EXCLUSIVE: Creditors of indie outfit Yale Entertainment are out more than $50 million following a failed attempt at restructuring the company in the lead-up to its collapse, according to multiple sources.
The company’s co-founders, Jordan Beckerman and Jordan Yale Levine, copped to the losses over the course of a nearly three-hour private Zoom meeting for investors held January 14, the footage of which has been reviewed by Deadline. The total number of creditors defaulted on is between 100 and 199, per Yale Entertainment’s May 14 bankruptcy filing in the Southern District of New York. Many loans to Yale were put forth under the understanding that they were backed by corporate guarantees from the company, according to multiple sources familiar with Yale’s operations.
Clay Pecorin, an investor and self-described friend of the duo colloquially referred to “the Jordans,” served as a liaison of sorts to investors on the Zoom, given his experience in financial restructuring. He alluded to those guarantees on the call, saying, “The bad news is, I believe everybody in this room has a form of corporate guarantee, one way or the other. Whether it be a film backed by a corporate guarantee, or a corporate guarantee by itself, on its own. [Yale Entertainment is] in a situation where the amount of money that they owe is impossible to recoup and pay people out without a significant restructuring.”
Yale’s bankruptcy filing marked a dramatic fall for the company, founded in 2010, which once operated its own independent production company Yale Productions; its own international sales company, Great Escape; and partnered with Katie Holmes on the launch of her production company Lafayette Pictures, producing dozens of indie projects featuring notable talents like Maria Bakalova, Antonio Banderas and Dave Bautista.
Amid its downward spiral against the backdrop of an industry downturn and challenging economic environment, Yale has come under intense scrutiny, both from creditors and onetime employees, with various sources making allegations of financial mismanagement and deceptive fundraising practices.
In a statement to Deadline, Levine and Beckerman said, “It is true that Yale Entertainment became insolvent, unsuccessfully pursued a restructuring plan, and has now filed for bankruptcy. We cannot dispute Deadline’s right to report facts concerning this sad part of our business and personal lives. We object strenuously to the claims you have sent us, unspecific claims made by anonymous sources, that we have done anything dishonest in connection with the company, its investors, or its creditors.”
With regard to the prospect of restructuring, Levine and Beckerman told us, “When companies near insolvency, restructuring is the path that is often pursued in order to avoid bankruptcy. There is nothing unusual or unethical about pursuing this approach.”
While the majority of Yale Entertainment’s debt is to individual investors, the company also currently owes millions to financial institutions through Small Business Administration loans, Economic Injury Disaster Loans granted amid the pandemic, merchant cash advances and vendor debts, which were acknowledged by Yale between the Zoom, subsequent email follow-ups to investors, and the bankruptcy filing. The latter lists an estimated $10 million-$50 million in assets and $50 million-$100 million in liabilities for Yale.
It’s not believed that Pecorin held a formal role at Yale Entertainment while speaking on the Zoom in January.
“High-stakes gambling”
When Lauren Gilbert joined the company as Operations Coordinator in 2022, after years of gig work in an increasingly unstable TV marketplace, she was “excited” to get involved. “Because they had a really impressive website and I had been wanting to get into features for a long time,” she said. “They talked a big game, and they seemed to have a lot of irons on the fire.”
Gilbert’s position, supporting Yale’s head of operations, had her putting together credit statements and handling various “odd requests on deliverables” to distributors and foreign sales agents. She said the first red flag on the company came in observing “how sloppy the production side was.”
Explained Gilbert: “I’ve worked in TV production for a while now, and there was just a lot of basic things that should have been handled a long time before, that I was still sort of cleaning up in the aftermath — contracts that didn’t get signed, tax incentive documentation that needed to go to our CPA. There was stuff that was months and months behind.”
Over time, Gilbert said she began witnessing “amounts of money that were … spent mysteriously.” An individual who worked alongside Yale as a producer — first, as an independent contractor, and then inside the company — echoed Gilbert’s observation that money would exit and reenter company accounts without explanation. “Most likely, they were just paying off some other debt before some other money came in, or something like that,” they speculated, noting that they kept their observations on Yale close to the vest in an effort to protect their job.
