Sugar Daddy Ponzi Scheme: Fraudulent Funding Gifts For Porn Stars and Vegas Vacations

Joshua Mandel, a 46-year-old film production accountant from Woodland Hills, California, has been indicted on six counts of wire fraud for allegedly embezzling over $1.9 million from independent film productions between 2019 and 2023. Mandel, who owned and operated First J Productions Inc. as its CEO and CFO, was entrusted with managing cash flow, payroll, expenses, and bank accounts for various indie films. He also controlled prepaid debit cards issued by CASHét Card, a tool commonly used in the film industry for quick payments. Prosecutors allege that Mandel exploited this access by writing unauthorized checks, executing illicit wire transfers, and funneling money into a personal CASHét Card account whimsically named "Fun Fun Fun."
To mask his activities, Mandel reportedly shuffled funds between different production companies, creating a web of transfers that temporarily covered deficits in one entity's books with stolen money from another—a tactic reminiscent of a Ponzi-like shell game, though formally charged as wire fraud rather than a traditional investment scam. This scheme allowed him to sustain personal extravagances while delaying detection. The embezzled funds fueled a lavish lifestyle, including payments totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars to various young women, such as pornographic actresses, and over $129,000 specifically to one woman he connected with via a "sugar daddy" website. Additional expenditures included more than $24,000 on Las Vegas hotels, clubs, and shows, as well as over $12,000 on luxury goods from Louis Vuitton. If convicted on all counts, Mandel faces up to 20 years in federal prison per charge, underscoring the severity of the alleged financial betrayal in an industry already fraught with tight budgets and creative risks.
The case highlights vulnerabilities in film production accounting, where trusted individuals like Mandel hold significant financial authority over transient projects. The FBI is leading the investigation, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander B. Schwab prosecuting. Mandel is presumed innocent until proven guilty and is scheduled for arraignment on September 10, 2025, in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
### Additional Information on the CaseThis indictment was announced by the U.S. Department of Justice on August 8, 2025, just days before the current date. Media coverage has largely echoed the DOJ's details, framing the story as a cautionary tale of embezzlement in Hollywood's indie sector, with headlines emphasizing the sensational spending on "sugar daddy" arrangements, porn actresses, and Vegas indulgences. No trial date has been set yet, and public records do not indicate any prior criminal history for Mandel in this context. The full indictment document is not yet publicly linked on the DOJ site, but it details the six specific wire fraud instances tied to the transfers. Some reports note that Mandel "socialized" with the pornographic actresses, suggesting the payments may have been for companionship or related activities, though exact purposes remain unspecified.
Regarding who he spent the money on, no specific names of the recipients have been publicly disclosed in available sources, likely to protect privacy amid the ongoing investigation. The indictment and press releases generalize the beneficiaries as "various young women, including pornographic actresses," with the bulk of identifiable spending directed toward one unnamed woman from the sugar daddy site (exceeding $129,000) and broader categories like adult entertainers. Other funds went to non-personal items, such as the Vegas outings and luxury purchases, but no further breakdowns or individual identities were found in searches of news articles, DOJ announcements, or social media discussions. If more details emerge post-arraignment, they may appear in court filings or future media reports.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Podcasting since two thousand and five. This is the King
of Podcasts radio network, kingo Podcasts dot com. A lowly
film accountant funnels millions of dollars so that he could
be a sugar daddy via POSEI scheme to spend money
on porn stars and Vegas vacations. We're all a little

(00:25):
depraved and debaucheris here is the King of Podcasts. Thanks
for joining me. King of Podcasts, here with you with
another episode of Depraved the Debatra. A couple of things
about skip me on to give before we get things started.
I recorded an interview that I said I was gonna
go ahead and preview for all the odd here, and
I don't know what I'm gonna do. I want to

(00:46):
go probably just push it out later this week my
interview with timash and he wrote a very great book
that I wanted to go ahead and let people know about.
Like I said, it's one of the most important dating
books you could ever read. And the book, just you know,
if you want to look for it right now, is
called Primal Dating. The Unflinching Evolutionary Psychology Guide to Modern Relationships.

