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SERIES l THRILLER l 2 SEASONS l 6 CHAPTERS x 50 MIN l SPANISH
Written by Deivis Cortés
ONE LINER
Monica, a newly graduated lawyer excluded from the family will, enrolls in a seminar aimed at teaching tricks to defraud clients. Applying what she learned, Monica manipulates her family to get the inheritance.
STORYTIME
Monica, a newly graduated lawyer, is assigned to assist her cousin Eduardo in the testamentary succession of Alicia, their sick grandmother. Upon discovering that she’s not included in the will she follows a colleague’s advice and enrolls in a seminar led by the prestigious lawyer Benítez.
In this seminar, she learns techniques to seize inheritances and uses these tricks to manipulate her family, gain her grandmother’s trust, and take advantage of Sergio, a cousin with a gambling addiction. When her cousin Eduardo discovers her, Monica deceives him into not reporting her in exchange for sharing the loot. Once the grandmother dies, they discover that the inheritance consisted mainly of debts, except for Sergio’s, the favorite grandson. Monica conspires to put Eduardo in jail and to win Sergio’s inheritance by exploiting his weakness for gambling. Upon returning to the seminar, she discovers that Benítez faces charges of procedural fraud, and the students must prepare a defense to protect him, otherwise he will reveal the tricks they’ve been using to defraud inheritances.
SINOPSIS
Monica, a newly graduated lawyer, struggles finding a job due to her lack of experience and her university’s low prestige. While her classmates boast about their new jobs, she endures humiliations from her stepfather Carlos and her mother Leonor. Her situation becomes more complicated when her grandmother Alicia is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and her cousin Eduardo is designated to handle the succession and will, from which Monica is excluded as she’s the daughter from a previous marriage.
Monica is assigned the task of assisting Eduardo, but she seeks help from Felipe, a former classmate, after being nervous about the assignment. Felipe recommends a specialized seminar taught by the prominent lawyer Benítez. Despite being expensive, Monica manages to qualify for the seminar by cheating on the exam, which was exactly what Benítez was looking for in applicants: people willing to break the rules.
In the first class, Benítez, supported by his right-hand man Losada, teaches students legal tactics to manipulate inheritances and successions. He teaches methods to generate family conflicts and strategies to neutralize lawyers defending the heirs. Monica applies these teachings by manipulating her cousin Sergio, who has a history of gambling addiction. The family plans to appoint a guardian to manage Sergio’s assets, but Monica influences him not to sign the testamentary succession, delaying the process to gain time and persuade Alicia to leave the money directly to her.
In another class, Benítez teaches the importance of discrediting rival lawyers. Monica, following this advice, recruits former classmates (Lucía, Sofía, and Diana) with the promise of helping them find work in the legal field. She convinces them to create fake social media profiles and seduce Eduardo, gathering compromising information about him. With this intel, she sows distrust in the family by exposing procedural frauds committed by Eduardo. During a family dinner, Alicia reveals she has properties in Mexico and sends Eduardo to verify them, leaving Monica in charge of the succession.
Days later, Benítez instructs his students on the psychological manipulation of inheritances. Monica applies this lesson by approaching Madame Roa, a psychic consulted by her grandmother, whom she blackmails to influence the old woman. Monica intervenes in a private consultation between Alicia and Madame Roa, where the soul of Moisés, Alicia’s deceased husband, is invoked. Moisés advises Alicia to leave the assets directly to Sergio, without a guardian or mediator.
Subsequently, Benítez teaches how to handle delays in the death of the asset holder. Monica persuades Alicia to seek second medical opinions and pays doctors to recommend euthanasia. Upon returning home, she is confronted by Eduardo, who has returned from Mexico and is aware of her movements. Eduardo forces Monica to go to Alicia’s house to confess everything. However, upon arrival, they discover that Alicia has passed away.
During Alicia’s funeral, Eduardo reveals that the properties in Mexico were seized and only Sergio will receive a substantial inheritance. Monica convinces Eduardo not to expose her and to collaborate in taking the inheritance from Sergio, but afterwards she betrays him, setting up an ambush that incriminates him, sending him to prison. With Eduardo out of the way, Monica manipulates Sergio, making him relapse into gambling and therefore managing to win the inheritance herself.
