Trump commutes Ozy Media founder's criminal fraud sentence

President Trump commuted the prison sentence of Carlos Watson, a co-founder of now-defunct digital media company Ozy Media, shortly before the entrepreneur was set to start serving a nearly decade-long jail term. 

“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,” Watson said in Friday night's statement.

Watson was sentenced in December last year to serve a 116-month-long sentence for lying to investors about the company’s finances. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Watson has denied wrongdoing. 

The media entrepreneur claimed on Friday that the prosecution of Ozy Media and himself was “driven by a malicious campaign orchestrated by a jealous competitor at a rival media company.” 

“These baseless federal cases were pursued 3,000 miles away from where OZY was based, and things went from bad to worse when a conflicted and unethical judge took control,” Watson wrote. 

Last December, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said that Watson, along with co-conspirators, from 2018 to 2021, orchestrated a “scheme to defraud investors out of tens of millions of dollars” via “fraudulent misrepresentations and omissions” of the company’s financial well-being. 

"His incessant and deliberate lies demonstrated not only a brazen disregard for the rule of law, but also a contempt for the values of honesty and fairness that should underlie American entrepreneurship," U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said at the time.

Ozy, the digital media start-up, was founded in 2012, focused on profiling “the new and the next” in politics, business, national and foreign affairs. 

The company shut down in 2021, less than a week after The New York Times article outlined that Ozy’s Samir Rao, the firm’s chief operating officer, had previously impersonated a YouTube executive during a conference call with potential investors. Watson apologized, writing that Rao was suffering from a mental health crisis, The Times reported. 

Trump has commuted numerous sentences since starting his second White House term. The clemencies have ranged from Jan. 6, 2021 rioters to recently commuting a four-year sentence for Trevor Milton, the founder of electric vehicle company Nikola.