There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Caleb Newquist: In 2019, Carlos Watson told a story live on CNBC that OZY media had settled litigation with Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne and that they had all become friends and that The Osbournes had invested in the company. When reached for comment, Sharon Osborne said that Carlos story was bullshit and said, this guy is the biggest shyster I have ever seen in my life. End quote. We're not ever, ever a friend and we don't have any interest in his company. And [00:00:30] when asked specifically about investing in Ozzy, she said, quote, you must be joking. No way did we invest anything. End quote. He's insane. And to be honest, he did say, well, we'll give you some shares in the company. But I said, your company is worth nothing.

Earmark CPE: Are you an accountant with a continuing education requirement? You can earn free Nasba approved CPE for listening to this episode. Just visit earmark in your web browser. Take [00:01:00] a short quiz and get your certificate.

Caleb Newquist: This is on My Fraud, a true crime podcast where desperate times call for desperate numbers. I'm Caleb Nyquist. How's it going? What's going on? Uh, I hope you're doing all right. I hope my voice is making whatever you're doing slightly more enjoyable. Be it laundry or running, walking, commuting. Hope you're okay. [00:01:30] Um, the only thing I really have. Only news I have to share. Catch you up on my life in a small way. Is that I got a colonoscopy for the first time, and it was a very nice experience. Excellent, excellent. Healthcare professionals all around the doctor was this tall Turkish guy. Turkish, Turkish name. Anyway, so I assume he was Turkish, but he was very nice. He was very funny and I think you have to have a good sense [00:02:00] of humor to perform colonoscopies all day long. In particular, what sticks out in my mind is he made a nuclear holocaust joke while explaining the anesthesia. And I have to say, risky move. But he must have sensed something in me that told him that I could handle it. Anyway, the anesthesiologist also very nice. She went into great detail about the drug, of course. Uh, which I have to say was quite something. I've never been under like that. And so, [00:02:30] you know, one minute I'm laying on my side, and the next minute I am waking up in my little recovery space. And the Turkish doctor is telling me that everything looked great. And he sped off to, you know, to do another colonoscopy, I'm sure.

Caleb Newquist: But anyway. Yes, happy to report the results were clean and I won't be doing that for, you know, ten years or so anyway. But I could use a nap like that on the regular anyway. How about a couple reviews? Here's [00:03:00] one from Apple Podcasts. Drew Murray 613 gave us five stars and writes great show even for Non-accountants. The show is amazing. As an accountant with his CPA, it's a great easy listen during my workday and I don't even use it for my CPE requirement. If you love true crime and want to know more about white collar crime, this is the show for you. Thanks. Drew Murray 613. And kudos for, you know, not even getting the CPE or or not I don't know, get some CPE, [00:03:30] I don't know. Anyway, uh, here's another one. Apple Podcasts the Garden Lady also gave us five stars and wrote smart, entertaining and interesting, spirited and informative. I also appreciate the sound quality. Thanks. Um, so there you go, Zach. Producer Zach. Uh, sound quality hitting the mark. Um, by the way, a while back I asked for people to write reviews on Apple specifically because Zach was tired of seeing this one comment about vulgar [00:04:00] language, and I'm happy to say that many of you delivered. So Zach sends his thanks and thanks to everyone who rates the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And thanks for writing reviews.

Caleb Newquist: Thanks for writing in the emails. If you go to the trouble of writing a email or a review, I just might read it out loud for this recording or a future recording. Okay? Also, if you're a firm or company or conference or event needs a live [00:04:30] or virtual presentation on fraud or ethics, that is something I'd be happy to talk to you about. Email. Oh my. Fraud! Com to get more information on pricing and availability. All right, that's enough business time for some fraud. The legend of Carlos Watson, as told by Carlos Watson, begins in kindergarten. Story goes that when his teacher asked him [00:05:00] what two plus two was, he answered yellow. It was this kind of mischief that led him to getting kicked out of kindergarten, but also signaled a charisma that would serve Carlos well throughout his life and career. Born in 1969, Carlos Watson was one of four siblings growing up in Miami. Both of his parents were teachers who put a premium on education, and despite his rough start in kindy, Carlos [00:05:30] soon excelled in academics, athletics and student government. This led him to being admitted to multiple Ivy League schools, ultimately choosing Harvard where he got a BA in government. In his early career, Watson had a variety of jobs in politics. He ran Bill Clinton's Get Out the Vote campaign for Miami-Dade County in 1992. And he also worked for a Florida legislator, the mayor of Miami, a US senator, and chair of the [00:06:00] Democratic National Committee.

Caleb Newquist: Watson eventually enrolled at Stanford Law School, where he was an editor of the Stanford Law Review and president of the Stanford Law School student government. It was at Stanford where Watson found his taste for entrepreneurship. He started several businesses there, but ultimately graduated. He had short stints at both McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. But then in 1996, he started a college counseling business with his sister and [00:06:30] a Harvard classmate called Akiva. Laurene Powell Jobs was an early investor, and they eventually sold the company to Kaplan, a consortium of education companies, in late 2002. It was around this time that Watson made a choice about his future. A 2006 profile in The Stanford Lawyer reported that Watson decided he wanted to be on television, and that was that. Watson's [00:07:00] first breaks in TV came as a commentator on Fox and Court TV programs. That was followed by a short but very successful run at CNBC, where he got the chance to try his hand at interviewing. Those went so well that it got the attention of CNN, who scooped him up to be a regular commentator and eventually a political commentator, and then he was part of the anchoring team for the [00:07:30] 2004 presidential election. Over the next several years, Watson kept building his bona fides, interviewing Barack Obama in 2004, hosting an interview show on Bet, and then as a morning newscast anchor for MSNBC. Then in 2013, at a Chipotle restaurant in Mountain View, California, Watson ran into a former Goldman Sachs colleague, Samir Rao.

Caleb Newquist: Watson and Rao were both sons of immigrants. [00:08:00] Watson's father was from Jamaica, Rao's parents were from India, and Watson had conceived an idea of a new kind of media company when he was caring for his sick mother. He and Rao discussed it, and together they struck out to create that new type of media company, one that could reimagine the news for a globally minded, discerning and diverse group. People who are edgy and educated, hungry and observant and tired of being handed [00:08:30] the same menu, rehashing yesterday's top stories. They called this new venture Ozy, and they got off to a fast start. Watson secured $70 million in funding and struck partnerships with A&E networks, iHeart Media and Live Nation. I worked in digital media from 2009 through 2018, and I have to say it was so [00:09:00] fun. Really thrilling. And, you know, at least I thought it was. And I was mostly working by myself. I worked and edited a small niche publication Going Concern. Some of you know about it, some of you maybe don't. But there was no bustling newsroom or production studio. It was mostly me on a laptop in a coffee shop. And but I loved getting up every morning to do it. And I worked. You know, the people I did work with, [00:09:30] usually on the editorial side, were awesome. Adrian Gonzalez is one of them.