At the seminar, Losada informs that Benítez has been accused of procedural fraud. He also reveals that he has been following the most promising students and has evidence to incriminate them if they refuse to help. Monica, who has excelled in the frauds, is designated to lead Benítez’s defense. The students will have to use the tricks they’ve learned to exonerate their teacher.
EPISODE 1
Monica, a newly graduated lawyer from a little-known university, struggles in her job search. Despite having sent numerous resumes and attending several job interviews, her lack of experience leaves her out of consideration. Her classmates boast about their new jobs on social media and refuse to help her. Carlos, her stepfather, and Leonor, her mother, constantly humiliate her for her lack of professional success.
The situation becomes complicated when her grandmother Alicia is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Her cousin Eduardo, also a lawyer and a graduate from a prestigious university, is in charge of advancing the succession and preparing the execution of the will. Monica is assigned the task of assisting him and thus discovers that she is not mentioned in the will. Insecure about the assigned task, she asks for help from several classmates. It’s then that Felipe, a former classmate, tells her about the specialized seminar taught by Benítez, a prominent lawyer in the country. Although it’s an expensive seminar, there are some scholarships for those who pass the entry test. Monica takes the test and days later receives a call from Benítez’s secretary. They inform her that they have detected irregularities in the exam she submitted that compromise its integrity. They summon her to offices downtown to clarify the situation, and once there they inform her she has been admitted to Benítez’s seminar thanks to her cheating skills on the test.
EPISODE 2
Monica attends Benítez’s first class and finds herself among other lawyers with fraudulent pasts. The students are scanned to detect electronic devices, which they must leave in lockers. Recording and note-taking are not allowed. They also sign an NDA. They are told the class will focus on learning dirty tricks of the industry to profit at the expense of clients, specifically regarding inheritances and successions. Benítez teaches the importance of triggering conflicts in families who are about to receive an inheritance and uses the case of La Ley Stores as an example.
Later, at a family barbecue at Alicia’s house, Monica influences Sergio, a cousin with a history of gambling addiction, into not signing an inheritance agreement, suggesting that this would prolong the legal process and give him an opportunity to influence the distribution of the inheritance in his favor.
EPISODE 3
In class, Benítez teaches that one of the main challenges in profiting from a succession is the presence of a family lawyer capable of detecting fraud attempts or negotiating out-of-court settlements. To overcome this obstacle, Benítez teaches two strategies: winning over the lawyer, as he did with Losada in the case of La Ley Stores, or delegitimizing them, as in the case of Prentac Industries. Years ago, Benítez was tasked with handling the succession after Harry Prentac’s death. However, the family lawyer, Dr. Rogelio Prentac constantly overruled him and didn’t allow him to move freely. Benítez discovers that Rogelio has an illegitimate son living abroad and uses this information to publicly discredit the lawyer.
Monica, on her part, seeks out former classmates to offer them a discreet job that involves creating fake social media profiles to seduce Eduardo and obtain key information about him. Meanwhile, she manipulates her family into distrusting Eduardo making him look like he’s engaging in suspicious dealings with the will. Monica convinces her grandmother Alicia that Eduardo is involved in fraud. During a family dinner, Alicia reveals that she has properties in Mexico and sends Eduardo to review them, leaving Monica in charge of the succession.
EPISODE 4
Benítez teaches his students that influencing the heir’s beliefs can be more effective than appealing to their rationality. Years ago, Benítez used this strategy to claim the inheritance of Comestibles Camargo. After researching the main heir, Enrique Camargo, and discovering his extreme trust in the veteran doctor Vivas, Benítez bribed Dr. Vivas to refer Camargo to another psychoanalyst, Dr. Piraquive, who was under Benítez his control. Piraquive managed to convince Camargo that his anxiety and depression were the result of financial stress, which led Camargo to donate his fortune to a foundation whose secret owner was Benítez.
