Carlos Watson, the Ozy Media founder who raised millions of dollars from liberal investors and organizations for his startup venture, is officially a convicted felon. A federal jury on Tuesday found Watson guilty of attempting to defraud investors; he faces up to 37 years in prison.
Prior to his arrest in 2023, Watson was adored by the Democratic billionaires who showered him with money after Donald Trump's election in 2016. Ozy Media backers included former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry, whose son ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2022. He helped Watson raise $35 million for Ozy Media in 2019. Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, was one of Ozy's earliest investors via her advocacy group Emerson Collective. The Ford Foundation, a liberal philanthropic organization, chipped in $2 million in grants.
Watson boasted a resume that most rich liberals would consider impeccable: Harvard undergrad, Stanford Law, McKinsey & Company, Goldman Sachs, CNN, MSNBC. Nevertheless, federal authorities described Watson as a charismatic "con man" who "ran Ozy as a criminal organization rather than as a reputable media company." Watson, who is black, managed to dupe gullible donors eager to support a minority-run business with revenue estimates that seemed too good to be true—because they were.
A key component of the government case against Watson was an incident in 2021, when Ozy Media cofounder Sam Rao impersonated a YouTube executive on a fundraising call with Goldman Sachs investors. Rao pleaded guilty to fraud charges last year. At the time, Watson attributed the episode to Rao suffering a mental health crisis, a claim he repeated at trial. Prosecutors said in closing arguments that Watson "wasn't going to let the truth stand in his way" of becoming the "next big thing" in digital media.
Watson is merely the latest charlatan to be convicted of fraud after successfully wooing large portions of the so-called liberal elite. Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was sentenced to 25 years in prison earlier this year for stealing $8 billion from investors. Bankman-Fried, who excelled at pretending to care about the things wealthy liberals care about, funneled millions of dollars to Democratic candidates and causes before his arrest in 2022.