Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson got an 11th hour reprieve, and won’t have to serve a nearly ten-year prison term for defrauding investors after President Donald Trump commuted his sentence on Friday.
The White House announced the news just hours before Watson was scheduled to report to prison, according to CNBC.
Watson praised Trump and blasted the federal judge who sentenced him, in a March 28 statement to the Associated Press.
“I am profoundly grateful to President Trump for correcting this grave injustice. His decision reflects his unwavering commitment to fairness and justice for those who have been wrongfully targeted,” he said.
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Watson, a former CNN and MSNBC anchor, was found guilty by a federal jury in New York in July 2024, as previously reported.
Prosecutors said he conned investors as part of a scheme to raise tens of millions of dollars in hopes of keeping his struggling media company afloat.
“The jury found that Watson was a con man who told lie upon lie upon lie to deceive investors into buying stock in his company,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement. “Watson invented phony financial figures and caused others to forge fake contracts and impersonate a media executive.”
Watson was indicted in 2023 and charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.
He pleaded not guilty and denied the allegations. Still, the jury convicted him on all three counts.
He was sentenced to 116 months on Dec. 16, 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said in a statement.
Watson launched Ozy Media as a digital magazine and daily newsletter in 2013. The now-defunct company was touted as “a modern media company producing original TV series podcasts, festivals and news for curious people.”
A former investment banker who pivoted to cable news, Watson used his connections to bring attention to Ozy Media.
According to published reports, the company secured more than $83 million in funding thanks to Watson’s name and what was viewed as Ozy’s massive digital success. Part of the company’s appeal was a claim that it had 50 million monthly unique users on its website.
But in 2017, BuzzFeed News reported a lot of that traffic was “fraudulent” and “purchased.”
Still, Watson continued to impress Hollywood players. He branched out and signed TV production deals with A&E Networks, OWN, Hulu, Amazon Prime and PBS.
In 2019, he began hosting and co-producing a series of “Spotlight” specials for the OWN cable network on issues affecting Black women.
In a statement, OWN said the specials would focus on “relationships, motherhood, beauty, mind, body and soul.”
Watson also teamed up with A&E’s Lifetime network to produce issue-oriented films, including the 2021 immigration drama Torn From Her Arms, about a mother and daughter separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Then on Sept. 26, 2021, the New York Times published an article saying Ozy’s co-founder and COO Samir Rao impersonated a YouTube executive on a conference call with Goldman Sachs, while attempting to raise $40 million from the investment bank. The paper also reported Ozy exaggerated the views it was getting on YouTube.
Ozy shut down days after the story went to print. Two years later, Watson was arrested.
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