CABARET Investor Files Amended Complaint Alleging Misuse of Funds and Self-Dealing

The producers of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on Broadway are facing expanded legal claims from investor and attorney James Lorenzo Walker, Jr., who filed an amended complaint in New York Supreme Court on October 30, 2025. The revised filing broadens his allegations of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and mismanagement, while also adding new claims for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and an accounting of the show’s finances.

Walker, who invested $50,000 in the production, alleges that the general partners of KKC Productions NY Limited Partnership and affiliated entities "engaged in deceptive and conflicted transactions to a degree that transcends any contractual dispute." He claims that despite the show grossing more than $90 million since its April 2024 opening, investors have not received a return of capital or profits. The amended filing further asserts that weekly operating expenses were nearly double those initially represented to investors, reaching as high as $2 million per week, and that the production’s managers "fraudulently inflated" costs through insider contracts and misallocation of revenues.

The new complaint also accuses the producers of using investor funds to pay for permanent renovations to the August Wilson Theatre, which is owned by an affiliate of Ambassador Theatre Group, without reimbursing the partnership. Walker alleges that portions of ticket packages attributed to food and beverage sales were "fraudulently inflated," reducing the reported grosses and profits available to investors.

"Defendants treated these provisions not as limited exceptions to be employed in good faith while exercising the caution of fiduciaries, but as a license to act in their own self-interest without oversight or restraint," the complaint states. It further argues that the defendants’ conduct "exemplifies an emerging scheme in theatrical productions in which outside investors are induced to invest cash into multi-layered structures of affiliated entities designed to conceal revenues, divert payments, and facilitate self-dealing among insiders."

Walker says that from May through August 2025 he repeatedly sought access to the production’s financial records but was denied. In a July 30, 2025 email included in the filing, ATG Entertainment general counsel John Rogers wrote to Walker that "we will not be providing you with any additional information absent a valid books and records request," and that any material reviewed "may be subject to a confidentiality order."

Walker’s attorneys, Reginald Richter of Richter Restrepo PLLC and Walker himself, are seeking compensatory and punitive damages, a full accounting, disgorgement of profits, and the placement of partnership funds in a constructive trust.

The producers have maintained that the lawsuit lacks merit. In a prior statement, they said that while they were proud of the artistic success of Cabaret and disappointed it had to close early, "the production has not been in a position fiscally to make any distribution to investors. We’ve offered to engage in a constructive dialogue with Mr. Walker regarding his financial expectations and to give him access to our accounts, but unfortunately, he has instead decided to file a lawsuit that lacks any merit."

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