US President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of Ozy Media co-founder Carlos Watson on Friday, just hours before Mr Watson was due to report to prison to begin a nearly 10-year sentence in a financial conspiracy case.
Mr Watson was convicted last year in a highly publicised case that showed the collapse of an ambitious start-up company at a time of turmoil in the media industry.
He was ordered to surrender to prison on Friday.
Mr Watson thanked the president in a statement and criticised the judge who sentenced him, calling him “inconsistent and unethical”.
“I am deeply grateful to President Trump for righting this grave injustice.
“His decision reflects his unwavering commitment to fairness and justice for those who have been unjustly persecuted,” Mr Watson said.
Mr Trump has used his presidential powers to commute sentences and pardon people he believes have been treated unfairly by the justice system.
The president himself was convicted last year in a hush-money case, part of what he called a politically motivated witch hunt against him.
Mr Watson's sentence commutation was one of several other clemencies announced by the White House on Friday.
Among them are Trevor Milton, the founder of electric car company Nikola, who was sentenced to four years in prison for fraudulently overstating the potential of his technology and was pardoned; and three entrepreneurs who founded and helped run the cryptocurrency exchange Bitmex, which was ordered to pay a $100 million fine earlier this year after prosecutors said it “willfully violated U.S. anti-money laundering laws to increase its revenues.”
They were given suspended sentences and also pardoned.
Ozy was founded in 2012 with the aim of providing a fresh, sophisticated, but not boring take on politics, culture and more, positioning itself as “new and future” while amplifying the voices of minorities and marginalized groups.
The company announced it would close in the fall of 2021, less than a week after a New York Times column raised questions about the media organization's claims about millions of viewers and readers and suggested potential securities fraud.
Mr Watson was arrested in February 2023 after two senior company executives pleaded guilty to fraud.
Prosecutors said Mr. Watson defrauded investors and creditors by inflating revenue figures and passing off deals as final when they were not.
At one point, Mr. Watson's co-founder posed as a YouTube executive on a call with potential investors, prosecutors said.
After Mr. Watson's sentencing, then-Brooklyn federal prosecutor Breon Peace said the jury found that “Watson was a fraudster who told one lie after another to deceive investors into buying shares in his company.”
Mr Pease said Ozy Media “collapsed under the weight of Watson's dishonest schemes”.
But Mr Watson, who is black, called the case a “modern-day lynching” and said he was the victim of “selective persecution”.
“I made mistakes.
“I'm very, very sorry that people were hurt, including myself,” Mr Watson said, but “I don't think it's fair.”
U.S. District Judge Eric Committee, a Trump appointee, said at sentencing that “the level of dishonesty in this case is extraordinary.”
Mr. Watson, who had degrees from Harvard University and Stanford Law School, worked on Wall Street, appeared on CNN and MSNBC, and boasted entrepreneurial acumen.
Ozy Media was his second startup, a decade after he sold the test-prep company he founded at age 20.
Based in Mountain View, California, Ozy has produced television shows, newsletters, podcasts, and a music and ideas festival.
Mr. Watson has hosted several television programs, including the Emmy Award-winning “Black Women Own The Conversation” which aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Ozi attracted major advertisers, clients and grants.
But behind the outward signs of success, insiders say, was an overextended company that struggled and faked to stay afloat after 2017.
Former vice president of finance Janine Poutre told jurors the company struggled to pay employees, fell behind on rent and took large advances to pay bills.
Meanwhile, evidence and documents show that Ozy provided potential investors with much higher revenue figures than what it reported to accountants.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