(01:11):
It's an unflinching guide for men based on evolutionary psychology.
It is also for men and women, and it shows
how to challenge the modern dating narratives that we all
have dealt with right now for men to focus on
self improvement and to become proven winners in the dating market.
This is not your alpha male book. This is not
pick up artists. This is not some overly psychology. It's

(01:32):
not rational mail. It's not men are from Mars, women
are from Venus. This is all that's all bullshit compart
of this book. This book is everything. And I'm telling
you I have read one hundreds of books on dating psychology, manipulation, narcissism, everything,
which is why I am so well read to do
this podcast. But I'm telling you Tim has done the work.

(01:54):
This book is out there now and you're going to
get a preview of what this book entails because I
put it down into a night concise, thirty minute format,
because that's all I think you need to know. That
you need to get out of the interview so that
you will be absolutely running and dashing to Amazon or

(02:14):
wherever you get your books, ebook, whatever it is, you
will get your hands on this book because you need
to do that. And I hope you get a chance
to go and check out the interview. I will be
putting out a little little bit later on this week
as a bonus episode of the preim The Bocher, so
look for that. But I was gonna think about putting
out today, but then this story came across before I
even decided to go ahead and record with Tim. That

(02:36):
was mind blowing. I mean, I couldn't even believe this
is true. But I just finally got onto the story
because a grand jury investigation just closed on this and
indictments have been filed. So we're gonna get into it
right now. Let me give you the whole story on it. Now.
A federal grand jury in California. They've indicted Joshua Mandel.

(02:57):
He is a film production accountant from Woodland Hills, California.
He has been charged six counts of wire fraud for
allegedly embezzling more than one point nine million dollars from
independent film productions that have employed him, and this announcement
was made by the Justice Department. Now, forty six year
old Mandel will be making his initial court appearance and

(03:20):
will be arraigned on September tenth, and US District Court
in Los Angeles. So in this indictment, Mandel owned First
Jay Productions. It's a company in Woodland Hills where he
acted as both CEO and chief financial officer. He was
a production accountant. He managed cash flow, payroll, and expenses
for various independent films. I try to dig into what
there was if we could find out what those films

(03:41):
were or who he's worked with. Couldn't really find out
much about it. But he had authority also over prepaid
debit cards issued by Cachet Card, a common payment tool
in the film industry, and access to production company's bank accounts.
So this guy had access to the funds, had access
to the bank roll. On accounting you think would be
above board, but no, I've heard of accountants skimming off

(04:04):
the books. That's not, you know, outside of the scope
of what could happen, very nefarious. But it's what the
guy did with the money, Okay, it's what the part is.
So between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty three, it's also
during COVID. It's crazy misappropriating funds by writing unauthorized checks,
making unauthorized wire transfers, and move money into this cachet

(04:25):
card account. The account was called Fun Fun Fund, which
I also found. It was one of his production company names.
As an LLC. Authorities say he used the funds for
personal expenses, where he was paying hundreds of thousands of
dollars to young women, including porn stars, pornographic actresses, and
more than one hundred and twenty nine thousand dollars to

(04:47):
a woman he met through a Sugar Duddy website. Wow,
the guy in what in the four years spent one
hundred and twenty five thousand dollars on a sugar baby? Damn.
Some of the expenditures he had was they had twenty
four thousand dollars marked where he was staying at various
Las Vegas hotels and clubs. Spent more than twelve thousand

(05:08):
dollars at Louisvaton. So obviously it was for a bag
or for some other accessories for this girl. I hope
the sex was good, buddy, Oh my goodness, man Josh.
To conceal the scheme, prosecutors alleged Mandel transferred funds between
different production companies to cover up with the menchise so
be a Ponzi scheme, taking money to put it to
cover the other ome man and if found guilty in

(05:32):
all charges, he could face up to twenty years in
prison for each count. That is crazy. So there's an
assistant US attorney that's on the case about this. I mean,
who comes up with the idea of doing this like
this is wild? But he did. And when I look

