Federal authorities said filmmaker Carl Erik Rinsch was arrested on Tuesday over charges he allegedly defrauded streaming giant Netflix out of $11 million in connection with a science fiction series he never completed.
Prosecutors didn’t name Netflix in the indictment or news release. But the dispute between Rinsch, 47, and Netflix has been well publicized since The New York Times first reported on the allegations against the filmmaker in a November 2023 article.
Between 2018 and 2019, Netflix, which is only referred to as “a subscription video on-demand streaming service” by prosecutors, had paid $44 million to Rinsch’s company for the filmmaker’s unproduced show, “White Horse,” according to the indictment.
Though Rinsch is a relatively unknown filmmaker — having only helmed one movie, titled “47 Ronin” — there was a competitive auction for the project, according to The New York Times. Rinsch’s pitch was for a science-fiction series about artificial humans.
In March 2020, Netflix
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