A Tale Of Epic Movie Proportions Comes To An End With The Last Guilty Plea

A Tale Of Epic Movie Proportions Comes To An End With The Last Guilty Plea

A San Clemente investment company was involved in a movie scam which saw 9 defendants being charged with fraud.  The case has now seen the entry of the last guilty plea from Robert Ramirez.  The case involved the defendants raising funds for movies which were not anywhere in the production pipeline.

The US Department of Justice nabbed all the fraudsters for their scheme of defrauding people and collecting $9 million.  250 people were scammed of their money in the name of 2 movies that were damp squibs at the box office.

Ramirez has agreed to his part in the conspiracy and pled guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, sale of unregistered securities and wire fraud.  The group was also instrumental in misleading people to believe that they would be getting a 1000% return on their investment.  They also were not upfront about how the funds raised from investors would be used.  The charge of conspiracy carries a maximum of five years sentence.

One of the people who have been caught in this conspiracy is Michael D.Sellers who was a CIA operative once.  He was the owner of teen pokies Q Media Assets LLC which is an independent movie company.  The telemarketing team of Q Media Assets approached these investors and lured them into the glamorous movie world by touting films called “Eye of the Dolphin” and “Way of the Dolphin”.  The dreams of the investors certainly were deep sixed in this scheme.

Sellers allegedly sold lead lists to the telemarketers.  He stated that he had purchased these lists from American Investment Strategies, a San Clemente company owned by yet another defendant called Joel Lee Craft Jr.

The telemarketing team played a classic cloak and dagger game to entice people into the investment circle by hiding pertinent information, making material misrepresentations and even using the CIA background of Sellers to promote the so- called authenticity of the movies.

The Eye of the Dolphin raised $5 million and about $70,000 in ticket sales.  The “Way of the Dolphin” was renamed “Beneath The Blue” raised $4 million but went straight to video.

The list of people who have pleaded guilty include James Lloyd, Allen Agler, Robert Keskemety, Jady Laurence Hermann, Daniel Morabito, Matthew Bryan Wellman- Mackin and Joseph McCarthy.

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