An Amazon MGM Studios executive allegedly solicited kickbacks from an aspiring vendor in exchange for post-production contract awards on shows, according to a recently filed lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Joe Eckardt, owner and president of Hollywood-based postproduction services firm Unbreakable Post, alleged that the studio\u2019s head of postproduction, Frank Salinas, told him during a business lunch in 2023 that Salinas could \u201censure\u201d Unbreakable Post would be included as an approved vendor to bid on Amazon-affiliated projects.<\/p>\n
Salinas would give Eckardt the target budget number for his company\u2019s bid and \u201ceffectively guarantee that Unbreakable would be awarded the work,\u201d the lawsuit states.<\/p>\n
After the contract was awarded, Eckardt would then pay Salinas a percentage of the project value as a kickback, the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n
After Eckardt refused, he alleges that his contract opportunities with Amazon dried up. <\/p>\n
He states in the lawsuit that although he had done \u201csubstantial\u201d work, served as a postproduction consultant or selected vendor on shows such as the Mexico, Brazil and Argentina productions of the reality series \u201cTemptation Island\u201d and the third season of documentary series \u201cCoach Prime,\u201d he was not selected by Amazon for a contract with those projects.<\/p>\n
In 2025, Eckardt alleges that he reported Salinas\u2019 conduct to Amazon and after six months of information gathering, the company told him that \u201cits investigation had concluded and that the allegations were \u2018not substantiated.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Amazon MGM Studios did not respond to a request for comment. Salinas declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Eckardt\u2019s lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. He alleges that he lost more than $1 million in contracts, income and future business opportunities. He is seeking a jury trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Amazon MGM Studios executive allegedly solicited kickbacks from an aspiring vendor in exchange for post-production contract awards…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[129325,129327,129329,1804,4017,129323,129324,93819,48,52,51,1846,47,50,49,129326,129330,1860,129328,18029,1968],"class_list":["post-307619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-amazon-mgm-executive","tag-amazon-affiliated-project","tag-argentina-production","tag-company","tag-contract","tag-frank-salinas","tag-joe-eckardt","tag-kickback","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lawsuit","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-post-production-contract","tag-reality-series","tag-show","tag-unbreakable-post","tag-vendor","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}