Keanu Reeves has asked for leniency in the sentencing of his director friend Carl Rinsch, who was found guilty of scamming Netflix out of $11m (£8.2m).

The Matrix actor, who worked with Rinsch on fantasy flop 47 Ronin (2013), wrote a letter to the judge saying that, while he “did not know the details” of the case, he hoped that his sentence “might be tempered with measures of leniency and mercy as well as justice”.

Rinsch was found guilty of wire fraud and money laundering in December 2025 after appearing to squander millions of dollars given to him by Netflix in 2018 to make a 12-episode series titled White Horse, later renamed Conquest.

“In my opinion, Carl can self-sabotage by amplifying the scale, scope and landscape of what had been negotiated, accordingly placing himself and his counterparties at odds,” the John Wick actor said in his letter.

“I do not intend to share this as an excuse or diminishment of what he has been found to have done, but offer this solely as perhaps an insight into why.”

In March 2020, Netflix sent Rinsch $11m (£8.2m), according to court documents. But he allegedly quickly transferred those funds to personal accounts.

Within two months, Rinsch lost “most of the money through speculation on the stock market”, having made “extremely risky purchases,” according to court documents seen by The Independent.

Meanwhile, Rinsch told Netflix that production on White Horse was “awesome and moving forward really well,” court documents stated.

The filmmaker then dumped the rest of the money into the cryptocurrency market, which proved to be a profitable move, with Rinsch eventually transferring the earnings into a personal bank account, according to an indictment.

However, court documents noted that Rinsch spent this money on five cars, antiques, luxury bedding and furniture.

One year later, he failed to produce anything more than teaser clips for Netflix, and the series was cancelled.

It cost Netflix $55m (£41m) in total, and during an ensuing arbitration case, Rinsch claimed the service owed him $8.7m (£6.4m) and rights to any footage he shot. The ruling went in Netflix’s favour – and Rinsch was ordered to pay back $12m (£8.9m), which he has yet to do.

When sentencing for the fraud trial takes place on 29 June, he could be sent to prison for more than 10 years. Deadline reports that Reeves, who initially helped fund the show in the first instance, has written a letter of leniency “as an artistic peer” of the director and “as a friend”.

Rinsch was handed $44m to make White Horse/Conquest despite having one directorial credit to his name, the Reeves film 47 Ronin, which was considered a box office flop.

The historical fantasy film, a fictionalised account of a real-life group of masterless samurai in 18th-century Japan, also starred Shōgun actors Hiroyuki Sanada and Tadanobu Asano.

After 47 Ronin, Rinsch returned to directing TV advertisements.