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DetlefK

(16,670 posts) Thu Oct 20, 2022, 11:55 AM Oct 2022

Production of MAGA-scifi-movie crippled when crypto-bro embezzled their money.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-woke-superhero-movie-rebels-run-blown-up-in-dollar1-million-con?ref=home

This isn’t how Beale’s followers thought their investments would go in 2019, when they started contributing to fund a film based on a Confederacy-themed superhero comic book character created by Beale. A trailer promoting the proposed movie, Rebel’s Run, featured the character Rebel fighting a global police force hunting down freethinking conservatives.

Frequent Tucker Carlson collaborator Scooter Downey signed on to direct. Beale’s supporters rapidly blew past an initial $750,000 funding goal, ultimately raising more than $1 million.

That money was supposed to be held in escrow to secure several million more dollars in funding. Three years later, though, the cash is gone, and with it Beale’s hopes for a movie.

...

Given that track record, he instead turned to Utah-based Ohana Capital Financial, a business aimed at customers that would struggle to get money elsewhere.

As Ohana’s promotional materials put it, according to prosecutors, the firm offered “banking [to] the unbankable.” On Nov. 5, 2020, Beale transferred the $1 million to Ohana to be held in escrow in advance of future film funding.

Ohana was the creation of James Wolfgramm, a self-described cryptocurrency billionaire who posted pictures of sports cars that supposedly belonged to him on social media. But in fact, according to a federal indictment filed last month, Wolfgramm’s wealth was a sham. The sports car pictures, for example, were pulled from other websites. Wolfgramm’s business also sold what were billed as high-tech cryptocurrency mining rigs — but those too were a hoax, according to prosecutors, with their screens just running on a loop to create the illusion of mine.

Unbeknownst to Beale and his supporters, the indictment alleges, Wolfgramm was deeply in debt to one of his business’s other clients. That client had paid Ohana more than $4 million in September 2020, several months into the Covid-19 pandemic, as part of what was meant to be a payment to a Chinese manufacturer of personal protective equipment. Instead of carrying out the transaction, prosecutors allege, Wolfgramm spent the millions on his own unrelated business issues.

Now seven-figures into the hole and with no PPE to show for it, Wolfgramm allegedly used the Rebel’s Run money to buy the Chinese medical equipment. Soon after that, according to a video Beale released to his fans, the blogger and his collaborators became suspicious and contacted the FBI, sparking the investigation into Wolfgramm.

...

Beale isn’t done with movies yet, though. In a video to his fans, he told them he’s working on a script starring his friend, antisemitic former comedian Owen Benjamin. In this new movie, Beale plans to cast Benjamin—who believes the moon landing was faked—as the head of NASA.

Owen Benjamin is also a Flat-Earther who regularly posts videos with "evidence" that Earth is flat.