THE ACTUARY
An Original Screenplay
A mild-mannered actuarial analyst discovers a $2 billion pension fraud. Armed with nothing but Excel, mortality tables, and a Purdue education, he must save 50,000 retirees from financial ruin. Die Hard meets A Beautiful Mind.
Dream Cast
Adam Driver
as Ben Scarsella
Quiet intensity, mathematical precision, moral backbone
Sandra Oh
as Margaret Chen
Sharp, experienced, seen it all before
Paul Rudd
as Cody Springman
The loyal best friend who shows up when it matters
Walton Goggins
as Suit #1
Corporate menace, polite threats
Viola Davis
as The Judge
No-nonsense, commands the courtroom
Billy Bob Thornton
as Defense Attorney
Slick, aggressive, outmatched by spreadsheets
FADE IN
ASSOCIATED PENSION CONSULTANTS — GRANGER, INDIANA
MORNING
A modest home office. Dual monitors glow with spreadsheets. A PURDUE BOILERMAKERS mug sits half-empty beside a mechanical keyboard. The walls are bare except for a framed Bachelor of Science diploma from Purdue University — Actuarial Science.
BEN SCARSELLA (30s, glasses, quiet intensity) stares at a spreadsheet. His fingers move across the keyboard with the precision of a concert pianist. He's running contribution calculations for the Midwest Regional Teamsters Pension Fund.
He pauses. Frowns. Scrolls back up.
BEN (V.O.)
The numbers don't lie. They can't. That's the whole point of numbers.
He highlights a cell. The projected fund value for 2028 shows $4.2 billion. But when he backtracks the mortality assumptions, the present value of future liabilities shows $6.1 billion.
BEN (V.O.)
A $1.9 billion gap doesn't happen by accident. Someone moved the mortality improvement factors. Someone wanted this fund to look solvent when it isn't.
He reaches for his coffee. Stops. Sets it down without drinking.
BEN (whispering)
Who changed the assumptions?
INT.
BEN'S HOME OFFICE
CONTINUOUS
Ben opens the audit trail. Every assumption change should be logged with a timestamp and analyst ID. He scrolls through hundreds of entries.
The mortality improvement factors were changed six months ago. The analyst ID: ADMIN_OVERRIDE.
BEN (V.O.)
Admin override. That's not an analyst. That's someone with root access to the actuarial system. Someone at the top.
He pulls up the contribution schedule. The employer contributions have been systematically reduced by 12% over three years, masked by the artificially optimistic mortality assumptions.
His phone rings. He doesn't answer.
He opens a new Excel workbook. Names it "ANOMALIES.xlsx". His fingers fly.
BEN (V.O.)
If the mortality improvement factors are wrong, then every contribution calculation for the last three years is wrong. Every funding certification is wrong. Every PBGC filing is wrong. Fifty thousand retirees are about to find out their pension isn't there.
He leans back. The enormity hits him.
BEN
Fifty thousand people.
EXT.
GRANGER, INDIANA — SUBURBAN STREET
EVENING
Ben walks his dog through a quiet neighborhood. Oak trees. Manicured lawns. American flags. This is the heartland. These are the people whose pensions he protects.
His phone buzzes. A text from CODY SPRINGMAN: "Poker Friday?"
Ben types back: "Can't. Working on something."
He looks at the houses around him. A retired couple waters their garden. A mail carrier waves. An older man checks his mailbox — probably waiting for his pension check.
BEN (V.O.)
Everyone in this neighborhood is one actuarial assumption away from losing everything. And nobody knows it except me.
He pulls out a small notebook. Starts writing down numbers by hand. Old school. No digital trail.
BEN (V.O.)
Exam P taught me that the probability of a rare event is never zero. Exam FM taught me that money has a time value. Neither exam taught me what to do when you find a $2 billion fraud and the people who committed it have root access to the system.
INT.
DINER — MISHAWAKA, INDIANA
NEXT MORNING
Ben sits across from MARGARET CHEN (50s, sharp, former DOL investigator turned whistleblower attorney). She reviews his printouts — forty pages of highlighted anomalies.
MARGARET
You're telling me someone manually overrode the mortality improvement factors to make a $6 billion liability look like $4 billion.
BEN
$6.1 billion. And it's not just the mortality factors. The discount rate assumptions are aggressive too. They're using 7.5% when the actual portfolio return has been 4.2% for five consecutive years.
MARGARET
Who has access to make those changes?
BEN
Three people. The plan actuary, the fund administrator, and the board chair.
MARGARET
So one of those three people—
BEN
—decided that fifty thousand teamsters don't need to retire. Yes.
Margaret sets down the papers. She's seen cases like this before. But the numbers Ben has compiled are airtight.
MARGARET
If you go public with this, they'll come after your credentials. Your career. Everything.
BEN
I became an actuary to protect people's retirements. Not to protect the people stealing them.
Margaret studies him. She's met hundreds of potential whistleblowers. Most of them fold. Something about Ben's quiet certainty tells her this one won't.
MARGARET
I'll need everything you have. Every spreadsheet, every audit log, every assumption change. And Ben?
BEN
Yeah?
MARGARET
Don't use your work laptop anymore.
INT.
BEN'S HOME OFFICE
NIGHT
Ben works by the light of a single desk lamp. His personal laptop. A VPN connection. He's building the most important actuarial model of his career.
On one monitor: the fund's official actuarial valuation. On the other: his corrected valuation using proper mortality assumptions.
The gap is staggering. $1.9 billion.
His phone rings. Unknown number. He lets it go to voicemail.
A knock at his front door. 10:47 PM.
He freezes. Closes his laptop. Walks to the door. Through the peephole: two men in suits. One holds up a business card.
