Steve Ballmer's "Inconceivable" Donation, the $20 Million Guarantee and a Head on a Spike: Kawhi-Gate, Part V

Media Day will force Kawhi Leonard to respond to scandal, but not before Pablo returns with new scoops and urgent questions: Just how easy was the "no-show" payday? Did Uncle Dennis really act alone? And why did the richest owner in sports keep funding a fraudster, even as the feds closed in? Mr. Amin Elhassan joins as an increasingly sweaty one-man cast of experts. • Part IV: Steve Ballmer, the Other Cuban and the $118 Million Infusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ow9i3obDE • Part III: The Mystery Investor, the No-Show Payday and the "Smoking Gun" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKJyKFdT8rQ • Part II: Team Ballmer vs. Team Sh*tting Bricks — an Argument with Mark Cuban https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwXcEG5BA6U • Part I: The Richest Owner in Sports, the Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OwzYk6OCFM • Subscribe: Pablo's newsletter has exclusive access, documents and invites https://www.pablo.show/ (Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out, and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're gonna find out what this sound is. Steve Ballmer's kink is being robbed.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Rob me blind, daddy.

• 0:15Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

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• 1:15Pablo Torre?

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• 1:59Pablo Torre?

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• 2:23Pablo Torre?

  I don't know whatever it is that you're planning to do. I mean.

• 2:30Speaker 05

  I'm just here to contribute and to answer everything that's allowed within the limits of the law, of course.

• 2:36Pablo Torre?

  You're wearing a suit and tie and what should I address you as?

• 2:40Speaker 05

  Mr. Alhassen.

• 2:41Pablo Torre?

  Mr. Alhassen.

• 2:42Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:42Pablo Torre?

  Uh, Mr. Alhassen, thank you for being in a podcast court today.

• 2:46Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 2:47Pablo Torre?

  I do want to start by acknowledging that your, um, client, uh, David Sampson.

• 2:52Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 2:53Pablo Torre?

  Your running mate typically in these endeavors is not here. He's attending unfortunately to a family emergency. We send him our thoughts.

• 2:59Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:00Pablo Torre?

  The upside, though, is that he can't fiddle with the [BLEEP] I put in front of you. Please, please don't fiddle.

• 3:05Speaker 05

  A little drumming, a light drumming to let, let it know I'm here.

• 3:09Pablo Torre?

  So where we are today is a special day.

• 3:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:14Pablo Torre?

  Mr. Alhassen, it is NBA Media Day.

• 3:17Speaker 05

  It sure is.

• 3:19Pablo Torre?

  We are, uh, dropping this episode, uh, as a surprise for everybody who might be engaging in the festivities. For those who have no idea what the festivities are, could you please explain, Mr. Alhassen? Uh, in case they did not work in a basketball front office in an executive capacity as you have. Uh, what is NBA Media Day?

• 3:37Speaker 05

  NBA Media Day, Mr. Tori, is essentially a kind of show and tell for the world. Look at our new team. Look how excited we are. This guy lost all this weight. That guy was playing there, now he's playing here. Everyone's happy. We're gonna win a title. We've started a brand new era in our organization. It is basically the day where you put your team on showcase and all the media entities, both local and national, come in, take pictures, ask questions, and essentially feel very positive about the year ahead of us.

• 4:10Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 4:10Speaker 05

  Well. For most teams.

• 4:13Pablo Torre?

  The team that we are focusing in on today, of course, is a team whose owner, I am told, Steve Ballmer, the richest owner in all of sports, one of the 10 richest people in the world, will not be participating in Media Day at all. But it is, despite that, the one day when Kawhi Leonard, and in fact, the Clippers' president of basketball operations, Lawrence Frank, a gentleman you must have encountered at one point in your journey through that day.

• 4:37Speaker 05

  I have.

• 4:38Pablo Torre?

  They are gonna have to field questions about this now five-part investigative series that I have been pursuing in a way that they may never have to again.

• 4:49Speaker 05

  I'd like to pause right here and make clear to everybody that Mr. Ballmer's lack of availability is not out of the ordinary. Typically, you don't hear from owners on Media Day. However, as you've mentioned, Lawrence Frank, Tyronn Lue, and Kawhi Leonard will all have to speak to the media. And I have to assume that the gathered media, of which will be local, and as I said, national and perhaps even international,

• 5:11Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  will be somewhat curious about the findings that you've been publishing over the last few weeks.

• 5:21Pablo Torre?

  And so I just gotta jump in here to interrupt Mr. Alhassan for a second to acknowledge that, yes, there have been a lot of findings over these last few weeks. And in this episode, Part 5 of our investigation, we're gonna get into new details about the $48 million that Kawhi Leonard was supposed to get from Aspiration, and the role of his personal camp in that deal, as well as new details about the deepening connection between Steve Ballmer and the co-founder of Aspiration, all of which will be germane to the NBA's investigation.

• 5:56Pablo Torre?

  But the other big reason we're doing this here is because we actually wanna acknowledge our detractors. And in doing so, we wanna simplify the story. The story of what our reporting suggests is the largest salary caps or convention scheme in sports history, a deeply elaborate and complicated effort to bend a cardinal rule that was designed to regulate the unfair extra spending of billionaires. And that's a rule, by the way, that too rarely exists otherwise in American life.

• 6:29Pablo Torre?

  And yet, I want to make the case here that this was also a very stupidly straightforward operation in some key elemental ways, as a current NBA head coach reached out to tell me this week. Quote, "This should be embarrassing for the league. I know teams do little side deals, but what happened here is so obvious." End quote. What does that summary sound like to you, Mr. Elhasan, that perspective from that head coach?

• 7:01Speaker 05

  It sounds like the head coach had like a pound of flesh, because how Adam Silver adjudicates this matter has reverberations that go far beyond what happens to the Clippers. It is essentially the head on the spike you put outside the city gates of King's Landing to let everybody know, "Don't try that [BLEEP] around here."

• 7:22Pablo Torre?

  Well, it is almost as if cap surconvention as a concept itself is on trial. That is the test in front of the commissioner.

• 7:29Speaker 05

  Of course. If, you know, I've done a lot of reading.

• 7:33Pablo Torre?

  Are you southern? I'm detecting a southern accent as you.

• 7:36Speaker 05

  It will emerge, Mr. Torre, from time to time, as I turn into my lawyerly self.

• 7:41Pablo Torre?

  You're opening a laptop now.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  I am opening a laptop so I can reference Article 13 of the collective bargaining agreement aptly named circumvention. Two key phrases: "Compensation from a sponsor, business partner, or third party substantially in excess of the fair market value of any services to be rendered by the player for such sponsor, business partner, or third party." And then the other part: "Violation of the sections named above may be proven by direct or circumstantial evidence, including but not limited to evidence that a player contract or any term or provision thereof cannot rationally be explained." As Adam Silver gets up and speaks to the media and makes it seem like, "Well, it's

• 8:24Speaker 05

  shades of gray, and we don't want to infringe upon corporate sponsors, and, you know, I've heard a lot of things have come to me, and then when we investigate, it turns out it was nothing at all."

• 8:33Speaker 03

  I think as a matter of fundamental fairness, I would be reluctant to act if there was sort of a mere appearance of impropriety. I think that the goal of a full investigation is to find out if there really was impropriety.

• 8:46Speaker 05

  He's making excuses where there are two pieces of literature in there.

• 8:54Speaker 05

  That are very clear.