Caleb Newquist: Greg Kite was somebody else. That's how Greg and I first met. Francine McKenna, all kinds of people that I met many years ago now. And I was I was very online in those days, reading all day long, talking to people both online or over the phone. I was writing constantly, writing every day, producing, you know, countless blog posts. Spending lots of time on what was known then as Twitter. Twitter [00:10:00] was fun in those days. Um, it's not even, you know, nowadays. Of course, it's not called Twitter, and it is not very fun. Um, it seems to be a white supremacist site now, but that's beside the point. The point is, Twitter used to be fun. Anyway, we built, um, going concern. You know, we were able to build a respectable audience of readers, uh, who were mostly accounting professionals who wanted to read news and gossip and engage with others about their profession, about their industry. Uh, [00:10:30] but despite this great loyal audience and me having a lot of fun, uh, digital publishing is a pretty tough business. Um, trying to convince advertisers to spend money with you is like this ongoing task a task? Yeah, it just never ends. And for a niche publication like ours, it was even harder because, number one, no one had really done anything like it before. The audience was young and hungry, [00:11:00] but not your typical target. If you're an advertiser, you know, a young white collar professional. They don't make a lot of buying decisions, typically unless they own their own business, or they maybe work in some kind of small business.

Caleb Newquist: And like, you know, lots of our readers were working at big accounting firms or working at big corporations or working at, you know, maybe small accounting firms, but they didn't get to make those kinds of decisions. So they're hard, you know, like who who wants to advertise those people, who wants to be in front of those people? Right. That was that was the [00:11:30] ongoing question we had. And, you know, there was lots of hustle going on. I was cranking out articles day after day, you know, to create and maintain an audience and grow the audience. And on the publishing side, people were trying to figure out how to monetize it and they weren't having much luck. You know, we even though we had this good audience of young professionals that made good money, you know, our audience wasn't so big that we could just attract advertisers. [00:12:00] You know, Squarespace wasn't calling us up because our audience was so huge. No, it's that's not how it worked for a publication like ours. And, you know, I think the other thing that was always at play was that regardless of what we were doing and how well we were doing it, the internet is just this massive market competing for people's attention. So while young accountants want to read about stuff related to their careers, they also want to read about sports and celebrities and politics. [00:12:30]

Caleb Newquist: They want to watch cat videos, porn, Netflix, like all that stuff, even though it's not directly our competitor. It is competition for people's attention. And so the point is that as a digital publisher, we weren't just competing with other publications, we were competing against the entire internet. And in the 2000 and the 20 tens, a lot of new publications were, you know, were being created, and some of them were [00:13:00] raising lots of money and trying to grow their audiences and land big advertisers. And even if they had these massive audiences that were way bigger than ours, they still faced all the same challenges. And that just made for a really that made the digital media ecosystem a really tough place to do business. All right. Rao and Watson wanted to build a media company that provided fresh perspective in a landscape [00:13:30] that felt stale and, you know, full of legacy players that were too entrenched to really stir things up, but they weren't the only ones with this idea. Vice media, which had by that point had been around for like 20 years. In 2013, they were expanding aggressively with big name investors like 21st Century Fox and a partnership. They had that big partnership with HBO. There were other websites too, like Mike and fusion [00:14:00] and countless others that kind of catered to this younger audience, but whose tone was less confrontational and aggressive than vice or, say, like Gawker.

Caleb Newquist: And there was an audience for these types of sites, like like Ozy. But while these other companies had money and resources, none of them had a well-known ish, charismatic leader like Carlos Watson. Or maybe they did, but he certainly weren't as visible and certainly not, you know, the [00:14:30] majority of media executives or white dudes. Carlos Watson was a black man and he was connected. He knew a lot of people through his career and media up to that point, and he wanted to diversify the voices in the media landscape and a media company like Osea, with both its founders being people of color, which was again, virtually unheard of. People liked that. They wanted that to succeed. People were hungry for that. Plus, [00:15:00] he's this telegenic, charismatic guy that leads this company, and he's out there and he's talking to investors, and he's he's got these connections. And those connections result in partnerships. Like Carlos Watson was very, very good at this. And Ozzy's pitch or Watson's pitch quickly centered around some key themes. Primary among them was its reputation as profiling the quote unquote, new and next. So these were notable people in sports, entertainment, politics [00:15:30] who Ozy Ozzie profiled early before most mainstream outlets knew who they were. You know, the examples that you would hear Watson talk about time and time again were Trevor Noah, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Aaron Judge. Those are the three that he mentioned all the time. And on its website, Ozzie boasted that it had, quote, profiled more than 1000 breakout figures and trends before top publications like The New York Times and The Economist [00:16:00] caught up.

Caleb Newquist: If your preferred pace is several steps ahead, Ozzie is where you belong. Then there was the name Ozzie. Where did it come from? Watson was happy to talk about this too. He told the story all the time, and it came from Ozymandias, which is a sonnet written by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Famously side note he was the husband [00:16:30] of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. So there you go. Little fun fact for you there. So even if you've never heard of this sonnet or poem or whatever, let me give you a sense of it. And here's a quote from the Wikipedia page that should do that quote. It explores the ravages of time and the oblivion to which the legacies of even the greatest are subject. Two [00:17:00] of the main themes noted are, quote, the inevitable decline of rulers and their hubris. In the poem, despite Ozymandias grandiose ambitions, the power turned out to be ephemeral. So, listeners, you might be wondering, the nature of this poem maybe doesn't quite fit with what we know about Carlos Watson. You know, he seems he's he's out there, he's extroverted. He's talking himself up. He's [00:17:30] talking Ozzy up. Right? This is how this was always the pitch. This was always the tone of it. But this is how Watson explained the name for the company.