Mónica proceeds to reach Madame Roa, a fortune teller her grandmother had consulted for years. Along with Jairo, a former associate posing as a tax official, she blackmailed Madame Roa, threatening to shut down her business for tax evasion and fraud. Cornered, Madame Roa agrees to cooperate. During a consultation with Alicia, a hidden Mónica listens and relays information to Madame Roa as she predicts Alicia ‘s imminent death including comments about her net worth, highlighting Mónica as a probable heir and disparaging Eduardo. The fortune teller goes into a trance and speaks pretending to be Moisés, Alicia’s deceased husband. After mentioning the honeymoon and key details of their intimacy provided by Mónica, the fortune teller claims to have advice about Sergio, Moisés’s favorite grandson. At a subsequent family dinner, Alicia announced that she had changed her mind about Sergio’s inheritance: instead of appointing someone else to manage it, she would leave it to Sergio himself in an attempt to hold him accountable for his recovery.
EPISODE 5
In class, Benítez teaches that one of the most difficult obstacles in an estate succession is when the holder of the assets clings to life, delaying the distribution of the capital. He recounts his experience with the succession of Editorial ECCO. Years ago, Mr. Contreras had initiated the succession process due to his deteriorating health, but an unexpected improvement with a new treatment caused the process to be prolonged. Benítez turned to criminal contacts to organize an attempted kidnapping that resulted in murder. Although some inheritors were implicated, Benítez ensured that their names were not revealed to the public.
Days later, Mónica persuades Alicia to consult several doctors for second opinions. They visit a homeopath, an alternative medicine practitioner, and a feminist doctor. All of them give Alicia hope and perform various tests. Subsequently, Mónica meets with the three doctors and pays them to provide a negative report to Alicia and suggest euthanasia as the best option. Upon returning home, Mónica is confronted by Eduardo, who has just returned from Mexico and is aware of Mónica’s activities. Sofía has betrayed her. Eduardo is outraged and surprised, as he had planned to do something similar. Eduardo forces Mónica to join him to Alicia’s house to reveal everything and threatens to ruin her professional career if she doesn’t disclose who is guiding her. Upon arrival, they discover that Alicia has died.
EPISODE 6
During Alicia’s funeral, Mónica sways Eduardo not to expose her in exchange for introducing him to her advisor. Eduardo reveals that the Mexican properties are seized and that the grandmother left behind debts rather than assets, except for Sergio, her favorite grandson. He also discovered that the grandmother had been managing double accounts and that her plan all along was to bequeath debts.
Mónica and Eduardo strike a deal to claim the inheritance: they alter the autopsy to incriminate Sergio in Alicia’s death. They manipulate security footage from various casinos to show that Sergio relapsed into gambling. Several bookmakers testify against Sergio, thus proving that he was most interested in hastening Alicia’s death to receive the inheritance.
But in the end, Mónica betrays Eduardo by setting up an ambush with a blackmailer who threatens to reveal evidence against him. Eduardo loses his temper and assaults the blackmailer, Mónica reveals that the blackmailer is her friend Felipe, a newly appointed notary. The violent act was recorded on video, and Eduardo loses his right to the inheritance.
EPISODE 7
With Eduardo in prison, Mónica releases Sergio and informs him that the inheritance has passed into his hands. The very same night, Mónica and Sergio go out to celebrate with drinks. They talk about Alicia and Moisés. Sergio recounts how his grandfather taught him to play Blackjack as a child. Over the years, the practice became a ritual of complicity between Moisés and Sergio. One afternoon, after several games, Moisés suggested to Sergio that they “make the game more interesting” and taught him how to gamble.
During their drunken state and under the pretext of paying tribute to the deceased grandfather, Mónica manipulates Sergio into gambling away his inheritance in a pre-recorded awards broadcast that she was already aware of. Ultimately, Mónica ends up with the inheritance.