SUIT #1
Mr. Scarsella? We're from the fund administrator's office. We'd like to discuss some irregularities in your recent work product.
Ben doesn't open the door.
BEN (through the door)
It's almost eleven at night. Call my office tomorrow.
SUIT #1
We'd prefer to handle this informally, Ben. It's in everyone's best interest.
BEN (V.O.)
In actuarial science, we call this "adverse selection." When one party has more information than the other. They know I found something. I know they know. They don't know how much I've already shared.
He picks up his phone. Texts Cody: "If anything happens to me, look in ANOMALIES.xlsx on my personal drive."
Cody responds instantly: "???"
Ben: "Just trust me."
Cody: "Always."
INT.
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR — CHICAGO FIELD OFFICE
ONE WEEK LATER
A conference room. Ben sits at one end of a long table with Margaret. At the other end: three DOL investigators and an assistant U.S. attorney.
Ben opens his laptop. A 47-tab Excel workbook fills the screen.
BEN
I've reconstructed every actuarial valuation for the Midwest Regional Teamsters fund from 2021 to 2025. Tab one shows the official mortality improvement factors filed with the PBGC. Tab two shows the factors that were actually applied in the contribution calculations. They don't match.
INVESTIGATOR
How significant is the discrepancy?
BEN
If you use the correct mortality assumptions — the ones published by the Society of Actuaries' Retirement Plans Experience Committee — the fund is 68% funded. The official filings say 94%.
Silence in the room.
ASST. U.S. ATTORNEY
A 26-point funding gap.
BEN
Correct. Which means the employer contributions have been underfunded by approximately $380 million over three years. The fund will be unable to meet its obligations to retirees beginning in fiscal year 2029 unless corrective action is taken immediately.
He clicks to tab 15.
BEN (CONT'D)
Tab 15 is a Monte Carlo simulation I ran. Ten thousand scenarios. In 94% of them, the fund enters critical status within four years. In 73% of them, the PBGC has to take over. In 41% of them, retirees receive less than sixty cents on the dollar.
The investigators exchange looks. They've never seen a whistleblower come in with a 47-tab Excel workbook and a Monte Carlo simulation.
MARGARET
My client is prepared to testify. He's also prepared to provide the audit trail showing exactly who made the assumption changes and when.
The assistant U.S. attorney nods slowly.
ASST. U.S. ATTORNEY
Mr. Scarsella, do you understand that your testimony could result in criminal charges against senior fund officials?
BEN
I understand that fifty thousand people are counting on a pension fund that's $1.9 billion short. Everything else is secondary.
INT.
FEDERAL COURTHOUSE — SOUTH BEND, INDIANA
SIX MONTHS LATER
Ben sits in the witness stand. The courtroom is packed. Fifty-thousand retirees are represented by the faces in the gallery — teamsters, truck drivers, warehouse workers who spent decades paying into a fund they trusted.
PROSECUTOR
Mr. Scarsella, in your professional opinion as an actuarial analyst, was the funding certification filed by the defendant accurate?
BEN
No. The certification stated the fund was 94% funded. Using the correct mortality improvement factors and an appropriate discount rate, the fund was approximately 68% funded. The certification was materially misleading.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY
Objection. The witness is not a credentialed actuary—
PROSECUTOR
Mr. Scarsella has passed two Society of Actuaries exams, holds a Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Science from Purdue University, and has over ten years of professional experience in pension plan administration. He is qualified to opine on actuarial methodology.
JUDGE
Overruled. Continue.
BEN
The mortality improvement factors used in the official valuation assumed that retirees would die sooner than actuarial science predicts. This had the effect of reducing the present value of future benefit obligations by approximately $1.9 billion. In simple terms: the fund assumed people would die before they collected their full pension. That assumption was wrong. And it wasn't an accident.
Murmurs in the gallery.
BEN (CONT'D)
I've run this analysis three hundred times. I've checked it against every published mortality table — RP-2014, MP-2021, the SOA's own improvement scales. The numbers are clear. This fund was looted through actuarial manipulation. And the fifty thousand people who depend on it deserve better.
He looks at the gallery. The retired truck drivers. The warehouse workers. The teamsters who showed up every day for thirty years believing their pension was safe.
BEN (CONT'D)
That's why I reported it.
EXT.
FEDERAL COURTHOUSE — STEPS
LATER THAT DAY
Ben walks down the courthouse steps. Margaret is beside him. Reporters surge forward but Margaret waves them off.
Ben's phone buzzes. Cody.
CODY (text)
Saw you on the news. You absolute legend.
BEN (text)
Just doing my job.
CODY (text)
No. Your job is running contribution calculations. What you did is save fifty thousand people's retirements.
Ben pockets his phone. Looks up at the Indiana sky. Clear. Blue. The kind of sky that makes you think everything might actually be okay.
BEN (V.O.)
The probability of a single actuarial analyst uncovering a $2 billion pension fraud, surviving the investigation, and testifying in federal court is... low. Very low. But probability is just a number. It's not a ceiling.
He walks to his car. A modest sedan. Granger, Indiana plates.
BEN (V.O.)
I have twelve more tabs to check in tomorrow's workbook. The mortality improvement factors for the Ohio Valley Municipal Workers fund look off by half a basis point.
He drives away. Back to Granger. Back to his desk. Back to protecting pensions.
TITLE CARD: "The defendants were convicted on all counts. The Midwest Regional Teamsters fund was placed under federal oversight and is projected to return to full funding by 2034. Ben Scarsella continues to work as an Actuarial Analyst at Associated Pension Consultants."
SECOND TITLE CARD: "He still hasn't missed a poker night with Cody."
FADE TO BLACK.
THE ACTUARY
Written for Ben Scarsella A celebration of the people who protect your retirement with math.