American entertainment production executive David Ozer has been sentenced to 18 months in U.S. federal prison after pleading guilty to two separate charges of fraud, including one for defrauding Ravenwood-Productions LLC of US$214,000 in connection with the Canadian-shot TV series Safehaven.
U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. of California found this week that Mr. Ozer, as president of Strong Studios Inc., defrauded Ravenwood, Savehaven‘s lead financier, “by misappropriating approximately US$214,486 in production funds from bank accounts for the production,” according to a Justice Department press release.
Safehaven, a supernatural thriller about a high-school comic artist based on show creator James Seale’s graphic novel of the same name, began production in Winnipeg in 2022. It features a roster of numerous Canadian writers and actors.
“To create the false appearance that the funds he embezzled were spent on legitimate production costs, Ozer created fraudulent accounting records, including falsified invoices, and forged a letter purportedly from his accountant,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California wrote in the release. “In fact, Ozer’s accountant did not write the letter, the contents of the letter were false, and Ozer used his accountant’s name without his accountant’s authorization.”
The attorney’s office said the fraud occurred between February, 2023, and January, 2024, and that “Ozer provided these falsified documents to a lawyer for Strong Studios and caused him to transmit them in an e-mail on January 3, 2024, to a lawyer for Ravenwood-Productions.”
Mr. Ozer was also charged with misappropriating several individuals’ funds in connection with a different television series totalling US$207,100. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud in the two separate cases.
In a sentencing memorandum, Mr. Ozer’s lawyer said his client had been extorted by someone through a hookup app. “Mr. Ozer believed that the only way to avoid the embarrassment was to accede to the extortionist’s payment demands, keeping them quiet and buying him more time,” the memo reads. After exhausting other financial avenues, the memo continues, Mr. Ozer then turned to his Safehaven-related account to pay the extortionist.
“Mr. Ozer not only lost his money, his profession, his dignity and his reputation, but his wife has left him, he’s lost standing in his community, and he has suffered a recent mental breakdown for which he had to be hospitalized,” the memo continues. “He has suffered tremendously, and he is prepared to face justice for his crimes.”
As of Tuesday, Mr. Ozer was free on a US$25,000 bond, and has also been ordered to pay US$400,000 in restitution on top of his prison sentence.
Prosecutors wrote that Mr. Ozer “knew it was wrong to embezzle funds from his company’s principal financial backer, and he knew it was wrong to misappropriate funds from individual investors. [Ozer] did these things anyway.” They also said the FBI had investigated these matters.
Ravenwood-Productions initially launched a civil suit in California against Mr. Ozer and others in connection with the matter, but the court issued a temporary stay as the criminal proceedings went forward.
