"The real crime is that a movie starring Richard Dreyfuss ever qualified for taxpayer funds in the first place"
News from the Bay State, where a film subsidy programs not only funded the making of movies that should not have been made in the first place but larceny:
A Cape Cod film maker was indicted today on 10 counts of making false claims and larceny after receiving $4.7 million in tax credits from the state, according to the attorney general's office.
A Suffolk County Grand Jury returned the indictments on Daniel Adams, 50, who was arrested last week on charges he defrauded Massachusetts taxpayers. He pleaded not guilty last Friday and is being held on $100,000 cash bail.
Tomorrow he is scheduled to appear in Suffolk Superior Court, according to Attorney General Martha Coakley's office. It was not immediately known who Adams's lawyer was.
Adams created the films "The Lightkeepers," a romance starring Richard Dreyfuss in 2009, and "The Golden Boys," about retired sea captains vying for a younger wife, in 2008. Both were set on Cape Cod. He took advantage of a state incentive that allows film makers to apply for a tax credit equal to 25 percent of eligible production expenses. But prosectors said he deceived the state about his expenses, claiming, for instance, that he paid Dreyfuss $2.5 million, when in fact he paid him only $400,000.
Whole piece here. These sorts of stories remind us that while film subsidies can mean that certain movies get made, it doesn't mean they get watched.
Hat tip to Keep Food Legal head and Reason guest blogger Baylen Linnekin, who notes, "The real crime is that a movie starring Richard Dreyfuss ever qualified for taxpayer funds in the first place."