Given that the last time she worked on something written by Scott Z. Burns, Kate Winsletended up dying horribly (on screen), we're perhaps surprised that she's jumping aboard his new film as a director. She'll star in Fake!, about a cryptocurrency scandal.
Burns, who wrote Contagion (the aforementioned movie in which Winslet perishes as a CDC scientist) and more recently wrote Panama Papers pic The Laundromat and directed CIA investigation The Report, is on to pull double duty for this latest film. He's adapting an upcoming book by Jen McAdam with Douglas Thompson, based on the true-life story of Jen McAdam and her involvement with the OneCoin Ponzi scheme.
OneCoin was promoted as a cryptocurrency by Bulgaria-based offshore companies OneCoin Ltd (registered in Dubai) and OneLife Network Ltd (registered in Belize), both founded by Ruja Ignatova in concert with Sebastian Greenwood. According to reports, US prosecutors alleged that the scheme rake in $4 billion worldwide. Ignatova disappeared in 2017 near the time a secret US warrant was filed for her arrest and was replaced by her brother, Konstantin Ignatov. Most of OneCoin’s leaders have now disappeared or been arrested, thought Ruja Ignatova is still at large. Greenwood was arrested in 2018, as was Konstantin Ignatov in March 2019, who pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and fraud. McAdam was a victim of OneCoin’s Ponzi scheme and she founded a support group for those affected. McAdam and her friends and family invested and lost close to $300,000.
MGM is backing the movie, which should be shooting next year.