When a one-time theater agent was recently arrested for fraud — he allegedly bilked gullible investors of $165,000 for a non-existent play — the parallels to Mel Brooks’s “The Producers” were irresistible. However, Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, the iconic characters of Brooks’s cult film and hit musical, were far more inventive in their scheme. The duo plotted to over-capitalize an actual show — “Springtime for Hitler” — that would be so awful it would close at intermission and they could then pocket the ill-gotten gains and head for Rio. Disaster strikes when the show turns out to be a hit.By contrast, Roland Scahill is a piker — and a not very clever one at that. The 41-year-old ex-agent and would-be entrepreneur told a number of investors that he had secured the dramatic rights to the stormy life of the aptly-named opera diva Kathleen Battle; the play would star Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o; it would be presented at the Booth, one of the most desirable of the Shubert theaters; and Netflix had been contracted to produce and exhibit a film of the production.None of this was true. Indeed, agents for Battle and Nyong’o, as well as the Shuberts, had never heard anything of the sort. Still, beginning in October 2014, Scahill managed to collect $165,000, apparently from friends, with these enticements which included, for good measure, the news that Nyong’o herself would announce the production when she presented a Tony Award at the 2015 ceremony. Instead, around the same time, a press release was issued that Nyong’o, who had just won an Oscar for “12 Years a Slave,” would star in Danai Gurira’s drama, “Eclipsed.” Undeterred, Scahill cooked up a phony email, purportedly from Nyong’o, claiming to investors that she was committed to Scahill’s production.According to court documents filed by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., the “phantom production” proceeded until investors grew skeptical and began asking for the return of their money. They received checks that promptly bounced. On Friday, August 19, Scahill, who had once worked at William Morris Endeavor and the Gersh Agency, was arraigned on charges of theft, to which he pleaded not guilty. In a statement, Vance noted that the indictment of the agent was essential to “safeguard the integrity of this vital industry.”Broadway’s integrity has been under assault several times before, of course, most recently in another notorious case. Last year, Long Island stockbroker Mark Hotton was sentenced to three years in prison for wire fraud in connection with the lavish musical “Rebecca.” In 2012, the show’s lead producer, Ben Sprecher, had paid an advance to Hotton who said that he represented an overseas investor, “Paul Abrams,” who was making a $2 million investment in the $12 million production. On the basis of the promise, “Rebecca” began rehearsals and sets had begun being constructed. Then Hotton came up with some bad news: Abrams had died of malaria while on a safari in Africa. Soon after, news emerged that the Long Island stock broker had managed to kill off a phantom investor.As in the case of Scahill, Hotton had concocted his scheme through phony emails, fast talk, and the inadvertent collusion of individuals who wanted to believe an irresistible sales pitch. To paraphrase the legendary writer-director Moss Hart, Broadway has a way of making perfectly reasonable people temporarily insane.
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