• 8:56Pablo Torre?

  I dare say that this is what that head coach was talking about. That this is what lots of GMs that I've talked to and owners, by the way, have been referencing is just this very basic premise of the rule of NBA law, which is again, not real law, but it is in fact a rule. And all of this alleged rule breaking, Mr. Elhassan, begins with Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg and his fellow co-founder and CEO Andre Chirney, and how they, according to the documentation, signed Kawhi Leonard to a secret $48 million deal that nobody ever announced or mentioned in public, in which Kawhi contractually did not legally have to do a single thing. And as far as I can tell, and there's exactly zero people have publicly disputed,

• 9:39Pablo Torre?

  did not actually go on to do a single thing. Except, Mr. Elhassan, there was the one thing that Kawhi Leonard was obligated to do, according to the covenant of his contract, to secure those 48 million bucks. What was it?

• 9:56Speaker 05

  Mr. Leonard had to keep playing as a Los Angeles Clipper.

• 10:00Pablo Torre?

  If you will now open up your folder and just reread for us another bit of the legal literature here. Section 2.10b, clause 2 of Kawhi's endorsement agreement, signed in the middle of the 2021-22 NBA season, with this now clearly fraudulent tree planting brokerage company thing.

• 10:17Speaker 05

  Company shall have the right to terminate if Leonard is no longer an employee of the team for any reason.

• 10:25Pablo Torre?

  Which is to say that this no-show deal in which Kawhi would do nothing and in fact, still get paid more than New Balance, his sneaker sponsor, paid him. And also, by the way, more than four times what Aspiration paid Drake and Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. and the rest of its celebrity A-list roster combined, this deal is a deal that I believe cannot, quote, "rationally be explained", does not represent fair market value, according to the language of the CBA which you read for us. It feels like it's enough to punish the Clippers frankly, right now. But the rationale from the Clippers is what I want to turn my focus to today. Because it continues to be that Kawhi's deal with Aspiration was made completely and totally independently

• 11:08Pablo Torre?

  of Steve Ballmer's $50 million personal investment in Aspiration, as well as Aspiration's 300-plus million dollar, quote, "founding sponsorship with the Clippers," which, of course, Mr. Ballmer, himself recently explained away as, quote, "a whole bunch of complicated stuff."

• 11:26Speaker 06

  Through that, we had many relationships with the company, sponsor, activation was through carbon credits, all a bunch of complicated stuff.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  I love how he says "carbon credits" with great exaggerated air quotes. "Carbon credits," whatever that crazy [bleep] is.

• 11:45Pablo Torre?

  Just that [bleep] that he spent, in the end, according to our reporting, tens of millions of dollars on, prepaid in ways that we have established in previous episodes. But the point here, Mr. Alhassan, is that much of what I've been doing for the last month now has been an attempt to just anticipate and even reconcile the possible responses from both my critics, the people who poke holes in my reporting, as well as the richest owner in sports himself. I do want people to "steal man," as they say, "steal man," opposite of "straw man." "Steal man the critiques here." And so I've heard from Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban, I've heard from former Aspiration CEO Andre Chirney, and I've heard from a growing rolodex of NBA sources who do request anonymity

• 12:29Pablo Torre?

  because, in many cases, they personally worked with Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard and Lawrence Frank. So, just in your view, Mr. Alhassan,

• 12:37Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 12:38Pablo Torre?

  What is the best argument that you've heard, you can imagine, for why Aspiration would want to do this deal in the way that Steve Ballmer has described it, which is to say, without Steve Ballmer or anyone from the Clippers knowing or influencing the deal in question?

• 12:57Speaker 05

  The best explanation I've received, Mr. Torrey, was that this was a form of inception, of planting the seed in the brain of Steve Ballmer, that these are good guys to keep around because they take care of me and my people, even if I'm not aware directly of how they are being taken care of. So if we're paying Kawhi Leonard, and Kawhi Leonard remains a Clipper, and we're excited about our partnership with the Clippers, Steve Ballmer will continue to funnel money into our endeavor. That is the explanation that I've heard that I believe comes closest to sanity, comes closest, does not quite arrive, though.

• 13:34Pablo Torre?

  So Andre Chirney, the Aspiration CEO who signed the deal, had also issued, in fairness to this argument, a statement on Twitter in which he claimed, quote, "In the months of discussion among our executives before signing the sponsorship, I don't remember conversations about the NBA salary cap," end quote.

• 13:53Speaker 05

  And if we're going to be as, what's the word, it's another word for naive, it's like a girl's name, man.

• 14:02Pablo Torre?

  What?

• 14:03Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 14:04Pablo Torre?

  Leave this in.

• 14:05Speaker 05

  Pollyannish?

• 14:05Pablo Torre?

  Pollyanna-ish.

• 14:06Speaker 05

  Okay. If we're to be as Pollyannish as the Clippers want us to be.

• 14:13Pablo Torre?

  Nailed it.

• 14:14Speaker 05

  That Dennis Wong, Steve Ballmer's partner, as well invest money. So we just keep the money invested in our company because they like us, because we keep their star player happy.

• 14:23Pablo Torre?

  Right, except you don't know that they're keeping your star player happy.

• 14:26Speaker 05

  Well, they know he's happy.

• 14:28Pablo Torre?

  But they don't know who to give credit to for that.

• 14:30Speaker 05

  Okay, it's falling apart. You see, you see, you see why it's hard to be Pollyannish in this case?

• 14:37Pablo Torre?

  But this is the thing that I'm like really just like circling as we, again, open this folder, which is just that Aspiration never announced or even referenced the existence of this deal to anyone, certainly not in public, and certainly not directly to Mr. Ballmer, because that, of course, would be violative of the rules.

• 14:57Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 14:58Pablo Torre?

  We should also keep in mind that Steve Ballmer admitted to ESPN that he and the Clippers did formally introduce Kawhi to Aspiration.

• 15:06Pablo Torre?

  He said, quote,

• 15:07Speaker 06

  "The introduction got made and then they were off to the races on their own."

• 15:12Pablo Torre?

  And so I guess Mr. Alhassan, the logical question would then be, did the Clippers ever inquire about the results of this very important meeting between their founding sponsor and their most important employee?

• 15:23Speaker 05

  Hey, how'd it go?

• 15:24Pablo Torre?

  And also, was that curiosity maybe coming from a place of concern, given how, of course, Mr. Leonard's designated representative, Uncle Dennis Robertson, had been presenting himself across the NBA in years previous, such that they sparked an investigation in 2019?

• 15:43Speaker 05

  Well, first of all, I'd love it if you referred him as Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson.

• 15:50Pablo Torre?

  And so this is the point in the episode where I actually do want to very quickly read from an athletic feature last week about Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson and how he handled his nephew's 2019 free agency. Quote, "Had Leonard chosen to re-sign with Toronto, the Raptors could only offer $190 million over five years. His other suitors were restricted to $141 million over four years." End quote. And I'm just gonna do the math here real quick for a second because 190 minus 141, that gets us to $49 million.

• 16:35Pablo Torre?

  A $49 million deficit that the Clippers could not make up on the books, according to the CBA, which then brings back to mind, I dare say, the $48 million deal, negotiations for which Aspiration CEO totally does not remember having to do anything with the NBA salary cap and its collective bargaining agreement and the regulations mandated therein.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  I had the great privilege on my own show called Basketball Illuminati to interview the one and only Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star.

