Producer Jason Cloth Indicted in Alleged $100 Million Ponzi Scheme

Jason Cloth, a Canadian financier whose executive producer credits include "Joker," "Licorice Pizza" and "House of Gucci," was indicted this week on charges he orchestrated a scheme that bilked investors out of more than $100 million.

Federal prosecutors in Chicago unsealed the indictment after Cloth was taken into custody Tuesday in Los Angeles. He now faces seven counts of wire fraud, each carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Prosecutors are also seeking forfeiture of at least $12.25 million tied to the alleged fraud.

According to the indictment, Cloth spent nearly seven years, from 2019 through this year, courting wealthy investors interested in funding film and television projects through his company, Creative Wealth Media. Prosecutors allege he pulled in more than $100 million from an Illinois-based investment advisor and its clientele, then diverted a significant portion of those funds away from their intended purpose.

Rather than financing entertainment projects as promised, prosecutors say, the money helped bankroll a real estate development in Canada. Investigators also allege that some of the incoming cash was funneled back to earlier investors, a pattern commonly associated with Ponzi-style schemes.

The indictment lands roughly two years after Cloth's career in film finance began to unravel publicly. He resigned as co-head of C2 Motion Picture Group in 2024, stepping down just days after a Florida jury determined he had defrauded an investor of millions of dollars earmarked for a group of films that included "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," "Monkey Man" and the NBA documentary series "The Pathway." That verdict was far from an isolated incident.

Since 2021, Cloth and Creative Wealth Media have been defendants in at least four separate lawsuits accusing him of moving investor funds between different entities in order to pay off debts elsewhere in his business empire. Creative Wealth Media itself filed for bankruptcy in 2023.

Much of Cloth's financing activity ran through Creative Wealth's relationship with Bron Studios, the Canadian production and finance company led by Aaron Gilbert. Creative Wealth served as Bron's chief financial backer during a run that produced 30 Oscar nominations and six wins across the films it helped finance or produce. But Bron collapsed into bankruptcy in 2023 amid its own fraud allegations, and the fallout became central to Cloth's defense of his business practices.

When Creative Wealth was awarded the bulk of Bron's remaining assets during the bankruptcy proceedings, including equity stakes in several films, Cloth framed the outcome as vindication. He said at the time that the court had recognized the damage Bron's conduct had inflicted on Creative Wealth and had responded by handing his company control over what remained of Bron's holdings.

That narrative now sits alongside a federal case that paints a starkly different picture of how Cloth ran his business. Prosecutors' theory, as laid out in the indictment, describes a financier who used new investor money to paper over old obligations rather than to fund the productions his pitch decks promised.

The scale of the alleged fraud, more than $100 million pulled from a single investment advisor and its client base, places Cloth's case among the more significant entertainment-finance fraud prosecutions in recent years, on par with other collapses that have rattled independent film financing.

Cloth has not yet entered a plea in the federal case. His arrest and the unsealed indictment mark the most serious legal jeopardy he has faced since the string of civil suits and the Florida jury verdict began chipping away at his standing in the industry over the past several years.