Actor Keith Middlebrook sentenced for COVID-19 fraud scheme

LOS ANGELES - A part-time actor and self-styled credit guru from Huntington Beach was sentenced Monday to eight years and two months behind bars for soliciting investments in companies that marketed what turned out to be fake cures and treatments for COVID-19 during the early days of the pandemic.

Keith Middlebrook, 57, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer, who also fined him $25,000 and ordered him immediately remanded to federal custody to begin serving his prison sentence, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

At the conclusion of a three-day trial in May 2024, a jury in downtown Los Angeles found Middlebrook guilty of 11 counts of wire fraud.

LOS ANGELES, CA - AUGUST 18: Actor Keith Middlebrook attends 'Autism Speaks' celebrity poker tournament at the Hudson Loft on August 18, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)

Evidence showed Middlebrook solicited investments in March 2020 from people in California, Nevada, New York, Texas and Colorado through various social media channels that touted an alleged "patent-pending" cure and a treatment for COVID-19 that he claimed to have developed. His so-called cure was dubbed "QC20" and the treatment was "QP20."

He would guarantee investors "enormous returns," and even claimed that Laker great Earvin "Magic" Johnson was a director at his company, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. He also told investors that a person in Dubai was offering to buy his company for $10 billion, guaranteeing victims that they would get their money back, prosecutors said.

Middlebrook was arrested in March 2020 after he delivered pills that were purported to be his treatment preventing COVID infection to an undercover FBI agent posing as an investor.

According to his page on IMDB, Middlebrook had minor roles in films including "Moneyball" and "Iron Man 2."