Lifeline Legacy Holdings, a Beverly Hills-based group, claims that Ozy misrepresented its business performance and interest from other investors, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in California.Subscribe for free
Lifeline claims that, at the time it was being solicited for investment, Ozy didn't disclose that Goldman Sachs had declined to invest after learning that an OZY co-founder Samir Rao had impersonated a YouTube executive during a due diligence call. It also says that Ozy failed to disclosed government investigations tied to that impersonation and that Ozy claimed "Alphabet or one of its Google affiliates" was leading a $30 million investment in Ozy in mid-2021.
Google Ventures, which would be the most logical affiliate to invest in a company like Ozy, says it did not make such a deal. It is unclear from the lawsuit if Ozy was ever in talks with Google about an investment, or if an investment by Google was ever made. A source tells Axios that Google Ventures did have exploratory talks with Ozy Media about an investment prior to 2021, but it never made an offer to invest.