(05:53):
at what the decision was to go ahead and pay
for all this, you know, I was amazed by this.
He had this extravagant lifestyle and this was obviously him
wanted to go ahead and play a part where he could.
If he can't have the money to be the sugar daddy,

(06:14):
he made it possible. That's the biggest thing that he did.
I'm like, wow, man, what are you doing here? Now?
A lot of the stories give the same story that's
going on here, But I want to go into the
complain of what's happening here because there are things going
on about the story that we need to go ahead
and bring up here about what happened. So the Justice

(06:37):
Department put this out here and put the whole story
through all this now because of all that's going on
here with this particular indictment, there was much more besides this,
because there were other cases that were going on in
the same case. Besides this embzment case, you also have
a case that was filed a fraud lawsuit where First

(07:02):
Date Productions was filing a lawsuit against a shredding company.
So I was trying to go and make money back
on a case that Mike go had helped to keep
covering up on the case right here. Then there was
another case they had where they were being thought a lawsuit,
but it was a contractual dispute by wmbty. Entertainment has

(07:23):
to be a part of this here, But it's the
risk that you take. The thing is what it comes
down to, is is it really worth the risk to
go ahead and be a sugar daddy when you are
so compelled to become a sugar dad because you'll just
go to this kind of route because you think this

(07:44):
is going to be, you know, the fun that you're
gonna get out of it, it's worth the risk. So
that goes into a story that came out about a
month ago from Psychology Today about the appeal and the
risks of sugar daddy relationships and college students be brought
up into this miix here. So for many college and
university students, sugar relationships can be a draw, especially for

(08:06):
those struggling financially. Three million college students we talked about
this before in the US are considered so called sugar babies.
They talked to one Emily, twenty one year old university
student needing extra income, had an interview with the Trauma
and Mental Health Report and describing one of her among
experiences with the sugar daddy who was married but not uncommon,

(08:27):
and she says, our longest arrangement was with a man
who was married. His wife and kids did not know.
I felt a little wired about it. What's interesting is
that we didn't know anythink about the Joshua and if
he was married, or what kind of arrange or what
kind of situation he had, you know, if there was
a relationship or if he had marriage or you know,
any kids, or what his old situation was. I just

(08:48):
wish we knew more about who this sugar baby was
and how she got caught up in this. But it
must have been multiple girls that he was also spending
time with. Plus he obviously was trying to go ahead
and get to the interest of some of the porn
stars he was probably working with, so probably doing some
adult work as well. For the fact he was able
to go ahead and interact with porn stars and taking

(09:10):
them out and what they probably got from him to
move forward. Because what doesn't help him either is the
kind of money he had to spend on these girls,
Like who are the girls he's going after to try
to get what he wants from it? Like he had
to spend some synthic of money again, twenty four thousand
dollars on hotels in Vegas. That is not cheap. Who
knows how much he spent on gambling. Who knows how

(09:31):
much how much he spent on shows or what anything,
if he even got that point. So now Emily said
she stopped working with Sugar Daddy and stop spending time
with him because she felt like things could go wrong.
It's risky. You have to be careful and there's no
really way of knowing. You could talk to someone and
they could be super nice and they can end up
not being genuine. And that's the other thing too, is

(09:54):
that with these sugar babies, they probably thought film accountant,
he's such an unassuming guy, he's a CPA. I mean,
he probably doesn't get out too much. I mean, who
knows what kind of stereotymes you could put into the
mix for this guy and saying, well, he's probably not
much of a catch anyway. So like he's in here
in Hollywood, he's surrounded by all these beautiful people, already
feels about it and he wants to be one of

(10:15):
those in people. But he doesn't make the money go
and do that. But he has the access all these
fund so he thought he could probably get away with it.
And there's an accountant. He probably could find a way
to work the numbers around, to fudge them to make
it work, and he could probably hide enough money doing
what he did in the Pozzi scheme to keep it working.
That's what he thought he could keep doing. But you know,
Posi schemes will find a way to stop now. Emily

