Trump commutes sentence of Ozy Media co-founder Carlos Watson
Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of Carlos Watson, co-founder of Ozy Media, shortly before he was due to report to prison to serve a 10-year sentence in a financial conspiracy case.
The former talk show host was convicted last year after the implosion of the once-buzzy and ambitious startup online media and events operation.
Watson and the now-defunct company were found guilty last summer of charges including wire fraud conspiracy. Watson denied any wrongdoing.
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.
The commutation of his sentence was confirmed by a senior White House official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Breon Peace, who was serving as the Brooklyn-based U.S. attorney at the time, said after the trial that the jury determined that “Watson was a con man who told lie upon lie upon lie to deceive investors into buying stock in his company.”
Ozy Media “collapsed under the weight of Watson’s dishonest schemes,” Peace said.
At trial, prosecutors accused Watson of heading up a scheme to deceive Ozy media investors and lenders by inflating revenue numbers, touting deals and offers that were nonexistent or not finalized, and boasting of false indications of the start-up’s success.
In turn, Watson portrayed himself as a founder who put everything he had into his company, saying that he took an average salary of just around $51,000 in the comapny’s final years and had thrice-mortgaged his home.
He also blamed any misrepresentations on others, and he said he was a target of “selective prosecution” as a Black entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
“The quantum of dishonesty in this case is exceptional,” U.S. District Judge Eric Komitee said following the guilty verdict, later telling Watson: “Your internal apparatus for separating truth from fiction became badly miscalibrated.”
Watson’s commutation was among a string of other acts of clemency revealed by the White House on Friday, including that of Trevor Milton, the founder of electric vehicle company Nikola, who had been sentenced to four years for fraudulently exaggerating the potential of his technology.
It comes as Trump continues to aggressively use his presidential power to commute sentences and issue pardons for people he believes were treated unfairly by the justice system.
The president himself was convicted last year in a case involving hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, part of what he has described as a politically motivated “witch hunt” against him.
Source: independent.co.uk
