Former talk show host Carlos Watson was sentenced Monday to nearly 10 years in prison in a federal financial conspiracy case that cast his once-buzzy Ozy Media as an extreme of fake-it-’til-you-make-it startup culture.
So extreme that another Ozy executive impersonated a YouTube executive to hype Ozy to investment bankers — while Watson coached him, prosecutors said.
Watson, 55, and the now-defunct company were found guilty last summer of charges including wire fraud conspiracy. He has denied the allegations.
Watson, who has been free on $3 million bond, faced a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison and potentially as much as 37 years.
Prosecutors accused the former cable news commentator and host of playing a leading role in a scheme to deceive Ozy investors and lenders by inflating revenue numbers, touting deals and offers that were nonexistent or not finalized, and flashing other false indications of Ozy’s success.
Watson even listened in and texted talking points while his co-founder posed as a YouTube executive to praise Ozy on a phone call with potential investors, prosecutors said.
“The quantum of dishonesty in this case is exceptional,” US District Judge Eric Komitee said, later telling Watson: “Your internal apparatus for separating truth from fiction became badly miscalibrated.”
Watson blamed any misrepresentations on others, and he said he was a target of “selective prosecution” as a black entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, where African American executives have been disproportionately few.
“I loved what we built with Ozy,” he said in court Monday, initially addressing supporters in the audience before the judge suggested he turn around. He portrayed himself as a founder who put everything he had into his company, saying that he took an average salary around $51,000 from Ozy in its final years, has triple-mortgaged his home and drives a 15-year-old car.
The co-founder, Samir Rao, and former Ozy chief of staff Suzee Han pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Both testified against Watson.
Ozy, founded in 2012, was styled as a hub of news and culture for millennials with a global outlook.
Watson boasted an impressive resume: degrees from Harvard University and Stanford Law School, a stint on Wall Street, on-air gigs at CNN and MSNBC, and entrepreneurial chops. Ozy Media was his second startup, coming a decade after he sold a test-prep company that he had founded while in his 20s.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Ozy produced TV shows, newsletters, podcasts, and a music-and-ideas festival. Watson hosted several of the TV programs, including the Emmy-winning “Black Women OWN the Conversation,” which appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Ozy snagged big advertisers, clients and grants. But beneath the outward signs of success was an overextended company that struggled — and dissembled — to stay afloat after 2017, according to insiders’ testimony.
The company strained to make payroll, ran late on rent and took out pricey cash advances to pay bills, former finance vice president Janeen Poutre told jurors. Meanwhile, Ozy gave prospective investors much bigger revenue numbers than those it reported to accountants, according to testimony and documents.
On the witness stand in July, Watson said the company’s cash squeezes were just a startup norm and its investors knew they were getting unaudited numbers that could change.
Ozy disintegrated in 2021, after a New York Times column disclosed the phone-call impersonation gambit and raised questions about the true size of the startup’s audience.
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