media. they were shut down after scrutiny of their business practices. it is led by cnn anchor carlos watson who got big entertainment to go on his show. the show that he inflated its viewer numbers. all of this got derailed after the new york times cited four anonymous sources saying ozy s ceo impersonated a youtube executive on a conference call with goldman sachs who was a potential investor. ozy was on earlier who said, the company may be down but they re not out. we re going to be open for business. we re making news today. this is our last first moment, if you will, our tylenol moment. last week was difficult. it s not going to be easy, but i think we do with original tv shows, podcasts and more, i think has a place. joining us now, the man who brought all of this to light,
stronger. the nation is stronger. so, yes, the republicans are on the lens, but they still have the need to do what s best for this country. hanging on the debt ceiling does not do that. we re going to do what we have to do on the democratic side and continue to move forward. like my grandfather used to say, the train is going to move. you can either get on the train, you can sit on the sidelines and watch the train or get off the train. we re going to continue to serve the american people. and you definitely don t want to be on the wrong side of a train. thank you for being here. i appreciate it. thanks, stephanie. what s blowing my mind, ozy s fall from grace. the company and ceo speaking out this morning after one of its
be a video they would upload to youtube. they told people it had been sold to hulu, which was not true. they were charging these premium rates to investors. you and i could offload a video from our phone and sell it to you, too. so it was said to craig melvin earlier that it s not just one call pursuing an executive. as part of the settlement, ozy gifted them shares of the company. carlos watson then went out and told people, yes, the osbornes are investors. yes, if they have shares, they re investors. that was like me deciding to give my money to jimmy buffett and going out and saying, hey, guess who my investors are?
new york columnist ben smith. ben, you had all the news on it. walk us through how it fell apart. anyone who knows ozy kind of knew they would make big claims about having an audience, but you would never run across anybody who really liked ozy, who read ozy. it was always kind of an enduring media mystery, but it s not like tylenol who poisoned people with cyanide. maybe some advertisers are getting ripped off, but that s really their problem. i think the thing a lot of us were vaguely aware of, and then i found out about this call saying, i impersonated a youtube executive, which takes it from puffery to being potential securities fraud and reported that in the wake of a lot of overlying issues, and hired a production crew which they said was for a & e, it turned out to