In response to these assertions, Beckerman said, “These nebulous allegations are completely wrong. Funds didn’t move ‘inexplicably’ or ‘mysteriously.’ This is defamatory and false.”
Former Yale employee Gilbert asserted, “Their internal producers did not know the extent of how deep in debt the company was. Under the Jordans’ direction they would find investors and money wherever they could — including their family members and friends at times — with the promise that everyone’s money would be guaranteed.” This point was corroborated by another source with direct dealings with Yale.
Beckerman acknowledged raising funds through friends and family, while emphasizing the skin that he and Levine had personally put in the game when it came to their own business.
“Jordan and I have put, not only our careers, but our own money and assets, at risk in this enterprise,” Beckerman said. “Our investors and creditors include close family members and friends. Bankruptcy is a heartbreaking outcome for us and for them. The questions you raise seem to imply that we are somehow extricating ourselves from this without suffering severe personal and professional consequences. That is simply false.”
Increasingly, during her time with Yale, Gilbert says she would get outreach from “completely random people” seeking “very desperately” to be paid on an outstanding balance — vendors, ranging from crew members to principal cast members and background actors.
“Over and over, money was lost with no accountability, effectively ruining producers’ relationships and reputations irreparably,” Gilbert said. “Internal operations employees (including me) fielded angry emails and phone calls from people they’d burned and we raised concerns and sounded alarms on all of this for months and years on end — the Jordans’ continued primary response was essentially, ‘The money’s coming, just tell them to wait’ — followed by silence.” A secondary source corroborated this depiction of events.
Asserted the Jordans: “As the company dealt with cash flow issues, and we struggled to make payments, we did tell people, truthfully, that we believed that the money was coming, based on a financing deal we sought to close in 2024, and we relied on that in making decisions. When that did not come through, in addition to many other factors, it left us in a difficult situation. We provided information truthfully on an ongoing basis, and when people requested information, we responded truthfully. These were ordinary conversations.”
Gilbert said that initially, when she approached the Jordans to inquire about what was going on, they would shift the blame to other independent producers on a project. “Sometimes, I took them at their word. And other times, I kind of raised an eyebrow. But I kept carrying on.”
Things came to a head when Gilbert received an “emotionally charged” correspondence from a vendor on Bandit, Yale’s 2022 crime thriller starring Josh Duhamel, suggesting that they’d been stiffed, financially and otherwise, by Yale on multiple occasions.
“I said, ‘Hey, this kind of sucks.’ … And their response to me basically was, ‘Oh, so you just think we’re scumbags, we don’t pay people?’” Gilbert recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s not what I said at all, but this has just been a recurring problem, and I kind of just want to know what’s going on.’ And then they basically threatened to fire me because I said something that they didn’t like to hear. They basically were like, ‘Well, if you think we’re those kinds of people, then maybe you shouldn’t work for us.’”
For Gilbert, however, who’s not “independently wealthy” and got out of gig work in search of a more secure post, “The idea of leaving that job at that point in time, as far as I was concerned, wasn’t really an option. So I kind of put my head down and apologized.”
From there on out though, she “started paying a lot more attention to what was going on.”
Gilbert said she “wanted to believe” for a long time that what she was perceiving was simple negligence. But she equates it, instead, to “high-stakes gambling.” She says that weekly companywide Zooms were the norm at the start of her tenure, with many people working remote. But “as [things] started getting more chaotic, and more people had questions that they didn’t have the answers to, they would just stop holding company meetings and stop answering texts.”
This experience of a drop-off in communication was corroborated by multiple sources we spoke with, including one who had experience working with the company, both as an independent contractor and as an in-house employee, overseeing multiple productions. The company has been described by a backer as never providing auditable financial records to their investors.