(10:36):
in the story here, he also says there were definitely
times I didn't feel good about myself afterwards. I wanted
to try to think about this way. They are paying
me for my time, not for what I'm doing, But
there were times I would feel kind of used. Sometimes
you do things you don't really want to do just
for the money, and the regret is definitely a part
of it. You'll lose to autonomy if you aren't paying
for your own stuff anymore, it kind of feels like
your life isn't yours. Now we've talked about this before,

(10:58):
but I want to make the point here that the
risk for the sugar baby there is a risk for
the sugar daddy, because for him, he felt that he
had no value. He felt like, well if I want
to get with the kind of girls I want to
be with, you know, there wasn't where he's at money
talks and where he lives. I mean in California, wool

(11:19):
And Hills, right out of side of Hollywood. I'm sure
he was probably trying to find and make himself feel
wanted to feel noticed. So he goes into this the
same process. He just feels like, well, these women can
be had. They're like the casting couch kind of feel
to It feels like he could probably find a way
to get himself closer to these girls, and the money
will do what it needs to do. And the thing is,

(11:43):
I would imagine that these women wouldn't have really asked
for a lot from him to even go into that,
because for the better is over four years, is going
to spend almost two million dollars. That's not a hobby
that is obsession and trying to find time, you know,

(12:04):
I mean the time he's probably spending to get together
with these girls over four years, he probably didn't get
that many. I mean, how many days could he have
gotten to go and spend with these girls in the
first place doing what he did? I mean, maybe what
a couple of weekends maybe amounting to maybe what a
couple of weeks over a four year period, just to

(12:24):
go and get some kind of fun and jolly's out
of it, and I mean it was just was it
just for sex? Because I guess it would imagine to
be that, because what else would it be to live
the life beautiful girl on his side? And you know,
we'll look like if he's out of sources anyway, film accounting,
Like I'm just putting everything together, just saying to myself,
this guy probably wasn't that big a deal, but he

(12:48):
was able to get away with it for four years
and found a way to do that, and now to
spend twenty years in jail for doing this because one thing,
if you don't have the money for it, but to
play with other people's money like that too, and to
expect the possible twenty year sentence for doing it. I mean,
it's bad, but that's also the risk that these guys

(13:09):
will go through thinking, well, if there's the fantasy of
getting with a girl that he spends time with, that
he gets to work around, or that he gets to
know from the circles of who he's working with the
production companies, and saying, well, he wants to get close
to her, but he's nobody, he's not a producer. He's
not able to do anything to further her career or
have any particular power. But the money gives him a

(13:29):
lot of leeway, and that's what he thought he had.
So in the story we talked about here about that
many young women getting too sugard any relationships for the
same reasons that prostitutes entered the profession for money. So
for the women that are probably in these production companies,
that are in these productions that are of movies, they're
probably not high level movies, so the salaries are probably

(13:51):
making or not in that much. So for some of
you to guy Anda act like they're in the business,
they're in this production company. He's got this set up
production company for himself, has three LLCs to his name. Well,
let's find a way to go ahead and do something
with that. So I mean, he probably did a lot
of talk to make him sound like somebody that he wasn't,
and he found his way to get over here. So
like in the same way the woman talks about, you know,

(14:11):
being risks. Yeah, this guy that she's spending whoever was
spending time with Joshua Mandel, probably got this whole kind
of idea of, well, this guy acts like he's somebody
he's faking it to he can make it, and he's
using other people's money. So he found a way to
like be somebody else. It's like an alter ego, and

(14:31):
he's using that to get out there. So I mean,
who knows, like he has to live like a double
life to be able to do this unless he was
just so good at being like a habitual liar. I
mean again, I am just speculating here, but like you
have to look at the numbers. It's just say to yourself,
two million dollars over four years, what he was spending
the money on, this dificant amount of spending, and then

(14:54):
how he had to go and try to cover it up.
That is criminal minded and that was quite a way
to be so obsessed to get around these girls, it's
not worth it. So women will express the emotions and
problems the girls that were labeled prostitutes shame, guilt, embarrassment,
feeling exposed, vulnerable, dirty, anxious, and depressed. But in Hollywood,

(15:14):
probably the women that are in some of these industries
as well, if they're important, the probably feel that way. Anyway,
it feels like prostitution in the first place. So to
go into this year and this guy can just go
ahead and like go along and you know, feel like
he can just make this happen, that's crazy. But do
you ever think you could ever hear about a story
that was going to be about a sugar daddy ponzi scheme?

