Three Chicago broadcasters have been accused of fraudulently lending their institutional credibility to a convicted mortgage-fraud felon running what state officials called a “Ponzi-like scheme,” reports Jon Asplund of Crain’s Chicago Business.
Asplund reports, “The complaint says the media outlets went beyond running paid advertising for Ellington by producing ‘Mr. Finance’ segments in their own studios, with their own news anchors interviewing and personally vouching for him as an expert.
“While broadcasters ran paid advertising that told the audience Ellington paid for his segments, the lawsuit said, ‘it did not tell them that he was unlicensed and unregistered, that he was a convicted federal mortgage-fraud felon, or that his ‘program’ was a Ponzi-like scheme — and it did nothing to convert the WGN anchors’ own statements vouching for him into anything other than the station’s representations.’
“‘That distinction is the gravamen of the claims against the broadcaster defendants,’ the complaint said. ‘They did not merely sell and label a stranger’s advertisement. They produced the content, presented it through their own named anchors and under their own trusted brands, affirmatively endorsed Ellington as a vetted wealth ‘expert’ in the station’s own voice, profited from the arrangement and continued to promote him after they knew or had every reason to know he was a fraud.'”
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