Robbing From the Rich, Stealing From the Poor: Carlos Watson, Prison Bound, Blames Whitey, Claims Innocence, Convinces No One
Watson, believes it's tough to be Black in America...right after he rediscovers that he's Black. And in America.
“You don’t really want to see him go to prison, do you?”
Pooja Bhatia was a good soul and the kind of good soul that would very precisely have answered her own query with a head shake. And undoubtedly a “no.”
Even after having been serially abused by our former CEO at OZY Media, Carlos Watson, she was carrying water for him. Abused enough that she left the job in tears and never returned. And goodhearted enough that in a lettered plea for leniency to the courts considering the Watson case in which he was convicted of fraud and aggravated identity theft she asked that the court “grant him the most leniency possible at his sentencing.”
Considering that he had been looking, initially, at 37 years (amended upward on the grounds of him perjuring himself during trial to 39), Watson, who was just sentenced to a few months shy of 10 years, actually did get the most amount of leniency that decency would allow. This despite his multiple public claims that the Jewish judge had been playing the stock market like a dreidel, that Watson himself was being railroaded because he was Black and even, borrowing the old Clarence Thomas saw, that he was a victim of a (high tech) lynching.
My theory, having been Employee #1 at OZY Media and having worked with the fraudster Watson for just about the same amount of time that he’s now been sentenced to, is that none of Watson’s schtick was accidental. His attempts to antagonize the judge into sentencing him to a sentence longer than other similar cases, and therefore bolster his prospects for appeal, seemed pretty transparent.
“I think it’s safe to say that not only was Watson the worst boss I have ever had. he’s also probably the worst human being that I’ve also had the occasion to work with.” — Eugene S. Robinson, Pre-Sentencing Report
As were his accusations that his co-defendants Samir Rao, who pled guilty and testified against Watson, and Suzee Han, who pled guilty and testified against Watson, were having an affair. It was straight from the Trumpian playbook of generating enough chaos and agita that the waters were muddied. Like the inky escape of a mollusk Watson, it could be imagined, would slip out of the snare that had been slowly high tech lynching him.
Him who lied about how much the company was worth, forged signatures, drove voice changing device finance calls with Goldman Sachs wherein executives from Youtube were impersonated. Him who borrowed money from friends and family, as well as a whole treasure trove of wealthy white folks who believed in him and more importantly were seduced by their well-meaning intentions.
But he wouldn’t succeed and since you really can’t succeed without failing, Watson successfully succeeded at failing. In the most spectacular way possible. Because while he did draw a similar sentence to Elizabeth Holmes (11 years) and Sunny Balwani (12 years) from Theranos, and just a little longer than Martin Shkreli (seven years), and a lot less than the 25 years that Sam Bankman-Fried is serving, Watson’s time plus restitution and forfeiture is…bracing.
How bracing? To the tune of $37,319,720.68 for the former (and that 68 cents is a nice additional kick in the ass), and possibly $65 mil for the latter. Whether these amounts include the approximately $37,000 I am owed for the salary cuts I endured while he took millions in PPP money so he wouldn’t have to cut salaries, I don’t know. What I do know is that when called on to deliver a letter to the courts for the pre-sentencing report I wasn’t nearly as charitable as Bhatia was.
“I think it’s safe to say that not only was Watson the worst boss I have ever had, he’s also probably the worst human being that I’ve also had the occasion to work with,” I said in a letter to the courts, requested by the strangest bedfellows ever, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. While I’d like to say that I am no kind of a snitch, as long as we have that established, in the interest of justice, despite Watson comparing himself to Nelson Mandela, I had decided to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Something the ever-maneuvering Watson still can’t manage to do.
Most comically in the trial confusion regarding whether or not his father was actually alive (he is), whether OZY had 1000 employees as he had stated, or 300 as he had previously stated, and even something simple like whiffing the question about whether or not he had a cellphone only to have the cellphone he claimed not to have, ring in court. Would you believe it if we told you that this was followed by a comically exaggerated “Oops!” look? Because it was.
You see it wasn’t him. It was everyone else and his feelings of sorrow and regret cohere around all of the victims left in the crimes’ wake. Victims like he, himself.
And through it all the newly minted race warrior that Watson has become is ducking, dodging and masterfully making a very real contention his own: the justice department and the FBI itself have a long history of enmity in the highest toward people of color. However, the argument that he’s being treated worse because he’s a Black criminal and would, presumably, be treated better if he’d have been a white criminal, doesn’t change the fact that he IS a criminal.
