Ozy dropped its lawsuit against Semafor founder Ben Smith after CEO Carlos Watson was found guilty of fraud [Video]

After its former CEO was convicted of a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme this month, the defunct media company Ozy is no longer pursuing its sprawling lawsuit alleging its trade secrets were stolen.

Ozy sued the media company Semafor, its cofounder Ben Smith, and BuzzFeed in December. It alleged Smith plundered Ozy’s business ideas when, as the editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, he participated in merger talks with Ozy.

Smith went on to cofound the media company Semafor using Ozy’s ideas, the lawsuit alleged.

At the time Ozy filed the lawsuit, its founder Carlos Watson was awaiting trialon criminal charges that he defrauded investors of tens of millions of dollars. Prosecutors said that Watson manipulated Ozy’s finances and worked with another executive, Samir Rao, to impersonate a YouTube executive in order to deceive investors. The criminal investigation was sparked partially by Smith, who reported on the impersonation scheme as a columnist for The New York Times, where he worked between his positions at BuzzFeed and …