• 17:09Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 17:10Speaker 05

  And he told us in great detail, the Toronto version of the Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson pitch, which started with things that were doable and quickly escalated to a place of great cap circumvention peril.

• 17:28Pablo Torre?

  Well, I want to get to the two prongs of what Bruce Arthur for the Toronto Star has reported that Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson was requesting. Because the question that I have for basketball reporters to just fundamentally ask on Media Day and for also the high-powered lawyers to investigate on behalf of the NBA League Office, would be simple. It is, did Steve Ballmer and Lawrence Frank really have zero idea about this $48 million deal that the founding sponsor struck with the most important employee in their organization?

• 17:56Speaker 05

  I've been kicking around that very question.

• 17:58Pablo Torre?

  Well, Mr. Alhassen, that's why we're doing a part five.

• 18:03Speaker 05

  Oh my God. And drop the intro music there. That's the cold open.

• 18:23Pablo Torre?

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• 18:56Speaker 07

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• 19:11Speaker 08

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• 19:53Speaker 04

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• 20:24Pablo Torre?

  I want to keep drilling down here into the financial logic, the presumed self-interest of aspiration as we try to understand who else was in the room, what else is happening. Because the company Aspiration, right? They at some point surpassed a $2 billion valuation. And part of the whole logic here is that Aspiration wants to do this because it's good for the business of Aspiration. Kawhi Leonard is happy. Kawhi Leonard stays a Clipper, according to the best steel man theory that you've offered. Therefore, Aspiration's business benefits. And so the thing that I want to interrogate here in this allegedly independently conceived relationship is what did the other executives at Aspiration think

• 21:09Pablo Torre?

  about what this would do to the business of Aspiration? And so, Mr. Alhassan, please flip over the next piece of paper in your folder. Because this is a screenshot of a text exchange between two senior aspiration executives from December 21, 2021, that I have now confirmed to be authentic. And so I want you to be the sender on the right side of the screenshot. I will be the respondent. And the one note here, before we do the table read, is that the chief financial officer of aspiration, who chose to leave the company by September 2022, by the way, is a man named Roji Avanesian. And also, ACIS, which will come up in this exchange, stands for aspiration sustainable impact services.

• 21:51Pablo Torre?

  In other words, the complicated bunch of stuff having to do with carbon credits that Mr. Ballmer was alluding to earlier. That was the focus of our last episode in the series. So.

• 22:01Speaker 05

  Roji and I are trying to talk Joe and Andre out of a $48 million deal with Clippers player Kawhi Leonard. It's regional, male, niche, redundant to the Clippers, had no ACIS impact, and is a huge expense with no clear ROI.

• 22:17Pablo Torre?

  [bleep]. That's a horrible idea.

• 22:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, [bleep].

• 22:25Pablo Torre?

  They are love drunk with these celebs.

• 22:27Speaker 05

  Plus, Kawhi's dull.

• 22:30Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, we will go under spending money like that. Fast.

• 22:36Speaker 05

  And Steph Curry is at least charismatic if you want an NBA star. It's insane.

• 22:43Pablo Torre?

  Which is a good point, by the way, as raised by that veryingly golden age of radio voice that was reading those texts.

• 22:52Speaker 05

  Thank you, Mr. Tore.

• 22:53Pablo Torre?

  Very good. I am told again, by the way, that aspiration's chief marketing officer literally did not know who Kawhi Leonard was. $48 million in a marketing deal, and everyone's like, can we get Steph? Why are we getting the dull guy?

• 23:09Speaker 05

  The sentence that I really think hits home as we explore how could this be positive for aspiration is, it's referring to a $48 million deal with Kawhi Leonard, regional, male, niche, redundant to the Clippers, had no ACIS impact. Meaning, we are investing in someone who does not reverberate much outside of Southern California? Does not cross over to different demographics, other than I'm presuming males age 18 to 55, even within Southern California, does not resonate beyond Clippers fandom.

• 23:49Pablo Torre?

  Well, I'll just remind you, this text is sent December 2021. What was the status of Kawhi Leonard at that time in the 21-22 NBA season?

• 24:01Speaker 05

  Under contract and injured.

• 24:03Pablo Torre?

  He wasn't playing.

• 24:04Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 24:05Pablo Torre?

  So the whole question of we need to boost the value of this company by getting this guy on the team. The dude wasn't playing.

• 24:12Speaker 05

  Ruptured ACL, missed the entirety of the season. Mind you, this was months after signing a lucrative extension.

• 24:19Pablo Torre?

  So the two prongs bring us now to a text message I introduced to the public record in our last episode. It's a text message that was sent by a number associated with Kawhi's uncle, Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson, his designated representative on the $28 million endorsement deal. And it was sent to Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg in February 2022. Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson and lawyers for Joe Sandberg, for the record, have not replied to our detailed questions, including about this text. But Mr. Alhassan, could you please just read what that text message said?

• 24:54Speaker 05

  Good morning, Joe. Hope you had a wonderful weekend. Just a heads up, things are still dragging. Mike has the contact for about 14 days now. Haven't heard back. Thanks. Just keeping you informed.

• 25:11Pablo Torre?

  And so you did say contact. It is contact. I believe it is meant to be contract, as I have also validated in my reporting. This was about, in fact, the $20 million equity offer, the second prong of the deal that Kawhi Leonard wanted from the Raptors, that we are now reporting, he was seeking from the Clippers as well. And the Mike, by the way, that Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson was referring to is a guy named Mike Shuckero, who was Aspiration's chief legal officer. But the other thing I just need everybody to understand about the deal that Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson was apparently texting about, the second prong. This is new, okay? According to sources directly familiar with the $20 million equity deal Kawhi was granted,

• 25:56Pablo Torre?

  this deal, in which he would be paid $5 million a year over four years, Had something called a put option on it.

• 26:05Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 26:06Pablo Torre?

  Mr. Alhassan, do you know what a put option is?

• 26:09Speaker 05

  I know it very well, but in case I hadn't done my research, please explain to the people what a put option is.

• 26:16Pablo Torre?

  I think I have uh someone who could help us out on that. So source number one, if you could help me out as a former member of Aspiration's finance department, what is a put option?

• 26:29Speaker 01

  To oversimplify, a put option is a fixed price at which a buyer is able to sell their stock in a company. So say they bought a put option at $5 and that stock essentially drops to a dollar. They have the right, but they're not obligated to sell that stock at the higher price, which is $5. And they have that put for a certain length of time.

• 27:00Pablo Torre?

  So let's put it in more concrete hypothetical terms. Let's say Kawhi Leonard acquires $20 million in equity from Joe Sandberg. And Joe Sandberg puts a put option at $20 million on that $20 million in equity Kawhi Leonard has just acquired from him. In other words, if Kawhi Leonard exercises that put option, he is guaranteed to get $20 million.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Yes, that's how that would work.

• 27:38Pablo Torre?

  It is a Sharon Kawhi Leonard that no matter what, even if aspiration goes into the [BLEEP], you're getting $20 million guaranteed by Joe Sandberg.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 27:50Pablo Torre?

  That's a pretty good deal now that you spell it out like that.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  It's the dream, like I said.

• 27:57Speaker 05

  It's getting a little hot in here, isn't it?

• 27:59Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, you might want to undo that top button. Because just to translate this as if I am five years old.

• 28:04Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 28:05Pablo Torre?

  If aspiration stock declined.