In response to the claim of a communication drop-off, Beckerman and Levine said, “Yale Entertainment communicated with its creditors and employees on a consistent basis whenever it had information to share with them. After the company employees were laid off in December 2024, there was less to communicate.”
Addressing the claim about a lack of financial transparency, the pair said, “We are unaware of any creditor requesting ‘verified, audited financials.’ To whom are you referring? Yale’s bookkeeper was employed until the end of 2024 and kept financial records in accordance with standard accounting practices. Since we were unable to afford to employ our bookkeeper, we have had the benefit of an independent bookkeeper who has generously donated their time to pick up where our prior bookkeeper left off. We know of no accounting irregularities, and of course the bankruptcy process requires full transparency.”
Gilbert said she finally pushed herself to make “a concerted effort to leave” Yale when the company failed to make payroll internally in September 2024 — something they are said to have blamed on a “clerical error” and did remedy in the end, even as they raised more flags for those in their circle.
Beckerman and Levine acknowledged missing payroll in September 2024, saying, “In eight years of operation, despite a global pandemic and unprecedented industry-wide strikes (during which time we kept every employee on payroll), we missed payroll on that one occasion, and cleared it up in two days. To suggest this is a part of a larger story would be inaccurate.”
“Where the hell’s the money?”
A fourth source who spoke with us is a producer who invested in five films from Yale Entertainment, beginning in 2022. They acted as an executive producer on these titles and began to see things going south within a year or two, as Yale started to default on payments.
What was most astonishing to the producer is that loans were often backed by a corporate guarantee, which they say was listed explicitly on loan documents as “an enticement to get you to invest.”
“Corporate guarantees are indeed incentives, inducements and enticements to loan or invest. That’s why they’re issued. There’s nothing strange or unusual about this,” said Beckerman.
But per the producer, “They were defaulting on those guarantees while they were offering the guarantees to new investors. So they knew they couldn’t pay back their investors. They knew they were defaulting, and then they were continuing to offer that guarantee.”
Beckerman admitted to doing this, saying, “All corporate guarantees that were issued complied with all legal requirements. A company in default on one obligation is not barred from guaranteeing a separate obligation. As mentioned, we had a significant corporate financing deal that did not pan out, which we were relying on in continuing operations, but we had every intention that Yale would honor every corporate guarantee that was issued.”
To the unnamed producer, the pertinent questions now are: “Were they actually taking money from investors to pay back other investors, despite the fact they said they would do otherwise? Was this a Ponzi scheme? Was fraud committed? And just where the hell’s the money?”
Said Beckerman, “The purpose of raising funds from new investors was communicated to those investors. No investor money was misapplied. The vague, nonsensical, and defamatory assertion that ‘fraud of some kind’ was involved is hurtful, false and defamatory.”
During their January Zoom call with creditors, Beckerman and Levine admitted that Yale had no operating cash flow, no capacity to service its debts, and no viable path forward without an immediate infusion of outside capital. “We have laid off essentially 90% of the company and we’re operating on next to nothing,” said Levine. In the course of the discussion, the duo cited the influence of big-picture trends on the company’s trajectory, including Covid, the dual strike of 2023, and a changing marketplace for independent films that is increasingly inhospitable to low-budget titles.
“While we have made some very good films which have gotten into very prestigious festivals, we have not been fortunate with respect to the financial performance of many Yale films in recent years. This is not to suggest that we haven’t made mistakes – but to ignore the larger context of the film business as a whole, and assume wrongdoing, is simply not fair or accurate,” Beckerman told Deadline.
While Pecorin, who said he invested millions in Yale projects, admitted on the Zoom that things had gone “upside down in a very big way,” he maintained that Levine and Beckerman “did not get rich on what has happened and were not trying to do anything but save their company, and they got over their skis.”
Addressing those in the room who might be “absolutely pissed off and want to sue,” he argued, “They’re sort of judgment-proof, guys, in terms of, there is not enough assets for anybody to go and sue, and if they file for bankruptcy, the bankruptcy court will take over this business.”
