Feds charge director with $11 million fraud over his unfinished Netflix show

is a senior editor following news across tech, culture, policy, and entertainment. He joined The Verge in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget. “The Strange $55 Million Saga of a Netflix Series You’ll Never See,” reported in 2023 by the New York Times, is now a criminal matter, as today prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged director Carl Erik Rinsch with wire fraud, money laundering, and other financial crimes. They allege that after Netflix (referred to as Streaming Company-1 in the indictment) won the bidding for his 13-episode show, it paid $44 million over the course of 2018 and 2019 to produce the sci-fi series about a species of superintelligent humanlike clones. According to the Times report, Netflix secured the show by offering millions more than Amazon and promising Rinsch, whose only feature film is 47 Ronin, final cut. The fraud he’s being charged with came into play once he told Netflix he’d need an additional $11 million to finish the sh ... Read full article.