Days later, at Benítez’s seminar, Losada reveals that Benítez has been accused of procedural fraud and that the students must defend him. He also reveals that he has been monitoring the most promising class’ students and has evidence to incriminate them if they refuse to help. Mónica, who has excelled in frauds, is chosen to lead Benítez’s defense, facing the final test of using the tricks she has learned to exonerate her teacher.
MÓNICA (25)
Key Characteristics: Dark-haired, sharp, and resourceful. Despite being sidelined by her family for being the child of a previous marriage, Mónica does not let this stop her. She paid for her own education and did whatever it took to make it to the end of each semester, even if it meant bending some rules.
Development: Mónica is assigned by her family to assist Eduardo in the succession process. When she realizes she has been excluded from the will, she crafts a plan to claim the inheritance for herself. She enrolls in Benítez’s seminar and soon finds herself surprised when noticing that her tricks, for which some of her classmates have always criticized her, finally have practical and professional benefits. Benítez’s teachings not only allow her to grow professionally but also enable her to achieve something she has desired for years: to get revenge on her family and prove her worth.
BENITEZ (56)
Key Features: Slim, elegant, and articulate. Possesses high oratory and analytical skills. A self-taught lawyer capable of reading situations and people with great speed. His lack of scruples and adaptability allowed him to learn skills in all areas of law from a very young age.
Development: Benítez has been teaching for years the seminar “Street Procedural Law”, but this is the first time he shares his experience with Almacenes La Ley. It’s also the first time he implements his scholarship system to offer study places to financially lacking lawyers. Although he has several promising students, he is particularly impressed by Mónica’s exceptional performance—a humble student with an astonishing talent for deception. The charge of procedural fraud surprises him, which is why he puts Mónica in charge of the defense.
Losada (45)
Key Features: Curly hair, mustached, and dark-skinned. A school friend of Camilo, he receives financial support from Don Fernando to study law, and after he becomes a legal advisor for Almacenes La Ley and the family in general. He betrays Don Fernando to align himself with Benítez.
Development: Losada has been working for Benítez since his falling out with Don Fernando. He is Benítez’s right-hand man, assisting in all processes requiring his help. The “Street Procedural Law” seminar was his idea, which he proposed to Benítez as an additional source of income while filling a gap in the educational industry: the need to learn dirty tricks of the industry and profit from clients. Losada oversees the entire class process, acts as an intermediary between the students, and coordinates the defense that the students prepare to exonerate Benítez from the charge of procedural fraud. However, Losada has already betrayed once and could do so again if his position feels threatened. Mónica is a promising student who could potentially take his place unless he takes action.
Eduardo (28)
Key Features: Handsome, charming, and arrogant. He is the spoiled son of Arnulfo and the favorite nephew of his uncle Carlos, who favors him over his stepdaughter Mónica. He has been given all kinds of luxuries and comforts, and the family sees him as the legitimate heir, the one who will best represent the family’s name.
Development: Eduardo takes over the succession when his grandmother falls ill, he views it as the perfect opportunity to make some adjustments to it and claim a large portion of the inheritance, benefitting from the fact that no one else in his family knows about law and can be easily puzzled by legal talk. However, when Mónica is appointed as his assistant, Eduardo sees her as a threat to his plans, a threat that intensifies when his grandmother sends him to Mexico to handle paperwork for a property he never heard of.
Alicia (70)
Key Features: Firm, determined, and calculating. Even though she was once a joyful and tender person in her youth, she changed after the death of her husband Moisés, Alicia has entered a state of melancholy that makes it harder for her to cope with old age. While she owns some properties, she feels lonely and knows that many of her relatives only speak to her to be included in the will and receive part of her modest fortune.
Development: The diagnosis of a terminal illness signifies a great promise for Alicia: a countdown to reunite with Moisés in the afterlife and an opportunity to manipulate the expectations of her relatives, who will surely start trying to win her affection to be included in the will. However, Alicia has other plans; she manages a double accounting and in spite of everyone distrusting Sergio due to his gambling addiction, he is the only one who has treated her with respect over the years and deserves a reward for that.
