Former MoviePass execs face fraud charges for siphoning $800K from customer accounts
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MoviePass, the subscription movie-theater and DVD ticket delivery service that collapsed earlier this year, has been accused of fraud after it emerged that its former executive director, Patrick Grae, could be charged with wire fraud and bank fraud.
One source who had access to Grae’s bank records said the bank he spoke to was not happy about the $800,000 in transactions that he and his wife made from movie ticket accounts over roughly a seven-month period.
“It was only after we were very close to getting all the data that we had started to look back,” the person said.
Grae was arrested Thursday by federal officials, according to an attorney for Grae who spoke to The Post, and will be arraigned July 29.
He was arrested after a search warrant was served at his North Hollywood home Thursday at the request of prosecutors in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. Grae, who worked at MoviePass for about 10 years, has been out on bail since his January arrest.
His attorney declined to cooperate with the investigation. In a statement, Grae said: “The allegations against me are completely unfounded.”
Grae also denied knowing that his wife made the $800,000 in wire-transfer transactions from the MoviePass account, claiming that the transactions were made without his knowledge and that he had “no idea” that his wife had made the transactions.
Grae, 60, and his wife, Stephanie Grae, were arrested in January on suspicion of a felony count of wire fraud. The indictment alleged that the two employees had defrauded movie theater owners out of $1.63 million by transferring “large sums” of movie-ticket cash back into the company’s own accounts, rather than giving it to