If you read the master list drawn from the trial and not even half covered in the press, of falsifications, lies, prevarications, alterations and bends of the truth, there’d be no question of this. But there is perception and then there is reality and in playing one off against the other Watson is showing the master strokes that got people to throw $83 million his way the first time.
However, like the line from the sole Brando directorial effort, One Eyed Jacks, Watson, like the titular one eyed jack, has a whole other side of his face, which those who had the misfortune of working with him, have seen. And it’s in this face that we can see precisely why a prison timeout may be just the thing that the doctor ordered for Watson.
Associates from his early days at MSNBC have said on background that while there Watson was disliked, not the least of which was because he was so terrible. Consequently, of his own choosing he, instead of hanging out with peers, hung with interns who were in awe of him. A prescriptive he needed. There were also allegations of same sex strangeness very much akin to the moment, in his office when, after putting his hand on my thigh, he looked me in the eyes and stated, “I don’t believe that there’s anyone who loves you, and your work, more than I do.”
Whatever, bro.
For me, despite my bow on Roland Martin’s show where we talked after sentencing about Watson’s trial, the real crimes of Watson are not just the actual crimes he’s been convicted for, but rather the very real and personal ones. The former employees he told me he had fired because they were alcoholics (three…non-alcoholics at my unofficial count), the times he tried to play on personal heart strings by expressing sympathy for me being a product of a broken home (I am not), him quizzing me about my sex life as though this was a professional necessity, him telling me that Bhatia herself had left because she was trying to get pregnant and didn’t have what it took to continue (an untruth). All amounting to the same shitty schtick.
[O]n March 28th, 2025, he [Watson] is slated to begin his prison sentence. Which is where we open the betting windows. Will Watson surrender to authorities post-the Ides of March, or will he flee?
Not any of which was occult. When he publicly claimed that Samir Rao and co-conspirator Suzee Han were having an affair (despite the fact that the real rumors were of him and Rao having had the affair), it was an unforced error that gained him very little while running the risk of causing the two referenced great harm. In political terms this would be called rat fucking and Watson was a rat fucker nonpareil.
Who never did nothing illegal. You see it wasn’t him. It was everyone else and his feelings of sorrow and regret cohere around all of the victims left in the crimes’ wake. Victims like he, himself. A notion that has him trending dangerously close to having us consider that this, very possibly, has become a mental health issue.
And that’s the wildest thing about these kinds of mental health issues, like a black hole, it sucks in all within its ambit, which make all, both pro and con voices, sound kind of crazy when just laid out there.
Which is what I thought and felt while on Martin’s show so I had to address it, or at least seem to be trying to.
“I mean no one delights in seeing yet another person of color go to prison,” I said to a nodding Martin who, more than many, is as media savvy as they come. “But to ignore something of this magnitude just begs for…” I searched for a word and while not the word I ultimately used, later it dawned on me that it’s one that I should have used, “correction”.
There’s been no measure of good will guiding very much of what Watson has done. No, it’s been self-interest. Aggressive, directed and unyielding efforts to foist the charmless Watson on to a world duped by what he sold as charm. Even now as elegies are being written by none other than Ben Smith whose article broke open the entirety of the crazy scheming on a podcast on Friday and made the claim that he felt “sorry” for Watson, and thinks, possibly, he’s been treated too harshly.
An opinion that diverges greatly from the opinion I hold which is: to whom much is given much is expected, and The Talented Mr. Watson has violated each and every expectation for the brass ring of fame that he’s now traded for infamy.
So it goes. On February 7th, 2025 the court will rule on the restitution and forfeiture issues that could leave him broke forever. And on March 28th, 2025, he is slated to begin his prison sentence. Which is where we open the betting windows. Will Watson surrender to authorities post-the Ides of March, or will he flee?
And the smart money says….
“If it was going to happen for you,” Watson once said to me, “this little music thing of yours…it would have already happened!” In light of his sage career counseling?
Read. Weep.
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I'm of the opinion the closest people see of the real you is in the work place. Family care too much and provide excuses. And bless them for it.
Nothing screams you until you are neck deep in shit and still slinging. You trap an animal in a corner and watch it do anything to get away.
I'm sorry you had ten years of that. I had eleven myself. Different vocations same crap. You care they exploit you. Its never enough but you should be grateful......
A year ago I got out of the most toxic workplace I couldn't even imagine until I stepped out of it. In 11 years I never once heard my boss apologise or admit fault for anything. I pity him.
Snitching requires examples of mistrust, illegal practices, etc. You explained exactly what type of person you worked for. Apparently honesty over a person's lack of morality, ethics and dignity is hard for people to stomach. They should consider how people would frame themselves in such circumstances.
I hope you are doing better. Festive greetings and have a great new year!