Caleb Newquist: And I found this on the website via the Wayback Machine, but it's in the show notes. But he said this is how he explained it. Quote. The poem is commonly read as a warning against outsized egos and the impermanence of power. We choose to read it differently. To us, it's a call to think [00:18:00] big while remaining humble. Admittedly, ours is an unconventional interpretation because that's who we are in a world littered with conformity. We like to see things differently. Now, I just want to say I find this kind of amusing for a couple reasons. First of all, if you know the graphic novel Watchmen, the main antagonist This is Ozymandias. Okay. [00:18:30] The alter ego of Adrian Veidt, who rationalizes doing some pretty terrible things for the greater good. Okay. And if you don't know Watchmen, then what have you been doing? Okay. Also, if we go back to Ozzie and Watson's unconventional interpretation of the sonnet, to say we think it means we should think big and be humble is a little more than unconventional, isn't it? Because [00:19:00] it just sounds wrong. It sounds like a incorrect interpretation at best. Maybe it's just wildly misguided. It's like watching the movie Titanic and thinking boats are a great way to meet someone special. In other words, yes, it's an unconventional perspective and people are going to think you're pretty weird for that perspective. But irony be damned, Carlos Watson had [00:19:30] big plans for Ozzie.

Caleb Newquist: For the next several years, I have to imagine things were pretty busy. As you know, they are at startups, particularly startup media companies. But things really picked up in 2016 when the first OZY Fest was held in New York City. Ozy Fest was this multi-day, mashup festival of food, music and Ted talks. And [00:20:00] it was a it was a big deal for Ozzie. Also, Carlos Watson was hosting a new PBS debate show. Point taken. Okay. That show only ran one season. But, uh, an impression was definitely made because Watson joined the board of NPR in 2018. And so, you know, PBS and NPR, you know, public, public, new public broadcasting, you know, sisters or brothers in public [00:20:30] broadcasting. This is like people take that stuff seriously and Watson was a part of it. Aussie Fest returned in 2017 and 2018, and Watson's star power really peaked in 2019, when he hosted a series for Oprah's Own network called Black Women Own The Conversation. Did I emphasize that correctly? I think I did. Anyway, black Women Own the Conversation won an Emmy for Outstanding News, Discussion and Analysis. So pretty cool, right? [00:21:00] There was also The Carlos Watson Show, hosted by Carlos Watson, and Third Rail with OZY, hosted by Carlos Watson. There was also the Aussie Genius Awards. These awards went to college students as a way to this is what they say, quote, find and support the next generation of thought leaders. Winners would receive $10,000 and mentorship for their projects.

Caleb Newquist: So pretty cool, right? And [00:21:30] while all that is great and impressive and great and impressive and cool, as early as 2017, cracks were starting to show. In late December 2017, a BuzzFeed news article written by Craig Silverman, the site's media editor, ran with the following headline. A bunch of digital publishers bought Cheap traffic and later found out it was fraudulent. The first digital publisher named in that article, [00:22:00] Ozy BuzzFeed, reported that quote. Between May and October, the sponsored content ranked among Ozone's most viewed articles. However, it also reported that, quote, those stories received traffic that was purchased and delivered via a system that automatically loads specific web pages and redirects traffic between participating websites to quickly rack up views without any human action. Now, let me just say [00:22:30] that buying traffic is not a crime. Publishers do it all the time. Use Google and Facebook to to send traffic to specific articles or specific pages. But finding out that that traffic was just a bunch of bots that were ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting back and forth. That was bad news for OSI. A different fact, however, made [00:23:00] the situation far worse. You see these articles that were racking up the phony traffic. They weren't just like a hot take on current events or an exposé on a prominent political, business or cultural person. No, these were the sponsored content, right? These articles were produced for big names.

Caleb Newquist: Who paid money for them? Names like JP Morgan Chase, Amazon and Visa. At the time, a spokesman for JP Morgan told BuzzFeed, quote, we're committed [00:23:30] to only working with reputable and brand safe publishers, and we don't take this sort of thing lightly. So that's not good. And as if the bot traffic going to big name advertisers wasn't bad enough, the article went on to reveal something else. Buzzfeed's investigation further found that eight of the ten most popular articles on OZY from the period between June and October 2017 had, quote received the vast [00:24:00] majority of their visits from websites attributed to Screen Rush. This was also the case for one of JP morgan's sponsored articles. A previous BuzzFeed investigation had documented how traffic sent by screen rush to publishers met the industry definition of fraudulent traffic. Now, the details of how this fraudulent traffic is created is a little boring and complicated, but suffice to say, this is not the type [00:24:30] of story you want to have written about your website. Okay. You know, digital publishers exaggerating their traffic isn't anything new. Digital publishers, they always try to put the size of their audience and the quality of their audience in a positive light to attract advertisers. But what was going on at OSI was a little bit more than I think people were comfortable with. Now, to be fair, OSI admitted to paying for [00:25:00] the traffic, but it denied knowing that it was fraudulent. And in a statement to BuzzFeed at the time, it said, unfortunately, our digital ecosystem harbors audience sources that don't always fit Ozone's target and in some cases exhibit behavior that is not authentic.

Caleb Newquist: It went on, we are proud to consistently overdeliver for our advertising partners across platforms, and it goes without saying that our partners only pay for quality delivery. So the bloom was [00:25:30] off the rose at OSI, but the worst was yet to come. January 2021 was an interesting time, to say the very least. The entire planet was in the throes of the Covid 19 pandemic and the recession caused by it. Here in the US, there were protests against systemic racism triggered by the murder of George Floyd the previous summer, and a blur of activity related to the outcome of the 2020 [00:26:00] presidential election, including protests, the attack on the US Capitol building on January 6th, and the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President on January 20th. Given everything going on, you would be forgiven if you missed the news that Ozzy announced in the middle of the month. On January 12th, Axios reported that Ozzy brought $50 million in revenue in the previous year, and it had become profitable for the first [00:26:30] time, and it had also received two offers to be acquired by major media companies, which they obviously turned down. The Axios story further repeated. You know, the the the Ozzy talking points that it's for a curious audience. It had these production partnerships with own PBS and other networks, Ozzy fest, the diversity of its employees and that it discovered people before the mainstream media, including people like comedian Trevor Noah, which we mentioned [00:27:00] before, and even Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Caleb Newquist: Carlos Watson spoke to Axios for that story, claiming that Ozzy had sold a dozen TV shows and its programing had, quote, become a big, meaningful business, and also that its profitability was no accident. Quote. We tried to be incredibly disciplined about spending. On September 26th, 2021, Ben Smith, the media columnist [00:27:30] for The New York Times at that time, wrote a story that seemed too crazy to be true. He laid out the scenario Goldman Sachs was close to a deal to invest $40 million in Ozzy. Some of its asset management executives were meeting with Alex Piper, the head of unscripted programing for YouTube originals, to discuss their experience with Ozzy. Piper had trouble connecting via zoom, so he requested a conference [00:28:00] call. Once everyone was on, he went on to talk about how great Ozzy was doing, how great of a leader Carlos Watson was. And, you know, just great great great great great. At some point early in the call, the Goldman team thought the voice on the phone sounded strange. So much so that they suspected that it had been digitally altered. When the meeting was over, someone from the Goldman team reached out to Alex [00:28:30] Piper via his assistant, rather than a Gmail address that had been provided prior to the call.

