Film Financier Jason Cloth Arrested on Wire Fraud Charges

Film financier Jason Cloth, whose executive producer credits include top Hollywood films like “Joker” and “Babylon,” was arrested and indicted in Los Angeles on Tuesday on seven counts of wire fraud. According to the federal indictment, Cloth took more than $100 million from investors intended for a gaming entertainment platform and to produce an unnamed film project and used it instead on an unrelated Canadian real estate project. The indictment accuses Cloth of, “in order to lull victims into believing their investment funds would be returned to them, misrepresented to victims his ability to repay their investment funds by, among other things, falsely claiming that their funds were inaccessible due to Production Company 1’s bankruptcy, when, in fact, he knew that not to be true.” The indictment comes on top of five earlier lawsuits filed by Cloth’s investors, including one in 2024 that claimed that Cloth had misused investments intended to produce films like Sony’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” and Dev Patel’s directorial debut action film “Monkey Man.” Cloth’s financing company, Creative Wealth Media, had formed a joint venture with the media company Bron, which was a co-producer on “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” and “Monkey Man.” But after those films were released, plaintiffs claim Cloth did not provide the financial returns he had promised in the investment. Creative Wealth filed for bankruptcy in 2023. In another lawsuit that was settled in 2024, Cloth was ordered to pay $19.6 million and subsequently stepped down as head of the production company C2 Motion Pictures Group. “When Dave and I founded this company, we had a shared vision for the types of successful movies we hoped to make and the kind of company we wanted to build,” Cloth said in a statement at the time. “This move simply reflects what the reality on the ground has been for several months – and I know C2 could not be in better hands.” The federal indictment is seeking $12.25 million in reimbursement, and each wire fraud charge carries a potential maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.