• 28:07Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 28:07Pablo Torre?

  Dropping this deal's value below $20 million.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 28:10Pablo Torre?

  Kawhi Leonard was assured the legal right to sell his equity back for $20 million.

• 28:15Speaker 05

  It's like investing in something with no downside. Because if it doesn't work, you get your money back. But if it does work, you get to reap the benefits.

• 28:24Pablo Torre?

  Mr. Alhassan, you have just discovered what a put option fundamentally is. It is a way to mitigate downside risk. It is a way to ensure that no matter what, the worst case scenario is not going to be less than the price that you were told you would get.

• 28:38Speaker 05

  Hardly the vote of confidence, though.

• 28:40Pablo Torre?

  Look, I'm just saying hypothetically, in this scenario, Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson and Kawhi Leonard, they're not rookies.

• 28:52Speaker 05

  Right.

• 28:52Pablo Torre?

  When it comes to getting paid. They have questions. Is this a theoretical $20 million? Or is this a real $20 million? And according to the reporting that I've done, they wanted the real kind. And so, the next document in your folder, Mr. Alhassan, explains how it is that Joe Sandberg was able to make this part of Kawhi's deal happen. Over the protests, by the way, of those fellow executives who saw what this was, and they were like, "We can't [bleep] do this." These are the people who are dragging their feet in the process of talks with Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson. And so Joe Sandberg said, "You know what? I'm gonna personally grant that guaranteed $20 million myself."

• 29:34Pablo Torre?

  And he did it through one of his 12, he has 12, personal LLCs. And it was not AGO Partners, as previously reported. It was another one of them, in fact. An LLC which Joe Sandberg called what, Mr. Alhassan?

• 29:50Speaker 05

  RJB Partners LLC.

• 29:53Pablo Torre?

  You are holding in your hands the statement of information as registered with California's Secretary of State from RJB Partners. And I knew to find this because Sandberg refers to RJB Partners in an email which he sent to his personal attorneys with other aspiration executives, CC'd. And that is the next piece of paper in your folder. If you can please read what this document says.

• 30:19Speaker 05

  For avoidance of doubt, any and all benefit to aspiration from the Kawhi deal is being subsidized by my contributing, my equity to make this happen. In conjunction with my offering to do that, I also explained verbally to Andre that Kawhi's team wanted his legal fees paid. I'll state it here for you. I, via RJB, am transferring $20 million, in all caps, of stock to Kawhi over four years to enable this partnership for aspiration. The benefits that you, Mike, that Andre, that Rogé, will get from this partnership are subsidized by my, in caps, $20 million of stock. Regards, Joe.

• 31:04Pablo Torre?

  And this reminds me, Mr. Alhassen, of another conversation I had with source number one back in part one of this series. It does seem very clear that the people inside of aspiration loved to email each other.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a stupid [bleep] idiots.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's put it in writing. Great idea.

• 31:28Speaker 05

  To be fair, Mr. Torre, as it continues to get a little hotter in here, Steve Ballmer, Dennis Wong, Lawrence Frank can all say, well, that has nothing to do with us.

• 31:40Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, that this could all be done independently, according to the foregoing theory that has been presented. And so this is where I just want to begin to pull on a thread here. A thread of something that Joe Sandberg, in that email that you just read, had mentioned, because he mentioned, quote, "a benefit to aspiration," and the, quote, "benefits that Mike, that Andre, that Rogé, the rest of the C-suite, in other words, will get from this partnership," which, again, he is personally subsidizing with his $20 million for Kawhi Leonard. And what nine aspiration sources now tell me is that to aspiration, the benefit was not simply keeping Kawhi Leonard a Los Angeles Clipper because

• 32:25Pablo Torre?

  aspiration wanted this team that they were already sponsoring to do well. That, actually, was the benefit to Steve Ballmer and the Clippers, that their player would be very happy. The benefit to Aspiration was actually rational in its logic, in its financial thinking. Because the benefit to Aspiration, according to my reporting and these nine sources, is what the company got from Steve Ballmer in exchange.

• 32:54Pablo Torre?

  The giant founding sponsorship deal, the signage all around the Clippers arena, the jersey patch on the bodies of the Clippers themselves, the sign on the back of the courtside seats. It was Steve Ballmer vouching for Joe and Andre, the co-founders, with other investors, helping to arrange meetings over email and in person as an internal email sent by Mr. Sandberg in October 2021 to Cherney and another Aspiration executive confirms, as, by the way, our old friend David Sampson read for us in part one of this [bleep] investigation.

• 33:29Speaker 10

  Ballmer himself is enthusiastic to help and will personally be a reference and advocate where we ask him. So please keep that front of mind.

• 33:39Pablo Torre?

  And then, I mean, if you will, there is an email on November 1st, 2021, from Steve Ballmer, personally connecting the CEO of Intuit with Andre and Joe.

• 33:50Speaker 05

  Since Intuit and Aspiration already have a business relationship and all of us share a passion for the Clips and our Intuit Dome project, I thought it might be fun for the four of us to take in a game together sometime soon. Pablo, it strikes me that if the names Sandberg and Cherney were different, if Aspiration had a different name, we would call this sports washing.

• 34:15Pablo Torre?

  We might, Mr. Alhassen. We might detect that they would want to use the imprimatur, the cosign, the representation of a very respected, rich mother [bleep].

• 34:29Pablo Torre?

  And that would help them make their business real. The part I want to get to next is the part where he said something that you kind of, I think, raised an eyebrow at as you were reading it. Because this part was, quote, "I also explained verbally to Andre that Kawhi's team wanted his legal fees paid." End quote. We've been focusing a lot on Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson in our investigation so far. Of course, he was the designated representative on the $28 million no-show endorsement deal that I obtained a copy of. He's also the guy whom my original source in the finance department, source number one, had told me had been calling Haspiration when they were late on those quarterly

• 35:12Pablo Torre?

  $1.75 million payments to Mr. Leonard. But Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson, for those who are not familiar with the saga, he was also the protagonist, right? Of the 2019 investigation by the NBA into the prior cap circumvention claims levied against Steve Ballmer's Clippers. Because even though the NBA did not find evidence of cap circumvention back then, what did the NBA do, Mr. Alhassan?

• 35:36Speaker 05

  They instituted what might affectionately be called the Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson Rule, which is only certified personnel may negotiate on behalf of a player for compensation, AKA, an actual agent, not a family member, not an uncle.

• 35:53Pablo Torre?

  Yes, and there were, in fact, increased fines and penalties for teams that dared to not do that. And the question then is, who is the certified agent representing Kawhi Leonard this whole time?

• 36:09Speaker 05

  It's a gentleman by the name of Mitch Frankel.

• 36:11Pablo Torre?

  Mr. Mitch Frankel, not Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson. Used to be an NFL agent, actually, before trying to build this whole agency around Kawhi Leonard, his biggest client by far. Mitch Frankel came to represent Kawhi during that time when Kawhi was with the San Antonio Spurs, of course. And in fact, we found a photo of Mitch Frankel standing right next to Kawhi Leonard. Kawhi has his arm, his left arm, around him. This is after they won the 2014 title. And what is Mr. Mitch Frankel holding in this photograph, Mr. Alhassan?

• 36:42Speaker 05

  I believe that is what is now known as the Bill Russell Finals MVP Trophy.

• 36:47Pablo Torre?