Caleb Newquist: When Piper got on the phone, something very strange happened. He said that he had never spoken with the person from Goldman Sachs before. In other words, Alex Piper wasn't on the call with Goldman Sachs, but rather someone pretending to be Alex Piper was on the call. Smith [00:29:00] reported that when YouTube learned that someone was trying to impersonate one of their executives. It launched an investigation. Something that the company confirmed when Smith asked them about it. The identity of the impersonator quickly came to light. It was Samir Rao, the co-founder of OZY. Carlos Watson profusely apologized to Goldman. Sachs explained that Samir had, quote, [00:29:30] a mental health crisis, and this is also the story that he told to Ben Smith. And while Ozy's board was initially satisfied with Watson's explanation and handling of the situation, more questions were raised. One of the people that Smith spoke to for his column was a former editor at large for Aussie Guy by the name of Eugene Robinson. And Robinson told Smith that he considered Ozy to be a Potemkin [00:30:00] village. Look that one up if you don't know it anyway. Many experts agreed with this assessment. Oz's traffic and purported success. It didn't really make any sense. And you know who else wasn't satisfied? Google the owner of YouTube. Their security team quickly concluded that a crime may have been committed and informed the FBI. As for Oz's employees, they found out about this story [00:30:30] just like everybody else, by reading it in the New York Times, and they were completely blindsided.

Caleb Newquist: Watson did his best to do damage control. According to an account in fortune the night the story came out, he emailed employees and called the story, quote, salacious and profoundly inaccurate. But he also acknowledged that the impersonation did occur. So, in other words, even Watson admitted that the most [00:31:00] salacious part of the story was true. Watson denied knowing anything about the impersonation beforehand. Samir Rao was placed on a leave of absence a couple days later. September 28th and that same day, OSI announced that it had hired a very fancy law firm to do an investigation. But things quickly got worse for both Watson and OSI. A couple days later, on September [00:31:30] 30th, the chairman of Ozzy's board, Marc Lasry, hedge fund guy, owns the Milwaukee Bucks, who had initially supported Watson's account and how he had dealt with the situation. He resigned and at the time of that resignation, Ben Smith also reported that one of Ozzy's earliest investors, a guy by the name of Ron Conway, had returned his shares. Then a multitude of reports in the press told countless unflattering stories [00:32:00] about the company. Here's just a few, a handful. Let's say first, a rep from a PR firm that OSI had used said that they were, quote, asked to issue press releases about joint collaborations with other organizations without confirming information with the partner first.

Caleb Newquist: Okay. Here's another. There was a report in Deadline Hollywood that called Watson the best interviewer on TV when it was, in fact [00:32:30] a quote from Rowe in a story published on deadline. So deadline didn't say that. Samir Rowe said that two deadline. Okay. Here's another. Ben Smith reported about a prominent producer who signed on to run The Carlos Watson Show based on this distribution deal with A&E. That Watson had told him about. When the producer learned that there was no such deal with A&E, he quit writing it. In an email [00:33:00] to Watson and Rao, quote, you are playing a dangerous game with the truth. Then there were multiple accounts of current and former OSI employees talking about the terrible working conditions. It was widely reported that many veteran journalists had tried working at OSI, but either left or were fired in favor of younger, cheaper and, to be honest, more impressionable employees. One anonymous staffer told the website defector that Watson, [00:33:30] quote, literally threw a book across the room at her. That book, the hard Thing About hard Things building a business when there are no easy answers, which is too on the nose. But that's amazing. Five days after the New York Times story and the avalanche of embarrassing reports that followed, the company's board of directors announced that the company was shutting down. The exodus of investors, advertisers and [00:34:00] employees were all too much, and it accelerated the fall of OSI. One commentator said that calling OSI media a dumpster fire is an insult to dumpsters and fires.

Caleb Newquist: But despite all the public embarrassment and the announcement that the company was being shut down, Carlos Watson surprised everyone by making the rounds on morning TV programs the following Monday to announce that OSI [00:34:30] was in fact not shutting down, and would find a way to move forward. But, you know, he was kind of light on the details, so much so that one of his early investors, Ron Conway, who we mentioned earlier, spoke to the New York Times and said, quote, I want to publicly ask Carlos to take care of his team members and quote, take every ounce of cash and you distribute it to those deserving team members who deserve to be respected at this time. It did not get better from there. [00:35:00] The first lawsuit against ozone was reported on October 5th. It was from a fund management company who had invested $2 million in ozone. Based in part on the claims that Watson and Rao made that Goldman Sachs and Alphabet, aka Google, were both planning large investments in ozone. A couple days later, ozone staffer Eugene Robinson wrote an essay about his experience of working at ozone and for Carlos Watson in The New York Times. He [00:35:30] painted a picture of a high pressure environment where staffers worked very long hours. Mr. Robinson said he worked two 24 hour days in the lead up to Ozone's launch in 2013, and were kept in the dark about the company's performance.

