] Say hi!
It was, like, a romantic thriller.
It was his first, like,
sex scene with somebody.
[clanging]
And it was just a really dark time for me.
[Georgia] Do you think
you could love another woman?
When, now?
No, ever.
No, not if I have you.
You're one in a million.
[music stops]
[Mallory] Zach was constantly busy,
whether he was running lines
with other actors
or he was going out to dinner
after the shoots.
I got really depressed and insecure.
And he would say, like,
"Mal, we need to get you in therapy,
because you're supposed to be
my escape from all of this,
and I can't handle this from you."
- It's okay. It's okay.
- No. No.
I-I said no!
- I left in the middle of work to be here.
- [grunts]
Have you ever thought about anyone
besides yourself?
The whole world doesn't revolve
around you, Emma.
That's how he talked to me.
[Bexxx] When you're young
and you choose to date
a young actor,
you have to understand that their career
comes first, because they only have
so much of a period of time to make it.
And so I think he really appreciated
the fact that I understood
when he said he was on set, you know,
for weeks at a time.
I let him be him and he let me be me.
Hi, baby.
[Bex 702 sings "Boss Life"]
- Hit it from the back like ♪
- Back like ♪
- Make 'em all mad like ♪
- Make 'em all mad like ♪
Bitch so bad and she get that bag
then rub my back like ♪
And we never gonna stop
this boss life
And then from that first night
that he heard me rap,
I'm telling you, he fell in love with me.
♪
[Stefan] She was laying in between
me and Zach in bed.
She just started rapping,
like rapping rapping.
And Zach loved that shit.
Zach had things for a lot of girls,
but I think it went deeper with Bexxx.
[Bexxx] Zach has a way of not only
making eye contact with you but holding it
and then leaning in and engaging with you.
And I think that's how
he would just put a spell on everybody.
I have not been in love with anyone since.
It's hard. He set the bar high.
He was a super gentleman.
He would always encourage me
to follow my dreams
and to continue to make music.
And he's like, "You got to get out there.
Like, people got to see you."
And I knew that he was in Hollywood
and he was obviously doing well,
so I was like, "Well, come on, Zach,
like, hook it up. Like, what's up?"
Then he would always shy away.
I had no idea what was going on
behind the scenes
that could have been stressing him out.
Or his secret family and his secret
life that he had without me.
I figured he was, like, a playboy,
but I never thought he was marr--
He never wore a ring.
And when you meet someone that young,
you're not thinking they're married.
I thought that he was just always
stressed out from being on the road
and doing his acting stuff,
so he wanted to come to Vegas
and just, like, go crazy. [laughs]
Like, just go crazy
and go wild and have fun.
[upbeat music playing]
[Stefan] I was always the crazy partier.
That's why Zach always loved
to have me around.
[Zach] Here's Coop.
I promised him that it wouldn't hurt,
but it would just shock him.
Here we go.
- [zaps]
- [cries out]
[Stefan] One of the scariest things
about Adderall and drinking
is you'd black out
but you are fully functional.
We were just taking
whatever was put in front of us--
cocaine, Molly.
There weren't really many questions asked.
We were introduced to GHB,
the date-rape drug.
[Stefan] GHB fucks you up,
but it also lets you keep,
like, a rock-hard dick.
[laughs] It's pretty fun
to date-rape yourself, it turns out.
♪
It just feels like you're fucking
each other's souls. [chuckles]
Lots of oil. Lots of massage.
You just feel like you're going into
a different world.
[breathy gasping]
[intense music playing]
But there was one time
where Zach almost died.
We were at a Miley Cyrus concert,
front row,
in Vegas on a two-day bender.
- [Miley Cyrus sings "We Can't Stop"]
- It's our party,
we can say what we want ♪
Mike Will Made It
[Stefan] After we had flown home,
one of our buddies ordered drugs
to the house.
And we can't stop ♪
And we won't stop ♪
Someone had snorted this drug
and said, "It's heroin. Don't do it."
And then I heard Zach snort it.
- [sniff]
- And he looked right through me
and he went like this
and he went to the back.
He was doing this deep breathing.
It was like
[deep, wheezing breathing]
It still, like, when you replay it
It was just one of the scariest moments,
like, of my life
that I've ever been involved in.
I curled up in the fetal position
on their kitchen floor
'cause I thought he was dead.
And Mallory walked in the front door
like an angel out of heaven
to save their lives.
- [monitor beeping]
- [sirens whooping, wailing]
[whooshing]
And-- Oh, God.
I was so scared after everything happened
because I just didn't understand
who he was.
I didn't tell anyone about that.
I was just so relieved he was alive.
I was angry. I was so confused.
I should've left after that.
But when you start a relationship
in this, like, extreme high high,
then you're constantly looking for
that hit to get back up there,
because you know it can be that good.
And all I wanted was the genuine Zach,
and it showed up.
There was remorse. There was appreciation.
So I stayed.
[Zach] So I fell in love with you 14 days
before you turned 20.
[guests laughing]
[man] Whoo!
[woman] Whoo!
And now I've been with you
- ten years and 14 days.
- [laughter]
And I promise you,
I'm gonna love you every fucking day
for the rest of my life.
[guests exclaiming and applauding]
- Happy birthday.
- [chuckling]
Cheers to 30.
[guests whooping]
Roses everywhere, flowers everywhere.
Think he had the same party planner
that does
the Kardashians' birthday parties.
