LOS ANGELES, July 30 -- For seven years, Jason Cloth moved through the upper tier of Hollywood film finance with the kind of access that makes investors receptive: producer credits on billion-dollar studio productions, a Beverly Hills address, and a track record that included the 2019 blockbuster "Joker." On Tuesday, a federal grand jury in Chicago reduced that resume to a criminal instrument.

Cloth, 60, was indicted on seven counts of wire fraud in a charging document unsealed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The indictment alleges he extracted more than $100 million from an Illinois investment adviser and that adviser's clients through what prosecutors described as "classic Ponzi scheme tactics," using the ...