Caleb Newquist: Watson, meanwhile, was prone to spats of anger and threats for minor offenses. Robinson wrote, and Watson confirmed later that his pay was docked for missing a meeting, and perhaps the most spicy passage [00:36:00] in the essay was Robinson's perspective on Oz's TV and video content. It said, quote. Over the years, it seemed much of Oz's video content became a shrine honoring the greatness of Mr. Watson. Remember how I said that Ozzy had investors and partnerships like the other up and coming media sites like Gawker, Mike vice? But those media companies didn't have [00:36:30] Carlos Watson. They didn't have Carlos Watson, but they did have something that Ozzy didn't have, and that was traffic. That is, you know, people visiting their stories and articles that actually got read and then actually got shared. And, you know, made the rounds. Something of a worst kept secret about Ozzy, or just questions that people had. People, stuff that people didn't quite understand was how come they never saw Ozzy's articles, you [00:37:00] know, in the wild? How come they never came across it unless it was sponsored? Also, remember how Ozzy claimed to have this unique ability to identify the under the radar figures that would be shaping the future of the culture? They didn't really do that either, as this Ozzy story was blowing up. One of the many embarrassing revelations was detailed in the Nieman Journalism Lab, and this is the blog for Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for journalism, and the author, Joshua Benton detailed numerous [00:37:30] examples of people that Ozzy had claimed to discover.

Caleb Newquist: But, you know, kind of sort of not really a bit of a bit a bit of myth making, shall we say. And here's the three big ones that we mentioned earlier. Okay. We'll go through them one by one. Trevor Noah. Right. This is the one that Watson said all the time. He told Stephen Colbert, for example, that Ozzy had run a story titled Could He Be the Next Daily Show Host? A year before it was announced that Noah would [00:38:00] in fact be named as the Daily Show host. But in reality, Ozzy's story only ran four days ahead of the announcement of Trevor Noah being the new host, and it was already being speculated that he would take over the show by this point. And when it originally ran, it had this very not predictably headline. That was what an African finds funny About America. Okay, what about Alexandria [00:38:30] Ocasio-Cortez? Okay. Aoc, the scourge of Republicans nationwide, right? She was featured in Ozzy about a month before she broke out and defeated the incumbent in the primary for New York's 14th congressional district. Okay. And the headline that ran was this Berniecrat aims to unseat a Queens powerbroker. Okay. Benton Joshua Benton, the guy who wrote this article for Nieman Lab. He found four [00:39:00] articles that ran before Oz's and one was in Mother Jones.

Caleb Newquist: That was a profile of AOC, and it ran seven months before the article and the Wall Street Journal, which is about as mainstream as it gets. They profiled her three months before Ozzie did. Okay, so Ozzie didn't exactly discover AOC. And here's Aaron Judge. Okay. Ozzie wrote about Judge in April 2017, and this was his rookie year with New York Yankees. Uh, [00:39:30] Benton found that the New York Times, a bete noire of Ozzie. They had written about Aaron Judge more than 100 times before Ozzie's article ran 100 times. So they know. I don't think that's means you discovered somebody anyway. Amanda gorman. Issa rae. Brett kavanaugh. Dua lipa. These were all people that were supposedly discovered by Ozzy. And Benton showed how, in each case, either Ozzy's claim or Watson's claim to be the first [00:40:00] to write about them were wildly overblown. On November 10th, 2021, The New York Times reported that both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission were investigating Ozzy. It was around this time that a new PR firm hired by Watson tried setting up an on the record interview with investigative journalist William Cohen and his new site, puck. Cohen reported that he and Watson spoke over zoom [00:40:30] the day before Watson was supposed to fly to Los Angeles for their interview. Cohen writes that he exchanged several texts with Watson about his arrival at Cohen's rental in the Hollywood Hills, but ultimately Watson never showed. It seems that the news of the investigations, which had led to the hiring of several new law firms, resulted in a very tightly controlled media strategy, one that did not include talking to investigative journalists like Cohen. [00:41:00]

Caleb Newquist: What resulted was a kind of dishy column that ran about a month later, with Cohen detailing the back and forth that only heightened the weirdness of Carlos Watson, who apparently hates Mayo. Things mostly went quiet after that until February of 2023, when Semafor, a digital media company co-founded by Ben Smith. Incidentally, Semafor shared details of an Aussie comeback. It showcased what else [00:41:30] Carlos Watson clips featuring Alex Rodriguez, Dwyane Wade, John Legend and others appearing at Aussie events or in Aussie shows were featured, which was a little funny because no one of that star caliber was currently showing up on Ozzy's flagship show, The Carlos Watson Show. Speaking of which, Axios reported that one source claimed that more than 95% of the viewership for The Carlos Watson Show was paid for. So [00:42:00] this comeback was short lived. On February 23rd, 2023, the SEC charged Watson with defrauding investors, and the Department of Justice indicted him on charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The Department of Justice press release stated that Sameer Rao and Watson's chief of staff, Susie Hahn, had both pleaded guilty to their roles in the fraud. The press release [00:42:30] shared some highlights that included allegations that Watson had tried to obtain a loan by lying about revenue that Ozzy would receive from one of its TV shows.

Caleb Newquist: When the contract wasn't even in place. As a part of that scheme, Watson asked Ozzie's then CFO to fake a signed contract. That CFO responded to this request by quitting on the spot and saying, quote, to be crystal clear, what you see as a measured risk, I see as a felony. In [00:43:00] the aftermath of that CFO quitting, Rao impersonated another media executive in a call with the bank that Ozzie was attempting to get a loan from. Then, of course, there was the infamous call between Goldman Sachs, a financial institution, in the indictment, and who they thought was a YouTube executive, a media executive from the online video service, as the indictment put it. And while those two incidents are probably the most damning of the allegations, the indictment is jammed [00:43:30] with examples of Watson lying repeatedly about Ozzie's business and its performance to land investors. And here's just one example. Although Ozzy's actual revenue in 2019 was at most $13 million. Watson, together with Rao, Han and others, falsely told Middle East investor Number One that Ozzy had earned $35 million in revenue in 2019. In this instance, the trio told this investor multiple times that Ozzy's [00:44:00] expected revenue was $65 million for 2022. Later, the projection changed to $45 million. Where did Ozzy's revenue in 2020 end up? 11 million. Quite a bit less than 45 million.

Caleb Newquist: In response to the charges, Watson took to Twitter, saying that he was deeply disappointed by the government's actions yesterday. I am not now and never have been a con man. I am and have been a hardworking entrepreneur who has helped build a special [00:44:30] company from scratch, he went on. I'm not saying I have made mistakes, I have. But it's fair to ask why have I been singled out? Aussies are real and valuable company that was built through an enormous amount of hard work and sacrifice. Less than a week after the indictment was announced, on March 1st, 2023, Aussie shut down for good. In a message from its Twitter account, the company said in light of its current operational and legal challenges, the Aussie Board has determined that it's in the best interests of its stakeholders [00:45:00] to suspend operations immediately. Now I will just mention something. Most of our stories don't have trials. Lots of people, when they're busted for fraud, cop to it, usually because they're facing some astronomical number of years in prison. But also, when trials do happen, they're very boring and pretty straightforward. They're not [00:45:30] anything like what we see on Law and Order or in the movies. But also most of the stories we talk about on here do not involve companies with CEOs who are, you know, marginally famous and well connected in the very highly visible media world. So Carlos Watson was determined to fight these charges and he went to trial.

