Pension plan sponsors associated with several Ottawa trade unions are seeking $38.8 million from the exempt market dealer that connected them with a Canada-based Hollywood financier accused of running a Ponzi scheme tied to film loans.

In a notice of action filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, nine pension plan sponsors accused Hamilton, Ont.-based exempt market dealer Westfield Partners of breaching its duties to them when it recommended they invest in funds run by Productivity Media Inc. and its chief executive officer William Santor.

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Santor’s company, which provided debt financing to TV and film productions such as the 2023 Nicholas Cage vehicle The Retirement Plan, went into receivership in August 2024.

In the following months, Santor’s assets were frozen by an Ontario court amid allegations he had misappropriated at least $44 million of funds, shortly before the CEO’s death in his adopted Cayman Islands homeland — reportedly by suicide — in December 2024.

In their claim, the plan sponsors are seeking the return of their initial principal, plus interest, alleging that Westfield is liable to them for recommending they invest, “despite information within its actual knowledge, or that it was willfully blind or reckless to, that the [Productivity Media Inc.] Fund was not a legitimate........

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