  That's correct. Mr. Leonard is holding the Larry O'Brien. Mr. Frankel is holding the Finals MVP Trophy. And so, in this way, I would like to lead you to the next piece of paper in your folder. Because the second name listed under the legal notices section of that $28 million no-show endorsement deal after Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson in Section 4.1A, as you take off your jacket.

• 37:14Speaker 05

  It's hot.

• 37:15Pablo Torre?

  I know, it's getting real sweaty in here. What is that name there?

• 37:18Speaker 05

  These legal notices were sent with a mandatory copy to Mitchell Frankel of Boca Raton, Florida.

• 37:27Pablo Torre?

  Which means that any legal notice that Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson received at his South Florida address, Mr. Mitchell Frankel, Kawhi's actual agent, would also receive at his South Florida address. Which takes us now to the next sheet of paper in your folder. Because this happens to be a series of text messages sent from Mr. Mitch Frankel to Mike Shuckaro, the aforementioned General Counsel of Aspiration, who provided these to me on the record after I requested any and all documentation of any communications that Mr. Shuckaro had had with Kawhi's agent that were not protected by attorney-client privilege. And so, just to set the scene, this is all about Kawhi Leonard's second-ever payment

• 38:09Pablo Torre?

  of $1.75 million that was due from Aspiration at the end of September 2022. But of course, September 22 came and went, October 22 came and went, and that takes us to when this text message was sent. Please play the role of Mr. Frankel. I will be the General Counsel of Aspiration, and you can timestamp us as we go.

• 38:31Speaker 05

  November 2nd, 2022, 8:44 a.m. Mike, good morning. Can you tell me the status of the payment from Aspiration to KL2? Thank you. Mitch Frankel.

• 38:41Pablo Torre?

  10:22 a.m. I have a call into our finance team. They are West Coast, so still early. I'll be back.

• 38:50Speaker 05

  Thank you. November 3rd, 2022, at 1:09 p.m. Any update? Thank you.

• 38:58Pablo Torre?

  Yes, I'll send via email. Sorry, morning got away from me.

• 39:03Speaker 05

  November 3rd, 2022, at 5:30 p.m. I never received an email. My address is [email protected]. Thanks.

• 39:13Pablo Torre?

  All lowercase. Sending now, period.

• 39:17Speaker 05

  November 3rd, 2022, at 6:43 p.m. Thank you.

• 39:24Pablo Torre?

  All of which is to say, Mr. Alhassen, that this scheme, as it has been reported and alleged, was not merely Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson going rogue. This was something that Kawhi's camp, his actual licensed, registered, and certified agent, alongside Aspiration, clearly considered pretty important. And I should just say here that we did reach out to Mitch Frankel and his office, again, with a detailed list of questions and interview requests, to which he did not respond. But for the record, Mike Chakarow, the general counsel for Aspiration, has told me that he would make those texts available to the NBA, to the Clippers, to Wachtel Lipton, the law firm that the NBA hired this month

• 40:05Pablo Torre?

  to investigate this alleged salary capturing convention scheme. All of that is available to them, I am told. But yeah, man.

• 40:16Speaker 05

  It's not a bug, it's a feature.

• 40:18Pablo Torre?

  It seems like this was a thing that everybody knew needed to be paid, and as of November 22, wasn't. This wasn't an alley in which Mr. Uncle Dennis Robertson was standing with a trench coat. This was a whole plan.

• 40:33Speaker 05

  This was the lobby of Kawhi Leonard, Inc., in essence.

• 40:38Pablo Torre?

  And the question, then, is inside the Clippers' building, what did they think about this arrangement? And this past week, I will say, I checked in with a former Clippers official.

• 40:53Pablo Torre?

  And they said they really do like Steve Palmer personally, still, by the way. But this is the quote they gave me. "The world in Clipperland revolves around Kawhi Leonard, and the moon is Dennis Robertson. There is no way the Clippers did not know about this deal." End quote.

• 41:14Pablo Torre?

  And they pointed.

• 41:16Pablo Torre?

  Straight to Steve Ballmer and the president of basketball operations, Lawrence Frank, the innermost circle who handled the most sensitive issues around one of the most delicate superstars that anyone has managed in professional sports.

• 41:33Speaker 05

  I'll tell you a story, and I believe the statute of limitations has run out. So none of the people here can be punished for this. But when I was working for the Phoenix Suns in the lead up to the 2007 offseason, we had a whiteboard where we would write our projected starting lineups and all these different permutations. If you remember the time we were in talks to acquire Kevin Garnett, we're trying to acquire Kevin Garnett. So there was a version where Kevin Garnett was our starting center. It's a version where Mark Stoudamire is our starting center. All these different lineups, different permutations. What if we get this guy? What if we swing the trade for that guy? Maybe our first round pick here will be that slot.

• 42:14Speaker 05

  But in every permutation, the starting small forward was Grant Hill.

• 42:21Speaker 05

  And I remember asking, how can we be sure that he's going to sign with us? He was going to be a free agent that summer, but how do we know he's going to sign with us? And everybody laughed.

• 42:33Speaker 05

  And July 2007 came around and we signed Grant Hill. I don't know. At that time, I was very, very, very low on the totem pole. I believe I was, I might have been a basketball operations assistant. But I say it to say that there are what sometimes can be classified as open secrets, meaning we all know, you may not know all the details, but you know what's going to happen. Now, obviously, that's a much smaller scale than what we're talking about here. But it would not surprise me that, A, of course, the president of basketball operations is involved. He's the architect building the team. If we're committing to something of that nature, of that large of a commitment, then obviously he's included.

• 43:18Speaker 05

  But the other person I would assume would be included in that conversation very, very intimately would be the head coach of the team.

• 43:27Pablo Torre?

  And this is where I should probably point out that Ty Lou, the head coach of the Clippers at the time and today, will be speaking at Media Day. And I'll be curious if anybody wants to ask him the question you have suggested logically might deserve asking.

• 43:43Pablo Torre?

  But now, I want to just swing the camera back because the finance team came up in that conversation between the General Counsel of Aspiration and Mitch Frankel, the agent of Kawhi Leonard. And so, this is where I think it's really worth pointing out that there's another benefit that Joe Sandberg didn't necessarily spell out directly to his C-suite at the inception of the Kawhi Leonard arrangement. Because this benefit, again, I would argue, is simple. If Steve Ballmer wanted Kawhi Leonard to get paid on the side, and if Steve Ballmer wanted that payment to be completely secret at risk of NBA punishment, he needed Aspiration

• 44:24Pablo Torre?

  to have enough money to pay Kawhi Leonard. Which would then logically explain why Steve Ballmer kept putting in money into this collapsing company. But the windfall, undeniably, seems to me an enormous benefit to Aspiration. In fact, the biggest benefit that Joe Sandberg might have been alluding to is that you have a source of not merely credibility, but a whole lot of money that you could tap into when needed.

• 44:55Speaker 05

  Straight cash, homie. That's what we call that. But Pablo, when did the Clippers stop giving them money?

• 45:02Pablo Torre?

  So, the timeline here, right? Kawhi wasn't getting paid in September, October, November of 2022. That's where we are now in the timeline.

• 45:09Speaker 05

  Right.

• 45:10Pablo Torre?