Caleb Newquist: This trial began in late May 2024. Watson was being [00:46:00] prosecuted in the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, which regular listeners to the show may remember being mentioned by Sam Buell, the Duke law professor and former prosecutor from the Eastern District. We talked to him in episode 77. It's a it's a very unique place. As Sam told it, that's where he wanted to work because it was so interesting. Anyway, right away it became clear that the prosecution had a mountain of evidence against Watson. They called 17 witnesses, including former [00:46:30] OSI employees, investors who lost money, and executives from companies who were victimized, including Google, YouTube and Oprah's network own the VP of finance, a CPA named Janine Buttre. I hope I'm saying that right. She testified that she, quote, felt like I was in a pressure cooker trying to solve something that wasn't there and that the company was, quote, always light on cash. That pressure was put even [00:47:00] into clearer context by the prosecution's star witness, Samir Rao. Rao's testimony lasted six days. He detailed how difficult the financial situation was at OSI. The company was producing more TV shows and more events, and the cost to do that is much greater. Meaning they were burning through a lot of their investment dollars. This led to the company occasionally missing payroll and paying huge amounts of interest on outstanding loans that they had. So [00:47:30] This were these were the circumstances that ultimately led to Watson Rowe and Susie Hahn to lying to investors.

Caleb Newquist: They would claim that Ozzy was making 18 to $20 million, but in reality they were making $10 million. In 2019, they claimed they were making they made $30 million when it was only 13 million. And like, you know, even those real numbers. So the 10 million to the 13 million, those are like that's good growth, right? Like that's not bad. Like that's [00:48:00] 30% growth. But it was not good enough. Watson wanted to crush the numbers. He wanted to blow them out of the water. Right. The the demand and the expectation for massive growth was huge. Prosecutors showed text messages between Watson, Rowe and Hahn trying to keep their story straight with specific investors. You know, what did we tell this person? What did we tell that person? It got complicated enough that they wrote it all down or [00:48:30] documented in some way to keep all the lies straight, which I have to say is just a classic move in fraud cases. You know, document your fraud because you're lying a lot. And who can remember all those lies anyway? Speaking of lies, more stuff they lied about. They told people that Oprah was leading a round of investment in 2019. That was not true. They told people that Live Nation was leading a round. That was not true. They told people that Google was leading around. Not true. Watson told one investor that Google was thinking of acquiring the company [00:49:00] for $600 million.

Caleb Newquist: That investor put in $20 million based on that information. Rao was also faking contracts to obtain loans, and he did this with Watson's knowledge. That's what he testified to. He took real contracts. He changed the terms, he forged the signatures, and then he copied them multiple times to make him look older. And they even actually got busted by one of their lenders. But that didn't scare them straight. They knew that they were being hoodwinked, and they didn't, you know, they [00:49:30] called him on it and they kept doing it anyway. Watson, Rao and Hahn were increasingly desperate to secure financing of one kind or another. And Rao painted this picture of Watson as this controlling, domineering boss, very similar to what Eugene Robinson wrote about one who was willing to do anything to win. Text messages from Watson to Rat were read in court, and they were not pretty. One simply said, quote, be thorough. Do not get tired. He sent that message at [00:50:00] 12:21 a.m. don't get tired. It's after midnight, but don't get tired, all right? He also texted, do not let things slip up for any reason. No excuses. And then there's this gem. I need you and Susie to do exactly what I ask and stop doing other shit. Get our fucking cash from Chevy and others and stop making me ask you. Oh, man. Susie Hahn, who also testified. She replied [00:50:30] to one message saying, I can't do this for you both anymore.

Caleb Newquist: The past two years have destroyed my mental health beyond belief. At another point, she told Watson that she could understand why someone would want to kill themselves. As a result of the pressure she was under from her job. Okay, so in response to that, which is a very serious thing, what did Carlos Watson do? Did he offer her any reassurance? Did [00:51:00] he offer her time off to rest and recharge? Did he apologize for putting so much pressure on her? No. No, he did not. What he did do was he suggested that he, Carlos, Watson or Samir go to Susie's therapy sessions to help the therapist do a better job. And while that all sounds extremely bad, it's. [00:51:30] I don't think it's against the law. No, none of it's against the law. I don't know about the therapist business I don't like. Can you do that? Would you would you have your boss show up at your therapy sessions? That sounds awful. Absolutely awful. Under no circumstances would I ever do something like that. I can't believe someone would actually suggest a boss that would suggest that he should do that for me. I yeah, I would stop working for that person. Anyway, as regular listeners to the show know, this is all you know. This makes it all very easy to understand why [00:52:00] a high pressure environment like this would be susceptible to fraud. Like all the ingredients are there. And, you know, for the prosecution, this all establishes the circumstances very effectively.

Caleb Newquist: It's hard to imagine that if the Carlos Watson that people saw on TV was the same guy at the office when he was interacting with his employees, it's hard. A fraud wouldn't happen in those circumstances, right? People wouldn't feel the pressure to do something wrong. If that was the Carlos Watson who they [00:52:30] got to work with. But that's not the Carlos Watson they got to work with. Incidentally, Rao and Han, they both received probation for their cooperation in the case. The prosecution's case detailed many, many examples of how OSI was playing fast and loose with the facts, particularly with its website traffic, views of its YouTube videos, its financial performance, and even the number of people who attended OSI Fest. Crowd size, am I right? Lots of these stories had already been reported in the media, [00:53:00] but it all added up to hard evidence that Watson was deceiving people in order to get money from them. Then there was the former CFO, a woman by the name of Tripti Thakur. She told the story of when the company needed cash and they were close to shutting down, and they were waiting on this contract from Oprah's network and Carlos said, make something and get it done. And that's when she responded [00:53:30] to him. He's like, are you asking me to make a fake contract? And Rao tells her that he will handle it. And then he sends an email back to her with a fake contract forged signature, and she and he cc'd the CFO and she responded and quit on the spot.

