This is the American Greed Podcast presented by CNBC. I'm Stacey Cage.

In this episode of American Greed, the shadowy world of film financing, where fortunes can be stolen.

We are just dying to make this movie, and we put so much into it, and now somebody's stolen it away from us.

And good names dragged through the mud.

Their reputations, and in some cases, their careers were destroyed by this fraud.

Jason Van Eman and Ben McConley are up and coming players in Hollywood's independent film scene.

Producing and financing movies through weathervane productions.

Van Eman is a former B-list actor who finds the deals.

He was the salesman. He was charismatic. He was smooth.

And McConley uses social media to show off his life as a wealth manager, married to an Instagram model, and he uses his family's money to fund them.

He was all over social media, flashy lifestyle, drove for our ease and bent leaves.

Ben McConley was all about his image.

In a few short years, the partners build a list of credits for financing films starring A-list celebrities.

But the feds tell American greed that these so-called financiers use other people's millions to fund some films and steal the rest.

Every day you had a cancerous knot, just wondering if this project is ever going to be realized.

But what these bad actors haven't counted on is getting caught up in a timeless Hollywood storyline.

The revenge plot.

You mess with the wrong guys. I'm going to make it my life mission to put you in jail.

You know that the whole house of cards is now collapsed on itself.

And that's when I got the bright idea how to go after these guys.

In the spring of 2015, production is moving along on the independent feature film Inside Game, the story of an infamous NBA betting scandal.

And the passion project of venture capitalists turned filmmaker Paul Martino.

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