Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story
Wed, 05 Feb 2025
This is the story of Zach Horwitz aka Zach Avery and his ponzi scheme
Who is Zach Horwitz and how did he start his scheme?
So this relatively unknown actor is rich now. He just took in over 690 million dollars and he did it basically by just using his charming personality. So how did he get so rich? Now the guy's name is Zack and Zack's an aspiring actor and he really wants to be famous. But unfortunately for him, he's not. But he will be. But for now, he's just a guy who runs a juice bar in Chicago.
But then one day, he writes a billionaire asking him to invest in his juice bar. That billionaire is Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. So Zach writes Howard asking him to invest, thinking, I don't know, it's worth a shot. But then, surprisingly, Howard Schultz writes him back. And he says that he's really impressed with the business plan that Zach pitched him.
but that he doesn't want to invest in the juice bar. However, he does want to invest in Zach. He wants him to come work for him at his venture capital firm in Los Angeles. So then Zach goes to his girlfriend, this woman, Mallory, and he shows her this email from Howard.
And they're all excited and just like that, boom, they move to Los Angeles so he can take this new job waiting for him at this venture capital firm. Here's the messed up thing though. There is no new job waiting for him at this venture capital firm. Zach never got a job offer from billionaire Howard Schultz because Howard Schultz never wrote him back. Zach made all of that up.
He faked the email and everything. And he tells this big lie so that he can convince Mallory to drop everything and move to Los Angeles with him. Because remember, deep down, he's an aspiring actor who really wants to be famous. Why he doesn't just tell his girlfriend that, I don't know. So anyway, pow, they're now in LA. And Zach has got to keep this lie going.
So several times a week, he'll leave his apartment for hours at a time. And he tells Mallory, oh, I'm off to work. I've got an important meeting. But he's really going over to this acting school to secretly take acting classes. And he's going on auditions, and he's putting himself on tape. But as it turns out, landing a role is hard for him, mostly because his acting sucks.
I am completely and utterly in love with you. Now, despite that, Zach does have a couple of things going for him. Like he's charming and he's driven. And at some point over dinner, he meets these two, Julio and Diego. And Julio and Diego are brothers and they're also indie filmmakers. Like they mostly make short films. And they really hit it off with Zach and they become friends.
And Zach, he eventually tells them the same lie he told Mallory. Hey, I got this connection to billionaire Howard Schultz and I can get him to invest in your movies. So the three of them start a production company and they end up buying the rights to low budget English language movies and distributing them in Latin American countries.
And this is a legit business model, but they need capital to get it going. So Zach hits up an old college buddy of his who works in investing, a buddy we'll call Day Trader Jake. And so Zach convinces Day Trader Jake to invest $37,000 into his new movie distribution business. promising him, hey, Howard Schultz invested in my company and you'll make a quick return.
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