Caleb Newquist: And there's this great podcast that I listened to multiple times, actually, from the Columbia Journalism Review called The Kicker. They [00:54:00] have the exhibit, they have a copy of the email, and it's linked in the show notes. And the email is amazing to read. But in that email, Tripti Thakur, she's she's straight up writes in the first paragraph of the email, this is fraud. Like that's the sentence. Then there was the infamous Goldman call. Rouse said that he and Watson came up with the plan together, and they were on the call together. Not [00:54:30] what Watson had said. The row had acted alone and was having a mental health crisis. They were asking Goldman Sachs for $45 million, where they would get $35 million up front, and then $10 million would be split between Watson, Rao and Han after the raise was done. And they came up with this plan to impersonate the YouTube executive. Okay. Prosecutors had evidence that Watson was on the call. He was. It was on his calendar. There [00:55:00] were text messages from Watson to Rao that made it clear that he was in the room, and he was texting Rao to coach him through the call, you know, saying things like, you know, use the right pronouns, don't say we, because this is supposed to be a YouTube exec and it's not OSI.

Caleb Newquist: Aussie. And you know, Rao is testifying to all this. And then later on, Alex Piper, the YouTube guy, he finds out about this, you know, he finds out what happens, of course. And he's just [00:55:30] pissed off, right? Like, he's furious and he talks to Watson. And Watson says that he's he can't talk to him because he's traveling for his father's funeral, but that he promises to them he'll get to the bottom of it. Okay. Fun fact Watson's father was alive when he was talking to Piper. Watson was in Rao's office when he had Piper on the phone. Piper testified that Watson had pitched [00:56:00] him on The Carlos Watson Show for YouTube originals, but that he had unequivocally passed on it. Okay. So Rao continues to testify and he says, you know, he agrees to take the fall and Watson will smooth things over. And so up to this point, there have been tons of surprises in this story. But what you probably won't be surprised to learn is that Carlos Watson took the stand in his own defense. And, you know, this is a this [00:56:30] is a persuasive, charismatic guy who is definitely going to jump at the chance to tell his own story. And despite all the evidence that the prosecution had, it isn't difficult to imagine a jury being swayed by somebody like Carlos Watson and him giving his point of view. And he was a good witness. He was a good witness for himself.

Caleb Newquist: He has this compelling life story. He's hard working. He'd achieved a lot. He's a skilled communicator. [00:57:00] But there were some idiosyncrasies, shall we say, to his testimony. He repeatedly mentioned all the things that Ozzie had done the newsletters, the podcasts, the TV shows, and he did a lot of name dropping in his testimony. Um, you know, everybody from Barack Obama to Heidi Klum to, you know, Bill O'Reilly, Oprah, you know, like so many name dropping lots and lots of name dropping. But when it came to his defense against the actual charges, [00:57:30] Watson just claimed to be a victim, you know, and he blamed Ralph for the fraud. And he also said that the company's books, you know, the numbers that say how the business is doing, that they were inaccurate and that the numbers he was sharing with people were the best representation of the company's performance. And a key part of this claim was his reliance, Watson's reliance on barter revenue. In [00:58:00] other words, he was claiming that certain things of value the company traded for should have counted as revenue. So OSI gives you a great show. Your organization gives something of value to Ozzie. And this is very common mostly in nonprofits. So remember that Ozzie did a show for Oprah's Own network, right? Black women own the conversation. Watson hosted the show. As you recall. And one episode even won an Emmy. Right. So you've got Ozzie producing [00:58:30] the show, and because it's airing on Own, you've got Oprah promoting it.

Caleb Newquist: Right. She did this very short video, one minute, 22 second video promo. And she also tweeted something about it as well. So any guesses as to what Carlos Watson said? Those two things were worth one minute and 22 second video and a tweet. He said in court under oath, he said that the one minute and 22 second video was worth $20 million. The [00:59:00] tweet, he said, was worth 50 million. And he explained, he said, I thought, what would I have paid for this? What was it worth to Ozzy? And then he said he divided it by two to be conservative. Not a very sophisticated method, but with a with with a kernel of truth. Right. There's all there's in accounting. There's this thing like fair market value is very common. And that's essentially what he was trying to explain here. But, you [00:59:30] know, a very short video and a tweet. I don't know, I don't think fair market value really works for those two things. But anyway, that's that's how he explained it. But he also testified if he wanted $500,000 for a show, but in the course of negotiations, he ultimately got 200,000 for it. He still booked in his mind. He still booked the 500,000in revenue, which is not really accounting. That's not really how accounting works. I mean, you [01:00:00] you can but like then like if everybody did that, then how would you know what anything is worth? Because that difference is big.

Caleb Newquist: Like you can't just do it based on your feelings. Anyway, again, these kernels of truth used by Watson to spin these plausible sounding explanations. You know, the myth making this is. But this is myth making to the point of almost parody. And remember the CFO, Tripti Thakkar. I think I'm saying it's right, Thakkar. [01:00:30] This barter revenue that Watson was talking about during her testimony, when someone asked her about it, she referred to it as sort of vapor, which is not how I think you want your, uh, accounting methodology to be referred. You don't want to you don't want those words associated with your accounting methodology. Finally, Watson testified about his involvement in the infamous call with Goldman Sachs, where Samir Rao impersonated a YouTube executive. Okay. Watson, during [01:01:00] his testimony, went into great detail about the day of that call. He was up early for an interview, then he went into the office. He then says that he just popped his head in to rouse Carl, and he realized it was with Goldman Sachs, and he realized what was happening, and he tried to stop Rouse short of physically stopping him because he wasn't sure if the call was on Zoom or not. And so that's how he explained the text messages were him, you know, those text messages that appeared to be [01:01:30] Watson coaching Rowe? Watson said. That was him trying to end the call without it completely crashing and burning.

Caleb Newquist: And you know, you hear this and it's it's plausible enough, right? You need to raise reasonable doubt if you have a defense. And I don't know, it didn't stretch the imagination that much that some jurors could maybe find this credible, would find this believable, would would believe that this was the version of [01:02:00] this was the actual truth. There's this other moment where Watson is asked about the barter revenue, and the prosecutor says, if I traded a cow for some magic beans and I think those magic beans are worth $15 million, and I told my investors that I got $15 million in revenue for selling my cow. Would that be okay? And Watson kind of like equivocates a little bit and says, well, it sounds kind of implausible or whatever. And it's like, well, we are talking about magic magic beans. But also [01:02:30] could you do it? And Watson said, sure. So he, he couldn't help himself. He he could he couldn't not somehow stand behind his version of events that were no matter how implausible they might be. The jury deliberated for two days and found Carlos Watson guilty on all three counts. At sentencing in December 2024, the judge in the case said that the quantum of [01:03:00] dishonesty in this case is exceptional And this is what he said to Watson. If you believe that everything you did here was fine, and the only reason you're here is because of this conspiracy by others, then I don't see any reason why.

