Following the United States’ capture of Nicolás Maduro over the weekend, a report came out claiming that Venezuela had $60 billion stored in Bitcoin—leading to speculation that the U.S. could lay claim to cryptocurrency as well as oil. Despite numerous reports of the huge Venezuelan Bitcoin stash, however, a crypto forensic firm is skeptical of the claims. 

Ben McKenzie will receive a Career Achievement Award at the St. Augustine Film Festival Jan. 10 prior to the screening of his documentary, “Everyone is Lying to You for Money.”

The former star of “The OC” wrote, directed and produced the film while writing his New York Times bestseller “Easy Money,” which spotlights cryptocurrency as a large-scale scam.

Working in collaboration with journalist Jacob Silverman, the film includes interviews with currently jailed cryptocurrency industry leaders and celebrities now facing trials for misleading the public on the value of cryptocurrencies as virtual money.

Sporting degrees in economics and political science from the University of Virginia, McKensie traveled to El Salvador – also known as Bitcoin city – and London’s banking district to showcase fraud perpetrated by Alex Mashinsky, the founder and CEO of Celsius Network, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for one count of commodities fraud and one count of securities fraud.

New York prosecutors accused Mashinsky with deceiving clients about the company’s finances and manipulating the price of Celsius’ token, which caused billions of dollars in losses.

The movie also includes interviews with individuals who were part of the scam before it collapsed, McKensie’s testimony before Congress following the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried and his trip to El Salvador.

“I turned the cameras on to document the difference between the marketing campaign and the reality of what was happening on the ground,” he told the St. Augustine Record. “Cryptocurrency was perpetuated by a very small number of people who made a lot of money in an industry rife with fraud, corruption and criminal activity.”

McKensie underscored the film as an unusual comedy that he’s deeply proud of.

“The film highlights the idea of avoiding intermediaries as appealing, but creating a currency that bypasses a banking system would never work,” he said. “The idea of investing in this obtuse thing that was hard to understand evolved/metastasized to exhibit the worst parts of our current system.”

McKensie described the “command tactic” of the get rich scheme as a con man tactic that lured people in as Bitcoin emerged during the wake of a financial crisis.

Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, was eventually convicted of wire, securities and commodities fraud along with money laundering and conspiracy and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

McKensie’s involvement was born and bred from COVID, “when I had time on my hands to check the financial markets.”

“I’m not an economist, but I love theory and behavioral economics,” he said. “I especially love the writings of the Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Schiller, who talks about things that were applicable to crypto that naturally occur in Ponzi schemes.”

Convinced that no one was monitoring the “price of a speculative asset rising far beyond what it was worth in terms of practical use in the real world,” McKensie turned to social media as a platform to show that “crypto was getting out of hand.”

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Posts connected him to Silverman and together they worked on reporting on the ill-fated concept. It didn’t take long before a book proposal landed on his desk.

“Then it was off to the races,” he said.

“I’ve met a lot of really interesting people I never would have met if not for the book,” he said. “I’ve never done anything like this before so I’m really glad I did.”

McKensie said that Greg von Hausch, co-founder of the SAFF, was persistent in adding “Everyone is Lying to You for Money” to the festival.

While the success of the book and the film remain paramount to an actor who hedged his bets in New York because of his love of “the art,” the Texas native has a long and successful acting resume that includes stints on Broadway for “Grand Horizons,” which received a Tony nod for Best New Play, an appearance in “Junebug” with Amy Adams and one in “88 Minutes” starring Al Pacino. Other film credits include the indie film “Johnny Got His Gun” and “Some Kind of Beautiful” with Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek.

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Other film credits include “Decoding Annie Parker” opposite Helen Hunt and a starring role in the short film “The Eight Per Cent of the 2009” shown in New York’s Tribeca Film Festival.

In 2009, he returned to series television in “Southland,” portraying a patrol officer in Los Angeles. McKensie also starred as Detective James Gordon in the series “Gotham,” detailing Gordon’s rise in Gotham City before Batman’s appearance.

McKensie made his directorial debut in Season 3 of “Gotham” where he met his then co-star and now wife, Morena Baccarin, who is the mother to his two children. The family resides in New York.