I don't think he was being taken advantage of but he did do a string of really shitty movies. The kind that spent 90% of the budget on him to show up and fuck around for an hour so they can trick people into buying it at the Redbox. Maybe also trick people into clicking on it because it was free on prime at the time and it was sci-fi so it's probably up my ally has face you know.

That sort of thing is probably more of a cash out thing than something he was tricked into. In like 20 years people won't remember him for that shit but there will probably be some video essay on the fuck happened.