  And the reason I think it's possible that Steve Ballmer and the Clippers stopped putting money in at that period was because perhaps they were learning what was happening? They might have detected the fact pattern, "We are reverse engineering now." I mean, as the Clippers themselves admitted to us, quote, "We made payments to Aspiration until the company was unable to fulfill their responsibilities," end quote. Which would then explain why both Uncle Dennis and Mitch Frankel would be calling and texting about Kawhi's money.

• 45:42Pablo Torre?

  But on December 6th, 2022, to remind everybody, what happens? Who finally comes through to save aspiration? Because it wasn't Uncle Dennis.

• 45:55Speaker 05

  It was Mr. Grandpa Dennis Wong.

• 45:58Pablo Torre?

  The person who saved the day was Dennis Wong, according to multiple sources and bank statements and cash forecasts that we reviewed. Steve Ballmer's college roommate, the only minority owner of the Clippers he trusted to own a piece of the team, who on December 6th, 2022, invested $1.99 million, having never invested in aspiration before. Dude signs off on a purchase agreement that tells him that the company is in default, that its independent auditor had resigned, that the SEC and FINRA are probing the company, that they're facing seven-figure litigation, and Mr. Dennis Wong, a different Dennis, who did not respond to our request for comment, invests anyway. And nine days later, on December 15th, while the company cannot make payroll,

• 46:40Pablo Torre?

  on the same day aspiration lays off 20% of their staff, Kawhi Leonard gets paid $1.75 million.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  Grandpa Dennis said, "Never tell me the odds." You turned into Han Solo right there.

• 46:56Pablo Torre?

  He put in just enough money at a time and in a quantity that was inexplicable to anyone who's ever reviewed the fact pattern we have established. I await also the appropriate spin on that.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  Let me go off-script here a little bit. Mr. Tori, let's assume right now you and I have an interdimensional portal that takes us straight to Clippers Media Day. We're credentialed, the mic has been passed around. Kawhi Leonard is on the podium. Yes, in the front.

• 47:30Pablo Torre?

  Kawhi, why didn't you do anything to promote aspiration despite signing a $28 million endorsement contract with aspiration?

• 47:38Speaker 05

  Um, they didn't ask me to do anything.

• 47:42Pablo Torre?

  Uh, did you ever exercise a put option that would have guaranteed the $20 million in equity that you were granted by Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg?

• 47:51Speaker 05

  I don't know what that is.

• 47:53Pablo Torre?

  Did you know that your agent and uncle were pressuring Aspiration to make its overdue sponsorship payments to you?

• 48:00Speaker 05

  Uh, I'm not familiar. I just go out and play basketball for the Clippers.

• 48:03Pablo Torre?

  Were you aware that the owners of the Clippers were investing in that same company while you were awaiting payment from that same company?

• 48:11Speaker 05

  Uh, again, I, I have no idea what happens. I just go out there and I play basketball.

• 48:17Pablo Torre?

  Have you seen the video of the last time that your boss, Steve Ballmer, spoke at Media Day? Cause it was 2021 and he sat on stage right next to the guy who co-founded the company that was paying you 1.75 million dollars late.

• 48:39Speaker 05

  Well, I'm usually pretty busy on Media Day. I don't get to see what everyone else is doing.

• 48:43Pablo Torre?

  Well, check this out.

• 48:44Speaker 06

  The piece de resistance as we went through this is when we had a chance to really sit down and meet the folks from Aspiration. I'm pretty keen on, on all the projects and we're keen to have, uh, these guys as a marketing partner. I don't think there's much conflict between what we're doing on the basketball side in the short term and what we're trying to do with, uh, Intuit Dome in parallel. And there's no financial tie. We're going to invest in our team, whatever we need to, to put ourselves in a position to win. And we try to get guys signed up to a long-term, you know, longer-term deals, which I think we did well this offseason, Lawrence Frank and his team. But at the same time, so we're

• 49:26Speaker 06

  going to invest to win and we're going to invest in the building. Okay. What does that really mean?

• 49:31Speaker 05

  I don't know. Oh, that aspiration.

• 49:37Pablo Torre?

  I, I think at this point in the story, the thing we gotta do is really get into Steve Ballmer's relationship with the guy sitting next to him on that stage, Joe Sandberg.

• 49:49Speaker 06

  So with that, let me turn things over to Joe Sandberg.

• 49:52Pablo Torre?

  And I'll give you one guess as to when we're gonna do it.

• 49:56Speaker 05

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• 49:58Pablo Torre?

  If only.

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• 52:09Pablo Torre?

  So if you have listened, Amin, and you're increasingly sweaty.

• 52:13Speaker 06

  It's got hot.

• 52:14Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, get comfortable. We're almost there. If you've listened to the two public interviews that Steve Ballmer has given since we broke this story, this was with ESPN and then with Sports Business Journal, he, in fact, is a victim.

• 52:30Speaker 06

  This is not a fun thing to be through.

• 52:35Speaker 06

  I was personally defrauded. Remember, they defrauded me. They defrauded many other investors. These were guys who committed fraud. How would I be able to... Look, they conned me. You're one of the richest men in America. They conned me. I made an investment in these guys, thinking it was on the up and up, and they conned me.

• 52:56Pablo Torre?

  Steve Ballmer has been trying to say very clearly that he is a victim of Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg, who has now pled guilty to wire fraud, that he is a victim as well of Sandberg's alleged co-conspirator, Aspiration board member Ibrahim Al-Husseini, who got arrested in October 2024 and has since pleaded guilty to wire fraud, acknowledging the falsification of financial documents at Joe Sandberg's direction.

• 53:21Pablo Torre?

  On Media Day, I suspect you are also, again, going to hear a party line about victimization and fraud and being conned quite a bit.

• 53:32Speaker 12

  There are a lot of layers to all of this, and the Clippers and Steve Ballmer, they have denied vehemently any wrongdoing in all of this.

• 53:38Speaker 13

  I know Steve Ballmer, and I think he's a great guy, and he says he didn't do that. I believe him. I give him props for acknowledging that, for owning up to that, for saying that, for saying that he got duped and what have you. And I do believe it warrants an investigation because of Pablo Torre Finds Out Podcasts and stuff.

• 53:55Speaker 14

  How could you invest 50 million? The answer is he invested 50 million because it's nothing to him. And he kind of liked it. And you might say, well, how could you not do your due diligence? Because it's literally nothing to him. It's like, did you do your due diligence on the Mexican restaurant where you had dinner tonight? Did you read the Yelp reviews?

• 54:12Pablo Torre?

  And that sentiment... To be maximally clear, has been echoed very explicitly, I mean, in the statements provided to us as a show by the Clippers.

• 54:22Speaker 05

  Quote, "Neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration. Any contrary assertion is provably false. The team ended its relationship with Aspiration years ago, during the 2022-23 season, when Aspiration defaulted on its obligations. Neither the Clippers nor Mr. Ballmer was aware of any improper activity by Aspiration or its co-founder until after the government instituted its investigation. The team and Mr. Ballmer stand ready to assist law enforcement in any way they can."

• 54:58Pablo Torre?

