President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0commuted the criminal sentence of\u00a0Ozy Media\u00a0founder\u00a0Carlos Watson\u00a0on Friday, just hours before Watson was due to begin serving a 116-month prison term for a multi-million-dollar scheme that included falsely claiming the start-up had deals with\u00a0Google\u00a0and\u00a0Oprah Winfrey, a senior\u00a0White House\u00a0official said.<\/p>\n
Watson had expected to surrender Friday afternoon to the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, California, before he received word of Trump granting him executive clemency, according to a source familiar with the situation.<\/p>\n
Trump also commuted the sentence of one year of probation imposed on Ozy Media for the defunct news and entertainment company\u2019s conviction in the same case.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s actions remove the criminal penalty imposed on Watson and Ozy.<\/p>\n
Watson, 55, was\u00a0convicted at trial\u00a0in Brooklyn federal court last July of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. He was sentenced in December.<\/p>\n
In February, a federal judge ordered Watson and Ozy to pay almost\u00a0$60 million in forfeiture\u00a0and more than $36 million in restitution.<\/p>\n
Watson\u2019s defense attorney, Arthur Aidala, declined to comment Friday when contacted by CNBC.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office, which prosecuted Watson, also declined to comment on the commutation of his sentence.<\/p>\n
Glenn Martin, a criminal justice reform advocate, in a tweet on Friday wrote, \u201cWe did it,\u201d above a photo of him and Watson.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Trump commuted the sentences of Ozy Media and Carlos Watson hours before his surrender,\u201d the tweet said.<\/p>\n
\u2033@CarlosWatson is not going to prison today,\u201d Martin wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst and foremost, thank God for His grace, mercy and the power of redemption. A very special note of appreciation to @AliceMarieFree,\u201d he added, referring to his fellow criminal justice reform advocate Alice Marie Johnson.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour advocacy, compassion, and relentless pursuit of fairness have made this moment possible for people like Carlos.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Watson was sentenced, then-Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said, \u201cCarlos Watson orchestrated a years-long, audacious scheme to defraud investors and lenders to his company, Ozy Media, out of tens of millions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said that Watson and his co-conspirators between 2018 and 2021 defrauded investors by misrepresenting Ozy\u2019s financial performance, its ongoing business relationships and its acquisition prospects, as well as its contract negotiations.<\/p>\n
Ozy\u00a0abruptly shut down\u00a0in October 2021, after The New York Times reported that the company\u2019s chief operating officer, Samir Rao, had impersonated a YouTube executive on a conference call with\u00a0Goldman Sachs.<\/p>\n
The investment bank was considering a $40 million investment in Ozy at the time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0commuted the criminal sentence of\u00a0Ozy Media\u00a0founder\u00a0Carlos Watson\u00a0on Friday, just hours before Watson was due to begin serving a 116-month prison term for a multi-million-dollar scheme that included falsely claiming the start-up had deals with\u00a0Google\u00a0and\u00a0Oprah Winfrey, a senior\u00a0White House\u00a0official said. Watson had expected to surrender Friday afternoon to the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, California, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}