Ronn Owens, the 80-year-old longtime anchor at San Francisco radio station KGO, and his wife, journalist Jan Black, have been accused of spending much of the money they raised in an online fundraiser on frivolous expenses rather than his medical bills.
Owens promoted a GoFundMe last year to raise money for his family, saying he and Black were dealing with "overwhelming financial difficulties" amid his "profound" health challenges. Owens has Parkinson's disease and has survived four bouts of cancer, which the fundraiser said had "taken a toll, both physically and financially" on the family. It also noted that their supplemental health insurance does not cover all the "residual" health care expenses following his multiple health crises, which included COVID and pneumonia.
But the US Trustee's Office has since found that just over 10 percent, or about $17,000, of the roughly $132,000 raised from the campaign was used for pharmacy and medical expenses.
Where the money actually went
Much of the rest instead went to mortgage payments, totaling more than $61,000, and to limited liability companies the couple controlled, to which they contributed more than $44,000, the Trustee's Office said in a filing on Monday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The family also allegedly used the funds for food delivery, credit card payments, their daughter's legal expenses, travel and retail purchases.
Meanwhile, Owens and Black were taking in more than $20,000 in monthly income and spent more than $520,000 out of their own bank accounts, according to the filing. The trustee concluded the couple's actions were not necessarily illegal but said the spending presented "a serious question whether donors received what they were promised."
Owens and Black have since argued that the GoFundMe, which remains active, never specifically said the donations would be reserved exclusively for his medical expenses. Black, whose real name is Elizabeth Ann Naylor, argued instead that it was meant to help with the family's broader financial difficulties.
Jennifer A Giaimo, an attorney with the US Trustee's Office, disputed that framing. "I don't think it's reasonable to assume that donors would know or expect that GoFundMe money is being used to pay Macy's credit card bills," she said.
Daughter's legal costs
The fundraiser came as experts warned that the couple's daughter, Laura, could face legal expenses running into six figures. Prosecutors have said the now 35-year-old woman doctored a sonogram and pregnancy video, and lied under oath, in an attempt to get former Bachelor star Clayton Echard to take a paternity test.
According to court documents, Laura testified in November 2023 that she was 24 weeks pregnant with twins and that Echard was the father. She dropped her paternity suit at the end of that year, saying she had miscarried at some point without knowing it. Laura is now fully dependent on her parents, whom she lives with as the criminal case continues.
Bankruptcy filings and mounting debt
Questions about the couple's finances first emerged after Owens and Naylor filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection in Arizona last August, reporting about $2.3 million in liabilities. The filing showed that more than $400,000 of that debt was incurred in the first half of the year, after the GoFundMe was launched.
It described $300,000 in credit card debt owed to creditors including American Express and seven separate Bank of America accounts, and noted that Owens was being sued by JP Morgan Chase for failing to pay $51,000. The couple claimed $6,640 in monthly payments, not including a $14,188 monthly mortgage they apparently stopped paying.
Their pensions and Social Security income, totaling $21,000 a month, more than covered their $150-a-month medical and dental care and their $225 supplemental health insurance. They were also paying $1,500 for life insurance and $425 for insurance on their daughter's horses. The couple had sold their longtime San Francisco home for $3.5 million in 2020, and the Scottsdale, Arizona home they bought since is now valued at $1.5 million.
Case dismissed, then refiled
The Chapter 13 case was ultimately dismissed in January after the couple allegedly failed to comply with recommendations from a Chapter 13 trustee. They then filed a Chapter 11 case four months later, on May 22.
The US Trustee's Office initially sought to dismiss the new case with a one-year ban on the couple refiling for bankruptcy. After reviewing their bank records and amended financial statements, the office increased that request to a two-year ban, which it said would give lenders and other creditors time to pursue foreclosures, lawsuits and other collection efforts. The office noted numerous inconsistent statements between the couple's two bankruptcy cases.
"Across three sets of schedules... the Debtors have sworn to statements that cannot all be true," the trustee wrote in Monday's filing.
Naylor attributed at least some of those misstatements to prior counsel and to Owens' health. "A lot of this was [a] lack of understanding of what was actually being asked and what was necessary to file," she said at a July 16 meeting of creditors, according to the Chronicle. The trustee acknowledged evidence that the couple intended to correct errors in their earlier statements but maintained the discrepancies were serious.
The Trustee's Office is now seeking to dismiss the bankruptcy case entirely, noting there appears to be no meaningful pool of assets a trustee could sell to repay creditors if the case were converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation. It is asking a judge to find that the couple filed for bankruptcy in bad faith and to bar either of them from seeking bankruptcy protection for two years. Any claims involving the solicitation or use of the GoFundMe donations will have to be pursued outside the bankruptcy case by donors or by GoFundMe itself, the office said, noting that all of the proceeds from the fundraiser have already been spent.
