Former MoviePass Executive Found Guilty of Embezzling at Least $260,000 From Company to Fund Coachella Event
A former executive for MoviePass Inc. was found guilty on Thursday of embezzling at least $260,000 from the subscription service and its parent company, Helios & Matheson Analytics, to repay debts incurred by producing a marketing event at the Coachella music festival in 2018.
Khalid Itum, now 43 years old, was found guilty by a jury of two counts of wire fraud. He was acquitted on two counts of money laundering. The Department of Justice announced the verdict Friday afternoon.
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At the time, Itum was the VP of business development at the New York-based MoviePass. He later reached the role of executive VP, which he held until departing the company in March 2019 — around the time that the all-you-can-watch subscription-based movie theater ticketing service collapsed financially after losing hundreds of millions of dollars.
The case stated that Itum registered a separate company, the Los Angeles-based Kaleidoscope Productions LLC, in 2017. The executive allegedly borrowed money to fund a Kaleidoscope promotional event at the next year’s edition of Coachella, then paid back his debts by siphoning money from Helios & Matheson Analytics through falsified invoices.
Itum was first arrested for the charges in February last year, before pleading not guilty and being released on $75,000 bond. Prior to that, Variety had reported in 2019 that Itum had pleaded guilty to stealing money from a previous employer, a furniture company.
A sentencing for Itum is scheduled for April 29. He faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
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