Sergio (20)
Key Features: Naive, noble, and anxious. He started playing games of Blackjack with his grandfather Moisés from a young age, but one afternoon, just before graduating from high school, he entered a casino out of curiosity and fell into the bottomless pit of gambling addiction. His parents paid for an expensive rehabilitation program that includes constant supervision and no access to money.
Development: When the succession process begins, Sergio faces the discomfort his addiction brings to the family: someone has to manage his share, and no one wants that responsibility. His cousin Mónica influences him not to sign the agreement to delay the process and buy time to persuade their grandmother to bequeath him his share directly; after all, he feels she owes him this: it was Moisés who first introduced him to the poison that ultimately condemned him.
letter of intent:
Although lawyers are theoretically at the service of the law and citizens, there are numerous cases of scams and embezzlement perpetrated by litigants. The legal drama genre has mainly focused on vindicating the heroism of the criminal defense lawyer, the lawyer who fights to defend the innocent and punish the powerful. Nonetheless, the lawyer can also be a criminal, a scammer who uses their knowledge of the law for personal benefit and to the detriment of their clients.
Similarly, testamentary successions, although they can be regulated in different ways depending on the country, obey a universal principle: someone dies and their living family members get into conflict over the assets left behind. This trigger, which is death and the latent possibility of acquiring capital and properties, brings out the worst in many people and reveals the true character of each person, including those who bequeath, as well as those who receive to manage, on top of the professionals who advocate as intermediaries and overseers of the process.
Master of Deception aims to show, in the tone of a con artist film and legal drama, a world in which novice lawyers must learn the dirty tricks of the industry to survive in an increasingly competitive job market. It also raises a discussion about the educational system and its need to teach increasingly practical knowledge.
Master of Deception introduces a specialized seminar where these tricks are taught – those that are whispered about, that aren’t taught in universities but are shared in the midst of bar conversations; in short: all those resources that don’t appear in procedure codes but that are fundamental for a lawyer to make their way up and profit at the expense of their clients. “Master of Deception” is not a series about lawyers. It’s a series about con artists set in a judicial context.
MOODBOARD
Tone:
Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992)
David Mamet’s work is a fundamental reference in considering the legalization of the con artist from a civil and respectable profession. Just as in Glengarry Glen Ross the con artists hide in the guise of salesmen, in Master of Deception the con artists operate under the facade of lawyers.
MOODBOARD
Characters
A Civil Action (Steven Zaillian, 1998)
The character of Benítez is slightly inspired by Jerome Facher: the lawyer played by Robert Duvall in A Civil Action. He is a seasoned expert, and erudite lawyer who teaches classes at Harvard on the practice of law. Far from teaching about laws and decrees, Duvall’s character teaches practical tricks to delay a trial so that the opposing party loses due to insolvency.
MOODBOARD
Structure
Scandal y How to Get away with Murder
Similar to the mentioned Shonda Rhimes series, Master of Deception has a student/pupil protagonist who learns from a great mentor figure who teaches the practice of a profession through episodic cases.
MOODBOARD
UNIVERSE
“Street Procedural Law” is a seminar set up by Benítez to satisfy a need of all recently graduated law students: to be able to apply the teachings of an experienced lawyer in real-time. The course also offers newly qualified lawyers the possibility of assimilating tricks and fraudulent procedures that would normally take them decades of experience to learn on their own. Likewise, it teaches them that with a keen eye, proper training, and necessary boldness, profiting as a lawyer doesn’t necessarily depend on winning cases; it’s possible to do so by defrauding clients and getting away with it.
The course is taught with a hidden curriculum because it’s presented to society as a mere update seminar, similar to those offered each year by various legal institutions and universities. However, the course has a clandestine program and prevents students from taking notes and making audiovisual recordings of the classes to get rid of any evidence that could compromise Benítez and Losada. As such, the seminar is supported by the informal modality of “honor among thieves,” very common in the criminal world. Just in case, Benítez has each student sign an NDA in the first class to cover himself and have legal tools to protect him in case they betray him or disclose the course learnings.