Then out comes Miguel,
a super famous R&B singer.
Happy birthday ♪
- To ♪
- [woman whooping]
- You, you, you, you, you ♪
- [Zach] Oh, God.
- [whooping]
- You ♪
[Craig] That birthday had to cost
a couple hundred thousand dollars.
[cheering, applause, chattering]
[seat scraping on floor]
[knuckles cracking]
[piano playing "Für Elise"]
[Bexxx] I really don't know
too much about Mallory
other than she was, like, a kept woman
and I think she did hair.
♪
And she was either
extremely naive to the situation
or looked the other way.
♪
But one of Zach's best friends said
that she turned a blind eye
because of the money that was coming in.
♪
[music ends]
[Mallory laughing]
[Mallory] We purchased a home
in Beverlywood.
There was a little park up the street,
and it had a little playground.
Walking distance.
That was quite a house.
[Mallory] I think we purchased it
for $5.7 million.
[Osnos] To the outside world, Zach
and Mallory had built the dream scenario.
Zach started luxuriating in the idea
that he was actually becoming
a sort of secondary movie star.
And in a strange irony,
he was making movies
that were an almost perfect reflection
of what was happening in his own life.
Cops came to see me last night.
They think you're involved
in some kind of drug murder shit.
Tell me this isn't happening again.
It's not. All right? I swear.
You can't put me in jeopardy
of losing Ashley.
I would never do that.
[Osnos] Here he was, playing on-screen
somebody torn between being a criminal
and being a father.
And, actually, in his own personal life,
that's exactly what was happening.
Zach, at this point, is kind of in a race
against the clock.
He needed a huge amount of money
to keep the con going.
So, step by step, he was expanding this
illusion that he was close to big money.
Zach starts communicating a lot
with Ted Sarandos.
[Craig] Ted Sarandos
essentially runs Netflix.
Like, he's as big as it gets.
He would constantly tell me about this
relationship he has with Ted Sarandos.
[Mallory] Zach always told me
his goal was to build
his film library of all the movies
he owned so big that some company
would come in
and just purchase the library.
We're talking about
an over billion-dollar offer for a library
of, I believe, it was 400 or 500 films.
And then one night we go out,
having some drinks, and I was like,
"Like, dude, like, what's going on?"
Every couple minutes,
he's showing me a response from Ted.
And it ends with, "I'll have the offer
on your desk tomorrow morning."
So when Zach reads that to me,
he drops to his knees, he begins crying.
Right in the middle of a bar in Hollywood.
You know, I'm almost crying.
Like, it was this, like, joyous event.
Like, I'm excited, too,
'cause I'm thinking
something's gonna be
coming my way out of it.
It was almost like
that was the performance
that he could never actually
give on camera.
Lo and behold,
that was just a setup the whole time.
Now, looking back,
who's the person he went to last
to help "keep" One in a Million,
essentially, alive?
He went to me. He's like, "Craig,
we need to keep these relationships.
'Cause if we want to sell the company,
we got to keep it going."
So I was like, "Yeah, dude, I'll give you
the rest of my life savings."
[Mallory reading]
And I'm rereading it now
knowing it's Zach texting himself.
It's just-- It's creepy.
"I cannot express
how impressed I am with you.
Netflix is on the receiving end
of good fortune."
Being a Midwesterner,
that sounds too good to be true.
Everything that was going on in California
at that time was, um
[car alarm beeping in distance]
alarming.
- Like that. [laughs]
- [alarm stops]
- [crickets chirping]
- [intense music playing]
- [howls]
- [Osnos] At a certain point
in every Ponzi scheme,
you simply run out of new people
to give you new money.
And that's why Ponzi schemes always fail.
[Craig] Zach started giving hints
that there were some problems
with the payments.
"Hey, we're having some challenges
with HBO."
[message whooshes]
[Mallory] HBO was supposed to pay
and they didn't pay.
And I was like, "Well, that's weird.
They've always paid on time."
It had to do with AT&T's acquisition
of Time Warner.
AT&T wanted to completely redo
their accounting, redo their agreements.
[Mallory] I was seeing emails
from the CEO of HBO Latin America
apologizing for the delay.
I'm talking, like, 30-page,
sophisticated documents.
[Doug] When a month
turned into three months,
people were starting to get worked up
and they want answers.
[Osnos] Zach had, in effect, sworn his
friends in Chicago to a kind of secrecy,
where he had said,
"You can't contact these companies--
HBO, Netflix and Sony-- directly.
You have to go through me."
And so when they raised concerns, he said,
"I'll let you talk to one of them."
And so, at one point, he connected them
to a woman he said
was named Jennifer Bowen,
who was an executive at HBO.
- [phone vibrating]
- And a member of their team
spoke to this person.
[Loftus] Whoever participated
in those calls,
the fake HBO people, should be in jail.
That's the definition of an accomplice.
Because they clearly weren't
somebody from HBO,
and it wasn't Zach,
unless he was a really good ventriloquist.
It's clear that there was
somebody else involved.
I'm fascinated by Jennifer Bowen.
- [Chaiklin] Me, too.
- [laughs]
Who do you think it was?
It's interesting,
'cause there were so many women
- in Zach's life
- Yeah. Right.
- Could've been anybody.
- but none o--
I-I have yet to come across one
who could pull off playing an executive.
I can think of one.
[upbeat music playing]
♪
♪
♪