With Carlos Watson’s conviction, the Ozy story reaches its poetic ending

Carlos Watson’s luck may have run out.

The founder of Ozy — that Google-exec-impersonating, mystery-traffic-generating discoverer of people who have already been discovered — was found guilty Tuesday in his trial in Brooklyn. A jury of his peers found he had indeed engaged in a conspiracy to commit securities fraud, a conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. He now faces up to 37 years in prison; the bail that kept him free throughout his trial has been revoked.

Watson was remanded into custody after the government said he repeatedly perjured himself on the stand. U.S. District Judge Eric Komitee agreed and revoked Watson’s bail. https://t.co/2Riz7E8npS

— Nika Schoonover (@NikaSchoonover) July 16, 2024

At one level, Ozy’s demise matches the fate of so many other VC-funded digital startups from the early-2010s glory days. BuzzFeed is a shadow of its former self. Vice is an empty shell. These were the digital-first companies that were supposed to push aside the analog dinosaurs and become their generation’s Condé Nast, Time Inc., or Knight Ridder. Instead, they’ve been humbled.

But yesterday’s verdict secured one important distinction between Ozy and its digital rivals. Watson’s outfit was, at its highest levels, a criminal enterprise, not just one that made strategic errors and bad management decisions. (Watson now joins his co-founder Samir Rao and former chief of staff Suzee Han as frauds in the eyes of the law. They pleaded guilty to the charges and testified against Watson, who pledges to appeal.)

Indeed, the defense’s main strategy throughout Watson’s trial seemed to be: Maybe we fluffed up a few numbers, but who doesn’t in this business? We just did the same “puffing and bluffing” that those other guys did. His lawyers tried, unsuccessfully, to have the case dismissed for what they called selective prosecution, saying Watson was being prosecuted because of his race. (Roland Martin had thoughts on that.) But in the end, the event at the case’s center — Rao, at Watson’s direction¹, using a voice-changing app to impersonate a Google exec on a call with a potential investor — was enough to illustrate the ethical gap between Ozy and even its most sketchy peers. (Not to mention dragging Google CEO Sundar Pichai into court to testify that, no, he had not offered to buy Ozy for $600 million, at Watson told a different investor.)

Throughout the trial, Watson’s team kept up an active online presence arguing for his innocence (or at least his unfair prosecution). They’ve appeared to fall silent since the verdict; Ozy.com — until this week recast a curated apologia for Watson — has been blanked. The same’s true for TooBlackForBusiness.com, the site which argued at length that Watson was being unfairly persecuted because of his race. But before the Ozy story slips into obscurity, I’ll just note this Instagram post, which lays out an alleged “Timeline of Carlos Watson.” The first item: “1850: Carlos Watson’s grandfather, a runaway slave, escapes,” paired with an image of shackles being broken. It’s certainly possible that story exists in Watson’s family history, but it’s unlikely to involve either of his two grandfathers, who were born in 1892 and 1889.

It cannot be emphasized enough that Watson named Ozy after the Percy Shelley poem “Ozymandias” — an unusual choice, given its content! It appears we’ve finally reached the poem’s end:

And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

1. Watson denies it was at his direction, saying he walked into the room mid-call. Rao testified that not only was it Watson’s idea, but that he texted Rao throughout the call suggesting talking points. The texts were entered into evidence; you be the judge.