Only students who cheated on the admission exam are admitted to the course. This allows Benítez to make a clear filter: he knows that his students have a predisposition for cheating and he won’t face conscientious objectors or moral discourses that hinder the class, wasting time on unnecessary explanations about what’s “right” or “wrong”. Although the seminar is expensive, Benítez reserves 10 scholarships each year to pocket promising young con artists who can serve him in the future and whom he can emotionally manipulate.
Outside the classroom, Benítez has been winning cases for years for both people from the underworld and members of high political spheres and media executives. He has worked for free on some key occasions in order to gain allies to call in favors at strategic moments.
Monica, on her part, belongs to the army of graduate lawyers who fail to get jobs for having graduated from a less prestigious university, the only one she could afford given the limited financial support from her family. Together with her classmates and ex-boyfriends, they have a WhatsApp support network called “The Survivors,” a network that started as a strategy to share job offers and has evolved over time to become a rich source of resources of all kinds: false paperwork, paid witnesses, experts of all types, impersonations, and all means necessary to survive in the sinister world of law.
The Sandoval family is a niche of permanent passive-aggressiveness. They’ve all been waiting for years for Alicia’s passing to dispose of their share of the inheritance, so once her terminal illness is announced, and despite not being able to stand her, they start visiting her frequently to secure their place in the will. Moisés’ death made Alicia distance herself from everyone except Sergio, who was always the favorite grandchild of the couple despite his gambling addiction problem. Alicia doesn’t reproach him for it since it was precisely Moisés who taught him to play cards. After becoming a widow, Alicia has begun to forge a plan to take revenge on the family, hiding properties, accumulating seizures and debts to teach a lesson to the clan she so detests.
SCREENWRITER BIOGRAPHY
Colombian screenwriter, writer, comedian, filmmaker, and audiovisual analyst. He holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing and is a university professor, having graduated from the School of Film and TV at the National University of Colombia.
- Coordinator of Cinemateca Sala Alterna (2014-2016).
- Contributor to magazines such as Kinetoscopio, Extrabismos, Arcadia, Revista Universidad de Antioquia, Revista Excodra, Hojas Universitarias, Gamers-On, Axxón, El Espectador, and Cuadernos de Cine Colombiano (Cinemateca Distrital).
- Reviewer for the Ministry of Culture’s film kits (2009).
- Film professor at Universidad del Rosario, National University of Colombia, and Universidad Manuela Beltrán.
- Research Coordinator at Universidad Manuela Beltrán (2018).
- Cast member of the web series Con ánimo de ofender (2018-2021).
- Creator of the web series Clasificado (2019) and Turisteandup (2021).
- Member of the podcasts Podcastinando (2020) and Por La Ventana Podcast (2023).
- Co-author of the essay book Bogotá fílmica – 2013.
- Author of the short story collection Interfaz (Editorial 531) and the novel Ojo Midas (Escarabajo Editorial).
- Creator and host of the podcast Rayones de Cine (2022-2024).
COMPANY BIOGRAPHY
Red Collision Studios, founded in 2017 is an audiovisual production company with over six years of experience redefining the entertainment landscape with original films and captivating genre series, also offers top-notch production services and has a slate of projects in development for sale.
The Red Collision team has worked on productions for StudioCanal, Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV, Discovery, CBS, Max, among others.
In 2021 they produced their first feature film called CERTAIN ALONSO QUIJANO, directed by Libia Stella Gómez with the support of Dago García Producciones and Caracol Televisión; it was released in 2021 with a limited theatrical release and a digital strategy, reaching more than 500 thousand viewers. His feature film THE JUDGE’S SHADOW is a crime thriller that won the FDC in the post-production category and will be released in 2024.
He currently has four other projects underway, two of them in post-production: “I CALL THEM SOULS” and “ENEMY IN THE MIRROR” and two scheduled to shoot in 2024, all of which are scheduled for release between 2025 and 2026.
In early 2024 Red Collision created the “Red Script Factory”, a dynamic writers’ room, which is a space of constant idea creation where captivating stories and epic scripts are born to revolutionize the world of original content and redefine storytelling.
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