NEW YORK, July 3 -- Two mattresses. They cost $638,000.

That pair of items - whatever species of luxury sleepware commands more than three hundred thousand dollars per unit - sits at the center of the federal fraud case that brought Hollywood director Carl Rinsch before Judge Jed Rakoff in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday. The mattresses were not an anomaly. They were part of a documented spending pattern that also included five Rolls-Royces, a red Ferrari, $652,000 in watches and clothing, and $295,000 in additional luxury bedding. What Rinsch did not spend the money on was the Netflix series it was supposed to finance.

Rakoff sentenced Rinsch to thirty months in federal prison for wire fraud and related charges, ordered him to pay appr...