If you think Hollywood spin-doctors play rough, wait until you meet the real villains behind Checkmate, the still-in-development thriller inspired by a criminal federal case and an ongoing civil federal lawsuit (Case No. 2:24-cv-09601). The complaint reads like newsroom noir: murder conspiracy, corrupt LA Sheriff Deputies working for an ISIS terrorist from Iraq, armed home invasion, armed kidnap attempt, aggravated threats, online defamation, slanderous YouTube videos, bribes slipped to editors of Wikipedia and TMZ, IMDb credits erased by a murderer tapping a laptop inside a Philippine jail and more.
It is, quite literally, the stuff of movies—except the bullets were live and the victims carried marquee names: Steven Spielberg, Margot Robbie, Todd Philips, and Enzo Zelocchi. All four appear—line for line—on ringleader Adam Iza’s “target list,” now preserved in court exhibits.
Rewind to 2018. Zelocchi was quietly building A-Medicare, a blockchain-powered platform meant to shave fat off America’s health-care costs and pair it with a utility crypto coin. For the white paper, he hired self-styled coder Troy Woody Jr.—never suspecting the résumé was camouflage.
Prosecutors say Woody, a proud alumnus of the hacktivist crew UGNAZI and an ISIS sympathizer, treated A-Medicare’s Git repos like a buffet: mainly targeting digital assets. He packed it all into digital suitcases and forwarded it to fellow UGNAZI hacker Mir Islam. Both men—already jailed for murder in Metro Manila District Jail — used contraband phones and laptops to beam the loot to the real puppet-master, Adam Iza (a/k/a Ahmed Faiq, who has since entered a guilty plea in the criminal case).
Iza’s circle ballooned quickly, including the following key players:
With police-grade surveillance in hand, the crew tried muscle first: a botched kidnapping outside an Arco station in Corona Riverside CA, then a March 30, 2022, home invasion aimed at Zelocchi in Los Angeles (Zelocchi open fire against Iza’s crew – while Kenneth Childs was outside waiting in his car in according to official documents). When guns failed, they swapped holsters for keyboards and checkbooks.
Court papers allege Iza paid TMZ staffers—pay for play—resulting in hit pieces to put Zelocchi in a bad light.
Corrupted Wikipedia editors erased Zelocchi’s Wikipedia page, replacing years of film credits and honorable career with a blank slate. The corrupted Wikipedia editors used as one reason to delete the page a slanderous and defamatory YouTube link commissioned by Adam Iza using an unethical YouTuber based in Vegas (that is currently listed as defendant into the lawsuit). Pretty shocking considering that Wikipedia normally doesn’t allow social media as sources.
The same Las Vegas content creator member of Adam Iza’s criminal organization dropped three videos (once per week), with a bogus, defamatory and slanderous mixed narrative aimed to run an extortion on Zelocchi and to damage his reputation.
Summer 2022: Disney’s official Instagram suddenly posted racist slurs under the handle @DavidDo. The stunt framed Zelocchi’s hired freelancer, David Do, and triggered mainstream outrage before Disney yanked the feed.
In 2024, Woody Jr. surfed prison Wi-Fi with falsified credentials, slipping into IMDb’s contributor portal. Within hours, multiple Zelocchi credits vanished; Several false and slanderous comments on IMDB, Reddit and more were created to make them look some what legit. Movie rating votes were altered accusing Zelocchi of the action.
Two ethically wayward attorneys then filed three civil suits: all dismissed, but each packed with lurid (and unsubstantiated) allegations destined for Google’s front page. The goal, prosecutors say, was simple: squeeze Zelocchi’s digital assets keys out of him and bury his name for good.
Instead of settling, Zelocchi flipped the script. His own complaint—citing RICO (18 U.S.C. § 1962), CFAA (18 U.S.C. § 1030), and California Penal Code § 502, plus defamation—landed like a legal mortar. He dumped chat logs, key exhibits, ISP traces, GPS pings, international tracking while only sharing sensitive information with law enforcement and members of the intelligence community. Saavedra folded first; seized jail devices tied Woody and Islam to real-time Telegram chats; Iza’s guilty plea cemented the ISIS-UGNAZI bridge.
Checkmate hasn’t even rolled cameras, yet its narrative backbone—celebrity targets, badge-backed hackers, a global smear factory—has been authenticated in open court. By refusing to bow to TMZ headlines, Wikipedia erasure, defamatory and slanderous articles with false YouTube videos, false press releases and IMDb sabotage, Enzo Zelocchi didn’t just salvage a career; he exposed a hole in the way media platforms vet “inside sources” and how easily rogue officers can hijack state surveillance.
In an age where one tweet can tank stock prices, Checkmate asks a darker question: What happens when the tweet, the warrant, and the gun all answer to the same boss? Thanks to Zelocchi’s evidence trail, we might actually get an answer, first on the docket, and soon, in a theater near you.
