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Keith Middlebrook, 57, who appeared in the film Iron Man 2 and claims to have been the inspiration for Ballers starring The Rock, was sentenced on Monday to eight years and two months in federal prison and ordered to pay a $25,000 fine. The sentence comes after a jury found Middlebrook guilty of 11 counts of wire fraud earlier this year.
Middlebrook, who also appeared in the films Moneyball, Bad Teacher, and Thor, calls himself The Real Iron Man in a series of YouTube videos. Just three days ago, he shared a video with his 112,000 subscribers wishing them a happy new year.
According to a U.S. Department of Justice press release, “Middlebrook claimed to have personally developed a ‘patent-pending’ cure and a treatment to prevent coronavirus infection.
“Middlebrook fraudulently solicited investments in various companies with a series of false promises. These fraudulent claims included miraculous results from the prevention product and the cure, risk-free and 100 percent guaranteed ‘enormous returns’ on investments, and that former Los Angeles Lakers point guard Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson was a director and officer of Middlebrook’s company.
“He induced victims to invest their money by promising them enormous returns. Judge Fischer based Middlebrook’s sentence in part on finding that he obstructed justice by his lying on the witness stand when he testified about his purported relationship and business dealings with Johnson.”
Middlebrook also claimed that a party in Dubai offered to purchase his companies for $10 billion and that he had secured funding from seven investors who had each already invested between $750,000 and $1 million.
He was arrested in March 2020 after delivering pills – purportedly the treatment that prevents coronavirus infection – to an undercover agent who was posing as an investor.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Keith Middlebrook’s lawyer called Magic Johnson “the biggest liar I’ve ever seen and we’ll prove it,” adding, “We’re going to go out and we’re going to prove that Magic Johnson is a liar.”
Middlebrook has made numerous dubious claims over the past decade on his YouTube channel including that he was rebooting Mean Girls, that he is a real estate mogul, that he was putting out a music album, that he was the lead on Floyd Mayweather’s Money Team, and that he was training to fight Dwayne Johnson.