Arsenault was not a serious actor, his brother said.

"I think it was more about getting women," Christopher Arsenault said.

Rose Mary Judy worked for Arsenault at a Florida commodities firm and a fitness company that sold the AbSolo workout machine. She recalled Arsenault as a flashy dresser who drove a black Mercedes-Benz convertible and told anyone who would listen about his acting career, she said.

He stocked his office with copies of the films and handed them out to employees, she said.

"He was very charismatic, very outgoing personality in the way he talked and carried himself," Judy, 53, said. "He's very smart. I don't know if 'megalomaniac' is a good word, but somebody called him that a long time ago."

Arsenault ran into trouble in Florida.

In August 2009, Arsenault was ordered to pay a $415,000 penalty to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission after his firmwas accused of engaging in speculative trading of illegal, foreign, currency futures. He also was barred from "directly or indirectly cheating or defrauding or attempting to cheat or defraud other persons."

Four months later, however, in December 2009, the alleged scheme involving Detroit homes was up and running, according to federal court records.

The alleged conspiracy involved Arsenault and several companies, includingand

One of the investors allegedly solicited by Arsenault's group was William Addy, 70, a "semi-retired" insurance broker from Colorado Springs, Colo.

Addy says he was urged to invest in bank-foreclosed homes that were appraised at about $30,000 but could be purchased for about $4,000, he said.

"The pitch was there were buyers in China and other places that were interested in investing and didn't mind holding onto the homes until the economy picked up again," Addy told Crain's. "They showed me beautiful homes."

Addy cashed out his retirement account and borrowed money on a credit card so he could invest about $120,000 in approximately 13 homes, most on the city's west side. All were purchased in January 2011.

The homes were transferred to shell companies controlled by the telemarketers and left to rot, prosecutors said.

Addy said he called the FBI in 2012 after he never received income from his investment.

"I started doing more research and ran some of the addresses. One was an alley, there was nothing on it," Addy said. "Quite a few of the homes were in pretty bad shape."

Through March 2014, the alleged conspiracy targeted about 300 victims who lost more than $20 million. In all, the alleged scam involved more than 2,000 homes, according to prosecutors.

For Addy, the ensuing years have been filled with foreclosure, the end of his semi-retirement and a bitter feeling about Detroit.

"Nothing personal against the city," Addy said, "but this just reinforced the fact that struggling areas are not good areas to do business in."

Arsenault was indicted in November 2014 alongside 15 others in connection with the alleged conspiracy. He was captured in Thailand in March 2015 and returned to the U.S.

He is being held at a federal prison in Milan and faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.

His lawyer Dennis Johnston said Arsenault solicited only about nine investors and was paid $410,000 during the alleged conspiracy. Johnston expects to reach a plea deal with prosecutors, according to a filing.

"He is a classic sociopath and has no remorse about who he hurt," said brother Christopher Arsenault, who accuses his brother of stealing the AbSolo invention. "He belongs in prison and should never get out. He hurt a lot of people."

On Dec. 8, the same day Arsenault's co-defendant, Florida resident Joseph Haden, was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison for his role in the alleged conspiracy and ordered to pay victims more than $17.8 million, FBI special agents in Detroit quietly started investigating a separate case involving the largest buyer of single-family homes in Detroit from 2010-2013.

On that day, agents executed a search warrant for the contents of email accounts belonging to four officials with Metro Property Group LLC, according to an unsealed search warrant obtained by Crain's.

On Dec. 16, the FBI received from Google a blue Toshiba hard drive containing records for email accounts belonging to Metro CEO Sameer Beydoun of Dearborn and company officials Ali Beydoun, David Makki and Kathy Messics.

The focus of the FBI investigation is unclear, but the seizure came three months after a federal judge ordered Metro and three other firms to pay $625,000 to a group of overseas investors.

The investors accused Metro and others of orchestrating a multimillion-dollar scheme that defrauded foreign investors in Detroit real estate.

Metro purchased thousands of foreclosed homes — largely uninhabitable — for $500 to $5,000. Along with others, Metro profited by duping investors into buying the homes for as much as $50,000, according to court records.

Metro and others fraudulently marketed the homes as refurbished and rented, failed to manage the properties and billed the investors for phony repairs and management expenses, according to the lawsuit.

Ali Beydoun, the company's former sales director, was unaware that the FBI seized his email account. Beydoun said he left Metro two years ago and the company is defunct.

"If anything, it was poorly run, but there was no fraud whatsoever that I was aware of," he said. "I was just an employee, and I always did business ethically."

Sameer Beydoun, Makki and Messics did not return messages from Crain's seeking comment.

Hong Kong banker Nelly Roquefort paid $49,500 to a Metro affiliate for a colonial on the city's west side in May 2012. Months earlier, the Dearborn affiliate had purchased the home from the Wayne County tax auction for $6,901.

Roquefort, 36, stopped receiving rent payments last year. When rent was paid, it never covered alleged repair bills, Roquefort said. After contacting a real estate agent to dispose of the property, Roquefort discovered the home was stripped and rendered almost unsellable.