Given Yale’s outstanding debts to the federal government, he argued, they would “take the first proceeds … So if the first thought is we should sue these guys, I would suggest that that is a very, very dangerous outcome for everybody, and I think you get nothing.”
In an attempt to salvage their situation, Beckerman and Levine used the Zoom to pitch an aforementioned restructuring plan, whereby a new entity, dubbed NewCo, would supposedly monetize Yale’s existing library and raise capital for future projects, without taking on Yale’s debts. Creditors were asked to invest an additional 10% of their existing principal in exchange for a 20% return and priority repayment.
“When the financial situation of Yale Entertainment worsened, we fought to keep Yale Entertainment alive, hoping for a turnaround. We consulted legal counsel to help with a company restructure, and we sought additional financing to remain a going concern,” Beckerman said.
Pecorin admitted on the Zoom that “if you’re losing your ass in this current business, there are a lot of people who would argue, why am I going to throw good money after bad?” At the same time, he said, “I would argue that this is a different money, after good, and hopefully it pays down our principal.”
Back on the Zoom call in January, one London-based investor said, “I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this. I’ve sort of logged onto this Zoom call from London and I can’t even count the amount of people that are on here, which is really surprising to me. What are we talking about here? You keep talking about the debt and the various corporate guarantees and stuff. How big is this?”
After describing the scale of the problem, Pecorin expressed hope that creditors would receive some form of repayment within a matter of years, though no mechanism was ever provided that would ensure potential future repayments were accurate. Investors were given only 48 hours to decide on whether to involve themselves with NewCo., in a move that was described by an investor as questionable.
Acknowledged Beckerman, “Restructurings require unanimous assent. We asked for an immediate indication of interest in a restructuring in January 2025. However, after months of subsequent correspondence with creditors, we ultimately did not have broad support for a restructure.”
Pressures on the company, and imposed by the company on the affiliated, only intensified through the early spring. Following the Zoom, Yale retained bankruptcy specialist David L. Neale of Los Angeles-based LNBY&G, and on April 9, creditors were sent a forbearance agreement, asking them to delay enforcement of their claims indefinitely, in support of the proposed restructuring.
“Yes, this is true,” said Beckerman. “That is how a proposed restructuring is customarily accomplished, as we were advised by our counsel. There is nothing unseemly about this. Without the restructure, bankruptcy was the only option – this was not a ‘threat,’ this was the reality.”
The following day, Neale warned in an email that if creditors did not sign the agreement, the company would have no choice but to proceed with a Chapter 7 liquidation — which ultimately occurred a month later.
Beckerman said, “If we had gotten that broad support, our restructure counsel was happy to field calls and talk through all of the elements of that. However, once it became clear that the restructure was not viable, the only remaining option was bankruptcy. We consulted with counsel, creditors, friends, and family every step of the way – and this was truly the last resort.”
At least three lawsuits and possibly up to nine, involving merchant cash advance companies, are currently pending against Yale and affiliated entities, something Beckerman and Levine acknowledge is true, “as stated in the bankruptcy petition.”
“So far as we are aware,” the pair added, “no individual creditors have any pending lawsuits.”
Looking back, “The Yale team worked exceptionally hard for the last 8 years, and we are proud of the films we’ve made and the work we’ve done,” Beckerman said, expressing confidence that an “impartial review” by a bankruptcy trustee “will address all of the questions that you have.”
As the saga continues to unfold, Gilbert says her life and perspective on the industry have been impacted by her experience with Yale in profound ways.
“As an independent filmmaker myself, they made me so much more cautious about independent film companies,” she said. “They really sort of opened my eyes to how many grifters and bad actors there are on the indie scene.”
Gilbert argued that the Yale principals “have really done a lot of damage, and they just can’t be allowed to keep making movies like this.”
Reflecting on potential fallout, she made sure to advise lawyers retained by Beckerman and Levine to “get paid in advance.”
