Ozy Media CEO and co-founder Carlos Watson appeared on the Today Show after The New York Times published an article about an impersonation scandal involving the chief operating officer. (screenshot via Today Show)
Ozy Media has been sued over a nearly $1.3 million legal bill its law firm claims it racked up to deal with bomb fallout New York Times Expose about the company.
Co-founded by CEO carlos watson and chief operating officer Samir Rao In 2013, Ozy Media takes its name from the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias, a sonnet on the transience of power and the powerful. Inspired by this verse, Ozy started with the ambition to become one of the few media companies founded and led by people of color – and it quickly found top-tier backers, Told stimulated by a funding round from Laurene Powell Jobs. German media giant Axel Springer paid $20 million in the company the following year, and other major investors followed, including billionaire Marc Lasry and the Ford Foundation.
The company’s fortunes turned in October 2021, when then-Time media columnist Ben Smith reported on a “strange” Zoom call Ozy Media held with another potential investor: Goldman Sachs. According to the article, COO Rao apparently posed as the voice of YouTube Originals executive. Alex Piper On call. Four people briefed on the meeting anonymously told the Time that the voice appeared to have been “digitally altered”. CEO Watson reportedly blamed Rao’s mental health crisis for the incident.
The article also described the upstart digital media company’s reports of high traffic as suspicious, either “hype” or worse.
After the article, Ozy Media briefly to close and reopened, in what Watson described about it Today’s show like that of the companyMoment of Lazarus.” The company also had to deal with litigation and multiple federal investigations, in which the prosecution notes were both criminal and civil.
Dec. On February 22, 2022, his law firm Ford O’Brien Landy LLP (FOBL) filed a lawsuit in New York County Supreme Court claiming that Ozy Media’s legal bills have increased throughout the year. with no end in sight.
When FOBL cleared Ozy Media’s arrears with Mr. Watson or company representatives during phone calls or videoconferences, Mr. Watson and/or these representatives repeatedly urged the company to be patient until ‘until the company’s financial condition improves, at which time, they promised, the company would begin work and eventually extinguish large outstanding balances,’ the 16-page complaint states. “But instead, Ozy Media’s debt to FOBL, far from being reduced, has steadily increased every month from 2022 until today.”
According to the lawsuit, the firm represented Ozy Media in the Eastern District of New York. criminal investigationthe Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil investigation and a pair of lawsuits in the Northern District of California.
Providing few details about these investigations, the lawsuit reveals that they involved mountains of paperwork.
“The firm had multiple responsibilities, including strategy, government communications, interviews, and the review and production of over 27,000 documents, consisting of over 160,000 pages, in response to multiple subpoenas. to appear from government documents,” according to the complaint.
Ford O’Brien Landy LLP notes that they successfully fended off a lawsuit filed by one of Ozy Media’s investors, LifeLine Legacy Holdings LLC, which accused the company of “fraud”. Ozy’s lawyers secured the trial partial dismissal in May, and LifeLine voluntarily withdrew the remaining claims — without prejudice — in November.
The company claims that these two developments made Ozy’s CEO exultant.
“In one instance, for example, when an associate of FOBL reported that the district court in the LifeLine lawsuit dismissed part of the investor’s lawsuit with prejudice, Carlos Watson responded in an email dated 4 May 2022: ‘BRAVO! Thank you. Outstanding work. Very grateful,” the complaint reads. “And when FOBL’s attorney later reported that it was likely the district court would grant Ozy Media’s second motion to dismiss LifeLine’s second amended complaint, Carlos Watson responded in an email dated from November 3, 2022.: ‘Thank you very much for the work and the update.’”
Days later, LifeLine voluntarily dismissed its remaining claims with leave to refile.
Ford O’Brien Landy wants the judge to award them $1,255,871.87 for services rendered, plus interest.
Ozy Media did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Read the lawsuit here.
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