(15:38):
I mean, that's crazy. I don't know if there's anything
like that's been happened like that but before, but it
hasn't really happened much out of other places. There have
been other stories where sugar babies have made a lot
of money off of the men that she was with.
So there was a story in April twenty twenty four

(16:00):
to talk about this in Japan. It was a sugar
baby that was sent to prison for nine years for
the FRAUDI mean out of one million dollars and selling
a Mignon on how to do it. We talked about
that here Mayawatsanabe defrauding men she met on dating apps
out of more than one million dollars and selling emennon
how to execute similar scams, helping another woman in her efforts.
These are extreme cases of sugar babies and sugar daddies,

(16:22):
so keep that in mind too. But there's quite a
bit of stories about all these kind of things. And
then of course there's the scams for a sugar daddy
that's trying to go ahead and make money off of others.
Like the thing is suit is that there's also those
where we get the risks of a sugardaiy scam, where
one guy in North Carolina, excuse me, was able to

(16:43):
go ahead and get twenty thousand dollars off of a woman,
you know, claiming to be a sugar daddy, off of
a sugardaddy website. The Better Business Bureau has talked about
numbers of ports of scammers offering to be a sugar
bomo or sugar daddy, and that there's been the scams
about scammers sitting a target a check or putting the
transfer money into the bank account or into a peer

(17:03):
to peer service like Venmo, cash at paypaler Apple pay.
Telling the target to keep most of the money is
a weekly allowance after they do a small favor, but
then asking the target to transfer part of that money
out in another way to pay an outstanding bill, buying
a gift car, sending money to a need friend, or
even donating to a fake charity. And those scammers have
promised hundreds and even thousands of dollars, which is how
some victims have been tricking though losing that money. One

(17:27):
person that was reported to the BBB was lost nineteen
five hundred dollars that she ended up sending her own
personal money to these contacts, and that's what happened. But
it's been going across the country. But it's one of
those things that the risks are out there, but it
still comes out of the fact that how do you

(17:47):
go ahead and let a guy just decided to go
and be able to do something like this and just say, okay,
this is the plan of it. Now, there is a
story this coming out from the Daily Mail that also
bring up a lot to this right here about sugar
daddies and sugar Babies. Alex Cooper, the host of the
Call Her Daddy podcast This here's it. An amazing story.

(18:10):
This just came out today, even before I even got
involved in this. But she, who is now currently the
highest earning female podcaster, signed a three year, one hundred
and twenty five million dollar contract with Serio six Am
last year. Eight years ago, she once relied on cash
from Sugar Daddies she met on Seeking Arrangement, which is

(18:32):
now seeking dot Com, to cover her New York City
apartment bills. So she was coming out of Boston University
and Cooper was surviving on unemployment checks. A's losing her
ass sales job at Gotham Magazine, and she turned to
Sugar Daddy's for help. She said, quote. The goal was
I never wanted to do anything with these men, she
said in her podcast in twenty twenty. It was just
to go get drinks and dinner and by the end

(18:52):
of the night have enough money for rent. In twenty
twenty one, she told Time magazine she iand no regrets
about Sugar Dady. Quote those hotel moments are or whatever.
They all taught me something. And yes, of course the
Calbert I was doing it. People may me think of
it as aspirational. We all go through our shit, so
we're gonna keep the show short tonight. That's it. But
like I said, stay tuned and stand by for a

(19:17):
great episode I have with Tim Ash the author Prommuldating.
I'll put that interview out for folks to gohe and
check out for yourselves, and it'll help you from being
a little less depraved. And the Bouchers