  So the question then becomes, when did the government start its investigation? That's an important time peg here, given what the Clippers are saying to us. And the crucial question I've been following this whole time, therefore, is when does it become implausible for a billionaire defrauded by Joe Sandberg, in the way that we have heard, to continue to give money to Joe Sandberg? And we pointed already to Dennis Wong, Ballmer's most intimate Clippers proxy, putting in 1.99 million in December 22, while the company was in default and so forth and so on, which to me frankly, I mean, is enough? That feels like the de facto smoking gun right there. The alternate governor of the Clippers becoming the only new investor in that round of fundraising,

• 55:42Pablo Torre?

  and an amount that made zero cents otherwise. But then you add in what we reported the last episode, which is that in March of 23, after Joe Sandberg sought investment from at least 19 other investment firms for that round, and this spanned the fall of 22 to the spring of 23, all 19 of those investment firms, which are listed in court documents that I obtained, said no. And yet, Steve Ballmer personally decided to invest another $10 million into this completely [BLEEP] company. At $23 a share, days after a Forbes article came out titled, "A Floundering Fintech's Risky Reboot." You may be thinking to yourself, I mean,

• 56:24Pablo Torre?

  well, maybe Steve Ballmer doesn't care about Forbes. Well, please flip over the next piece of paper, because this is an article in Forbes from later that same month.

• 56:40Pablo Torre?

  Please show it to the camera if you can.

• 56:43Speaker 05

  I can't even read this. I know there's an audio audience.

• 56:47Pablo Torre?

  What is it? What do you see?

• 56:49Speaker 05

  It is the cover of Forbes. An extreme close-up of Steve Ballmer's smiling face. It's a pleasant, slight smile.

• 56:58Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 05

  Says L.A. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. The title, "Welcome to the Ballmer Dome." His new $2 billion arena raises the game in the NBA. And then, the article, the cover story itself.

• 57:12Pablo Torre?

  This is the daily cover, online only for the record, but nonetheless, big Forbes over his forehead.

• 57:17Speaker 05

  For Steve Ballmer, building an NBA champion is harder than running Microsoft, but more fun.

• 57:22Pablo Torre?

  Maybe, whatever. What if he's only just scrolling through Twitter? Maybe he's not even seeing that stuff. The next piece of paper.

• 57:28Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 57:28Pablo Torre?

  Could you read the tweet that Forbes sent to promote the article? Just so we have it in the public record.

• 57:34Speaker 05

  This is from at Forbes with the gold check bar. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been trying to spend his way to an NBA championship from the start. The problem, of course, is that if money could buy championships, the fingers of both Ballmer's hands would be weighted down with rings. March 26, 2023.

• 57:51Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. So, again, in the master timeline here. Weeks after those articles, and Ballmer's $10 million investment, I am told, the federal government began its process of interviewing dozens of aspiration employees, two of whom are the sources you've been hearing on tape throughout our series here. The federal investigation, at this point, was underway. And by January of '24, as your tie is now off your deck.

• 58:20Speaker 05

  This is a lot of stuff, man.

• 58:21Pablo Torre?

  We're not done. January 24, Bloomberg publishes this headline with a giant photo of the Intuit Dome across the top.

• 58:31Speaker 05

  Clippers Arena Deal Dragged Into U.S. Probe Of California Fintech.

• 58:37Pablo Torre?

  And Bloomberg, by the way, also in that article, got a statement from the Clippers.

• 58:41Speaker 05

  This is dated January 18th, 2024. The Clippers said in a statement that, quote, "The sponsorship agreement entered into between Aspiration and the L.A. Clippers was terminated by the team last season. This in no way relieves Aspiration from the obligations they are under contract to provide."

• 58:59Pablo Torre?

  So I'll just remind everybody here that the Clippers, having terminated their sponsorship agreement with Aspiration during the 22-23 season, is very interesting phrasing. Now, when you remember that Steve Ballmer invested another $10 million to the benefit of Aspiration in March 23, there happened to be 14 regular season games left in the season, meaning he did the opposite. He went back in. And by the way, so did Bloomberg, because the coverage proceeds. There was another Bloomberg article in July of 24.

• 59:34Speaker 05

  July 10th, 2024. DiCaprio-Backed Green Finance Startup Unraveled On Dubious Deals. Three years after pursuing a $2 billion IPO, Aspiration Partners faces probes by U.S. authorities.

• 59:49Pablo Torre?

  Look, you get the gist, which is that by early 2024, it was beyond obvious, using even just the Clippers' own statements, that the government was all over this. And Mr. Ballmer, of course, had become aware of improper activity by Aspiration or its co-founder Joe Sandberg, at least by that. And all of this reminded me of a particularly thoughtful interview that I once saw Steve Ballmer do with 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes, in October 2024, had profiled him.

• 1:00:22Pablo Torre?

  Well after the government had started its investigation into aspiration.

• 1:00:26Speaker 15

  He bought the basketball team, which is certainly an extravagance, but he's also giving away billions through a philanthropy he runs with his wife Connie.

• 1:00:34Speaker 06

  It really is kind of grant by grant. You can't look back and say, "Well, people's economic mobility this year was a 2, and next year it's going to be a 2.3."

• 1:00:44Speaker 16

  Yeah, we can't do population level measurement. But place by place, you know, grant by grant, we can do that.

• 1:00:51Pablo Torre?

  So, the Ballmer Group is an entity that I want to introduce everybody to. The Ballmer Group is Steve Ballmer's philanthropic arm. His organization that he runs with his wife Connie, who was sitting right there next to him in that interview. And as you heard them say thoughtfully, they care about their donations. They go through them grant by grant, as they said. So, what I did was go through their donations grant by grant. I went through their database. The Ballmer Group has a website. And in the "Our Grants" section of the website, you just notice immediately there are donations ranging from $500,000 to $424 million. It's vast and impressive.

• 1:01:34Pablo Torre?

  But what caught my eye, as I was scanning these dollar amounts, was a $1.875 million grant.

• 1:01:43Speaker 06

  Don't say it, please.

• 1:01:44Pablo Torre?

  And it was made to an organization that is listed on the next piece of paper in your folder.

• 1:01:50Speaker 05

  $1.875 million just seems a little... Ah, God. I've come full circle. On the first day, I was like, "Oh, I can't wait to see what's under these papers." Now, I don't even want to see this anymore.

• 1:02:01Pablo Torre?

  What is the organization called, Mr. Elhassen?

• 1:02:05Speaker 05

  Golden State Opportunity Foundation. Golden State Opportunity is dedicated to ending poverty by providing all Californians with the tools to build financial well-being. Our grant supports its outreach to more than 1 million low-income Angelenos, helping them to claim hundreds of millions of dollars from tax credits and improve their financial situations.

• 1:02:27Pablo Torre?

  And so, what I went to go do was learn more about the Golden State Opportunity Foundation. But, when I went to the "Where We Started" section of the Golden State Opportunity Foundation's website, this is what I saw.

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  Uh, not found. Sorry, that page was not found.

• 1:02:46Pablo Torre?

  Which was weird. It's weird, right? And so what I did was I went to the trusty old internet archive, a journalist's best friend.

• 1:02:54Speaker 05

  Wayback machine.

• 1:02:55Pablo Torre?

  The wayback machine. And this, Amin, is what a cached version of the page used to read as recently as November 2024.

• 1:03:05Speaker 05

  Jesus Christ. Oh, my God. Oh, hold on.

• 1:03:14Speaker 05

  Golden State Opportunity founder, Joseph Sandberg, grew up in circumstances familiar to many Californians. Raised by a single mom who struggled to make ends meet on her public school teacher salary, Joe's family lost their home to foreclosure after falling deeply into debt.

• 1:03:31Pablo Torre?

  And it goes on, and it is a tremendous story.

