Money Laundering and Independent Films

Would anyone be surprised to find out that films tend to be a risky investment?

When Big Idea was getting its feet off the ground, no one would invest in them. There were companies who offered to market the films when they were done, but no one would pay to produce them. Except for a nameless man who claimed to be from the ministry. He did not reveal his identity and offered Big Idea of 110 thousand dollars to make eleven episodes of Veggietales and he still remains anonymous to this day. Looking back it’s easy to conclude that the investor was probably not legit and might have been using Big Ideas Christian branding to get away with laundering money.

As far as investing in films go scams invade the industry, Indie producer Christopher Eberts laundered 600,000 thousand dollars from a retired firefighter who wanted ti turn his book Rebounding From Death’s Door into a movie.

The FBI in 2011 busted a 25 million dollar indie film soliciting scheme where investments were being made on films that no one ever intended to produce.

With microbudget indies, a lot of time money is coming out of a producer’s friend’s pocket or their own and these films have a very limited chance of success. It’s actually required that investors file with the SEC on most film investments due to the high risk and often limited knowledge of these investors in the production process and distribution.

This isn’t the most important research but it’s worth noting that because of the risk involved, the lack of transparency required, and all of the moving parts involved in the production, corruption can occur. It is very easy for someone to take your money or use your project to clean up theirs. Part of the issue is the investment in a project vs. a publicly traded company that gets audited regularly.