Law360 (April 30, 2021, 9:00 PM EDT) — A group of investors has hit a Chicago investment brokerage firm’s founders with a lawsuit in Illinois state court alleging they failed to perform due diligence before recommending a Los Angeles actor’s alleged $690 million film distribution Ponzi scheme as an investment option.

The investors — Beepa Cheech Paulo LLC, Franklin River LLC and Eric Heinecke — alleged in Monday’s complaint that JJMT Capital LLC’s members “operated in willful ignorance” and relied only on representations from the alleged Ponzi scheme runner Zachary Joseph Horwitz. In early April, federal authorities charged Horwitz with defrauding investors out of millions by falsely claiming their investments would…