Caleb Newquist: As soon as you are able to, you wouldn't simply repeat the behaviors that led us to this point. Watson was sentenced to 116 months in prison in order to pay $96 million in restitution. It's [01:03:30] March 2025, and Carlos Watson is on his way to report to federal prison in Lompoc, California. When he got the news, President Trump had commuted his sentence. He would not be going to prison. He would no longer have to pay $96 million in restitution. Alice Marie Johnson, the prison reform activist and former federal prisoner who first became known because Kim Kardashian had brought [01:04:00] her case to. President Trump's attention in his first term. She was instrumental in getting this commutation for Watson. Her own sentence was commuted by Trump and then she was later pardoned. Johnson, along with fellow criminal justice reform advocates Glenn Martin and Topeka Sam, were instrumental in bringing Watson's case to the attention of the white House. Alice Johnson [01:04:30] is President Trump's pardons czar, and in spite of all that, this commutation was given without any consultation of the prosecuting attorneys, which is standard practice in these matters. In his statement, since the commutation, Watson has maintained his innocence, and upon the news he said, I am profoundly grateful to President Trump for correcting this grave injustice. His decision reflects an unwavering commitment to fairness and justice for those [01:05:00] who have been wrongfully targeted. All right, so did we learn anything, man? Well, first.

Caleb Newquist: First thing that comes to mind is you've got this charismatic leader who engenders loyalty. You know, Sameer Rao was 15 years younger than Carlos Watson. And yet he would do anything. He would do anything for Watson and for Ozzie. And [01:05:30] Watson liked to do this with all kinds of employees. I mean, this guy was a co-founder, but just all kinds of people. They would hire young people who wouldn't have gotten these opportunities, uh, in other places. And, you know, but then he demanded a lot of these people. So, like, he was constantly texting Rao from early in the morning to late in the evening. And, you know, you've got this [01:06:00] very different public face from who he was behind closed doors and in the way, you know, Eugene Robinson talks about this. He said that Watson systematically abused people in isolation. So he would he would get you alone. And you think you're just getting some face time with the boss, and he would, like, crush people, be frustrated like, you know, and berate them. And, you know, being a shitty boss is not a crime. But [01:06:30] it does create pressure. And pressure is critical to a fraud triangle. And so yeah, it's not great. And you know, these kinds of things are they're common. This is this is common in startups. And it was especially common in digital media during that time. You know, people are expecting fast growth.

Caleb Newquist: And so you're telling them what they want to hear. You know, there's lots of bullshitting, particularly [01:07:00] in this period 2000, 20 tens, you know, buying traffic again, very common. Lots and lots of digital media companies, especially startups that are trying to grow fast. They would buy traffic, you know, especially from Facebook. And so from that standpoint, you have all these people that are, you know, you've you've got this plausible defense, right. But it doesn't it doesn't excuse illegal activity. Right. The defense being that exaggerating [01:07:30] performance was standard industry practice for digital media companies. And there wasn't anything special or certainly illegal about what OSI was doing. That was essentially the defense. There's even a legal standard for this or a legal defense for this. It's called the puffery standard. And it basically says that a certain amount of bullshitting is defensible. Right. That it's legal and allowed. But there is definitely a difference between bullshitting and [01:08:00] line. And, you know, there's two very good examples recent examples, Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Fried, a lot of bullshitting and a lot of lying. They can coexist like it isn't one or the other. They can both happen concurrently. Right? And when there's lying and breaking the law to give to deceive people into giving you money. Yeah. That's that's. You can't do that. It's legal. And so there was [01:08:30] that defense and like and to this day you know that is how Carlos Watson that's a big part of what he how he explains his defense.

Caleb Newquist: And while that is you know debatable a defense that wasn't so good was this attempt, the defense to accuse the prosecution of racial bias, singling out Watson because he was black and the judge ruled early on that this argument was baseless. And so Watson and his team, they kind of went [01:09:00] all in on this argument outside of the courtroom where they produce videos. And there's this like nearly three hour, two part documentary called The Troubling Case of Carlos Watson that just goes into it all. And it's very slick and well produced, and it basically tells that story. And of course, the prosecutors strongly denied this, that there was any basis for these claims. And in that podcast, the kicker they actually reported, they say in the Eastern District of New York, they don't choose their cases, [01:09:30] and the charging decisions are made by the US attorney. And at the time that Watson was charged, the US attorney in the Eastern District was Brian Pace. Brian Pace is a black man. So despite the claims, the charges of racial bias, they just don't get a lot of traction, Attraction, especially where they would matter most, which is in the courtroom. But in the court of public opinion, this is this is part of like the story that Carlos Watson is still telling. [01:10:00] And there's but there's all kinds of other stuff to like. Remember, like early in the episode, I mentioned how Carlos Watson said that he was an editor at the Stanford Law Review.

Caleb Newquist: Well, the Columbia Journalism Review podcast, they looked into that, and he was only an associate editor. So, like the myth and the legend of Carlos Watson, that is such a big part of this story. And it's just one of those things that when you surround yourself with people who believe in that myth, believe in that legend, they'll [01:10:30] do anything for you. And in this case, you know, he asked people to do illegal stuff and he got busted for it. And to say, well, other people are doing this and they're not getting busted. I mean, that doesn't mean that it's okay that you're doing it. That doesn't that's not a that's not a viable defense. All right. That's it for this episode. And remember don't say Sharon Osborne is your friend when she is definitely definitely, [01:11:00] definitely not your friend. She will cut you. If you have questions, comments or suggestions for stories, drop me a line at omnifrog at com. Hit me up on LinkedIn if you want to do that. All my fraud is created, written, produced and hosted by me. Caleb Newquist Zach Frank is my co producer, audio engineer and music supervisor. Laura Hobbs designed our logo rate review and subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. If you listen on your mark, earn some CPE there if that's a [01:11:30] thing you need. All right, join us next time for more avarice, swindler and scams from stories that will make you say oh my fraud.