Avoid Steele Shannon and Ernie Panza at all costs. Neither one has ever made a movie. They're just two thieves who run telemarketing rooms / boiler rooms all across the country.
They have three basic scams:
1) They feign interest in your project and tell you that they have an investor who can come up with half the money to make your film. They say this to get you to bring your investor to the table. Their next step is then to leverage your relationship with that person to get them to either invest that half of the money into one of their films or to simply take their money and claim the film they were making was never completed or lost money.
2) They find out about projects in development and then lie about being associated with that project. Rest assured no respected producer in Hollywood is associated with either of these clowns.in fact, most of the producers I know would be ashamed to even be mentioned in the same breath as them. These two idiots merely claim to be associated with legitimate projects to gain the credibility needed to lull you into investing in their projects which they have no intention of ever making or bringing to the screen. They just want you to buck up money so they can put it in their pocket.
3) Their third scam is to telemarket the country to get people to invest in film projects that don't exist. Another company called Alpine pulled this very scam. What they do is they get hundreds of people to invest 10 to 100k in order to build up a nest egg of 5 to 20 million and then skip town. They never make a film. They simply say they started, but never finished or they put 100 to 500k in to a film production that sucks and then never gets distribution.
Filmmakers beware of these people. They have no love for movies and only want to take your money. I know several producers who hate them and would sue them if they thought they could get any money out of them.
Investors if you are reading this, don't give Ernie and Steele your money. They will never get it back to you more or less give you a return on your investment.in fact, by the time you read this, both of them probably will have changed their names.
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