Trump commutes Ozy Media founder Watson's nearly 10-year sentence

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has commuted Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson's nearly 10-year prison sentence for defrauding investors in his now-defunct startup, the White House said on Friday.

Watson, a former cable news anchor and investment banker, was found guilty last year of lying to investors about the news and entertainment company's finances and sham deals with Google and Oprah Winfrey. Watson, who pleaded not guilty, was sentenced to 116 months in prison by a federal court in Brooklyn in December.

The White House, without elaborating, said Trump had commuted Watson's sentence, which was reported earlier by CNBC.

Watson thanked Trump and the president's "pardon czar" Alice Marie Johnson, saying in a statement his prosecution was "driven by a malicious campaign."

Prosecutors told jurors that Watson and Ozy Media had falsified information about the California-based company's finances and audience size, fabricated contracts and inflated earnings projections to court investors.

His lawyer argued Watson had been betrayed by deputies who acted on their own and kept him in the dark about their wrongdoing.

Founded in 2013, Ozy Media imploded in 2021 after news reports questioned its audience numbers and revealed that a top executive had impersonated a YouTube executive during a call with Goldman Sachs bankers, in which he claimed the streaming site had agreed to pay for exclusive rights to an Ozy show.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by William Mallard)