• 1:03:34Speaker 05

  In case anyone was wondering, maybe it's another Joseph Sandberg.

• 1:03:37Pablo Torre?

  That's the picture on the page that was erased.

• 1:03:40Speaker 05

  Folks, I had a whole thing. I was gonna do the Southern Lawyer Act.

• 1:03:43Pablo Torre?

  I know.

• 1:03:43Speaker 05

  I was gonna push back.

• 1:03:44Pablo Torre?

  Now you've just dropped. You're just, we're just talking in our actual voices now.

• 1:03:48Speaker 05

  Completely broken character.

• 1:03:49Pablo Torre?

  None other than disgraced aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg is in fact the founder of the Golden State Opportunity Foundation. This is his charity. It's his baby. And it's a fact that is verified, by the way, by the organization's Form 990 IRS filings, which also list him as the longtime board chair. You can find references to Joe Sandberg's role in this organization all over his Wikipedia page, easily Googleable articles, interviews about his ambitions in democratic politics. And so the relevant question, Amin, I suppose would be this. When did the Ballmer Group decide to give yet another seven-figure infusion of cash to an entity founded by Joe Sandberg?

• 1:04:33Pablo Torre?

  The answer to that question,

• 1:04:37Pablo Torre?

  as you can establish here in this paperwork, is that the Ballmer Group announced this grant as part of a larger roundup of grants

• 1:04:47Pablo Torre?

  in December of 2024.

• 1:04:55Speaker 05

  Hot as hell. I'm just saying, is anyone else hot?

• 1:04:58Pablo Torre?

  December 24 was a month after the last recorded mention of Joe Sandberg on the charity's website, which we showed you. It was a couple of months after the arrest of Joe Sandberg's co-conspirator Ibrahim Al-Hussein by the FBI. It was almost a year after Bloomberg publicly broke the story of the government's investigation into aspiration. It was more than a year after the Clippers claimed to end their partnership with aspiration and dozens of aspiration employees had been interviewed by the federal government. In other words, well beyond the point when Steve Ballmer would have learned that he was humiliated and defrauded and victimized by Joe Sandberg, as he keeps on saying, Steve Ballmer's charity, the Ballmer Group, appears to have donated around

• 1:05:40Pablo Torre?

  December 2024, according to the public records of his own internal database, 1.875 million dollars to that same fraudster for the first time.

• 1:05:52Speaker 05

  Golden State Opportunity, what is it? 10th anniversary. There it is. 10th anniversary. They've been around for a long time, Pablo. A long time. They've been doing good work, right?

• 1:06:03Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 1:06:04Speaker 05

  And also the Ballmer Group, you said they've given out 400 million dollars. He doesn't know? It's like loose change in his couch cushions. They just, we gave it something called the Golden State Foundation. Golden State Opportunity. Sounds great.

• 1:06:20Pablo Torre?

  It's true. It's true that 1.875 million dollars was approximately, doing the math here, worth 0.0014% of Steve Ballmer's estimated net worth at the time. And so, in fairness, we put this in front of the Clippers and the Ballmer Group and the Golden State Opportunity Foundation. I wanted to know what this 1.875 million dollars was used for and why it was 1.875 million dollars.

• 1:06:47Pablo Torre?

  And what I can tell you here is that right away, once we brought up the question of whether Steve Ballmer made charitable donations associated with Joe Sandberg, the chief communications officer of the Clippers acknowledged that the issues we raised, quote, "are germane to the investigation by the NBA, and we will let them conduct their investigation," end quote. But then, once we asked that chief communications officer of the Clippers specifically about this 2024 donation that Ballmer Group made to Golden State Opportunity, he took some time to send us a statement on behalf of Ballmer Group philanthropy,

• 1:07:32Pablo Torre?

  which felt conspicuous, in which the Clippers' chief comms officer volunteered on behalf of Ballmer Group philanthropy that Ballmer Group had actually sent four grants to Golden State Opportunity dating back to 2018, which Golden State Opportunity in turn acknowledged receiving. But when I then proceeded to line up all the dates provided to us here, I noticed something. I noticed that in an email, Golden State Opportunity president Amy Everett told us that Ballmer Group's initial grant, which started on January 1st, 2018, was coordinated by her, quote, predecessor. But according to tax filings,

• 1:08:17Pablo Torre?

  Amy Everett was the first person Joe Sandberg ever gave that title to, other than himself. Everett also told us that Sandberg remained the chairman of his charities board up until March 4th, 2025, which happens to be the day after Joe Sandberg got arrested following roughly two years of federal investigation. And so, when it comes to what is germane to the NBA investigation...

• 1:08:46Pablo Torre?

  The known connection between Joe Sandberg and Steve Ballmer now dates back to almost four years before their names ever appeared together through Aspiration, all the way back to 2017, when discussions for Ballmer Group's initial donation began. All of this, I think, deepens what the decision to make a new, ongoing donation from Ballmer Group, starting in November 2024, to help with tax support for low-income workers that got granted amid that ongoing federal investigation into the chairman of this charity's board, might actually mean.

• 1:09:26Pablo Torre?

  But look, maybe, I mean, this foundation has done and continues to do good work, but the timing of this donation is something that, just to me, would defy, what's that phrase again, about explanation?

• 1:09:44Speaker 05

  Cannot rationally be explained.

• 1:09:48Pablo Torre?

  That's right. As source number one from the Finance Department at Aspiration also points out...

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  Am I taking crazy pills? It's just inconceivable to me to be both hoodwinked and bamboozled, but yet continuously giving money to Joe Sandberg. I don't know how to make that make sense in my mind.

• 1:10:15Pablo Torre?

  Well, I want to anticipate the possibility that Steve Ballmer really believed in the mission of the Golden State Opportunity Foundation, Joe Sandberg's baby, the thing that he was the head of, and so maybe there is an art versus the artist sort of distinction he's drawing?

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  No, it does not make any iota of sense to invest in 2021, contribute nearly 100 million in carbon offset pre-purchases, reinvest in 2022 or 2023 around, claim all of that to be lost in 2023, and then come back for more in 2024, a charitable donation. Maybe Steve Ballmer's a secret masochist.

• 1:11:14Pablo Torre?

  That is honestly one of the most persuasive theories that anyone has offered at this point in the reporting. Yeah, Steve Ballmer's kink is being robbed. Yeah. Rob me blind daddy.

• 1:11:30Pablo Torre?

  Mr. Alhassen.

• 1:11:33Pablo Torre?

  The table is strewn with papers. Your clothes have come off. You are as sweaty as I am now, as I contemplate exactly where this story goes next. But what did you find out today?

• 1:11:54Speaker 05

  I find out that in a different world, in a different timeline, you would be part of Scooby Doo's mystery team. And Steve Ballmer would be wearing a mask and we'd pull the mask off. And as he's bound and tied and sitting on the ground, he'd look up at you angrily and he'd say, "And I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you, you meddling kids and that mutt over there with the glasses on."

• 1:12:23Speaker 05

  Zoinks.

• 1:12:25Pablo Torre?

  To quote the only cartoon that makes sense anymore.

• 1:12:29Speaker 05

  Rrrrr.

• 1:12:32Speaker 05

  Come on, man. 1.875? Pick a different number. Pick a different charity. Anything. Find a new person. Hey, sorry, we're not gonna be able to make that payment anymore. Scoob. Jesus. Jinkies.

• 1:12:59Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

• 1:13:05Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

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