March 29, 2025
Watson’s sentence was commuted just hours before he was ordered to surrender for his 10 year prison sentence.
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According to a White House official, on March 28, President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of Ozy Media co-founder Carlos Watson. The act was finalized just hours before Watson was set to head to prison for an almost 10-year sentence for his role in a financial conspiracy and fraud case.
Watson was convicted and sentenced to prison last year on account of his startup company, and he was ordered to surrender to prison on March 28 officially. The commutation narrowly stopped it.
Watson’s company, Ozy Media, was founded in 2013 and was supposed to offer media on politics and culture with a focus on minority voices. However, it shut down in the fall of 2021 after The New York Times asked questions about the media organization’s claims of having millions of viewers and readers. The NYT also pointed out that there were hints of securities fraud behind the scenes at Ozy Media.
Soon after, in February 2023, Watson was arrested when two of Ozy Media’s top executives pleaded guilty to fraud charges.
Watson reportedly deceived the company’s investors by intentionally inflating revenue numbers for Ozy. Prosecutors stated that Watson pretended to have finalized large deals and that a company co-founder even posed as a YouTube executive on a phone call with potential investors.
At Watson’s sentencing, then-Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said, “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.
U.S. District Judge Eric Komitee added during sentencing, “The quantum of dishonesty in this case is exceptional.”
Watson has maintained that his treatment is unfair and implied that he’s being targeted because he’s Black and that his charges are a case of “selective prosecution.”
“I made mistakes. I’m very, very sorry that people are hurt, myself included, but I don’t think it’s fair,” Watson stated.
Watson’s commuted sentence is one in a series of cases that Trump has used his presidential jurisdiction to alter. The White House revealed several other pardons alongside Watson’s, including the three entrepreneurs who founded and run the cryptocurrency exchange BITMEX. The company was ordered to pay $100 million earlier this year after Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed “willfully flouted U.S. anti-money laundering laws to boost revenue.”
Hayes, Delo, and Reed pled guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and failing to “maintain anti-money laundering and know-your-customer programs.” Prosecutors stated that the co-founders operated BITMEX exclusively as a “money laundering platform.”
Trump also pardoned them alongside Watson this week.
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