The Moment of Troops, the Power Couple and the Clippers' Everything Connection: Kawhi-Gate, Part XVII

As Kawhi Leonard distances himself from scandal, Pablo uncovers internal financials, government records and new sources on the "no-show job" that the silent superstar... actually showed up for. Amin Elhassan and David Samson enter a captive portal of multi-million-dollar promises, while Hunterbrook Media's Sam Koppelman explains how the feds could haul in Steve Ballmer and his banned lieutenants. • Subscribe to PTFO on YouTube for breaking news, greatest hits and live premieres with Pablo https://www.youtube.com/@PabloTorreFindsOut Previously on PTFO: • Part I: The Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhiN2IxMTNkNmUyY2RhYTI2MmQzNWI1 • Part II: An Argument with Mark Cuban https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhiYTg1ZTkyZDkxM2JkMzMwODFhODBi • Part III: The Mystery Investor, the No-Show Payday and the "Smoking Gun" https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhjMjVlMzJhY2EzNTIxYzc2MzhiZjNi • Part IV: Steve Ballmer, the Other Cuban and the $118 Million Infusion https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhjYjcxNzVkYzYyZjBlMWQ2NjdjMzYy • Part V: Steve Ballmer's "Inconceivable" Donation, the $20 Million Guarantee and a Head on a Spike https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhkOWU1ZmIyNTUyYjcyYzIwZWQ1NTQ1 • Part VI: An IRL Showdown with Mark Cuban https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhlZDk2ODM4ODU1MjdhNDM2ZGJjNDU2 • Part VII: The Briefcase, Ballmer's Social Network and Aspiration's House of Cards https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/Njk2MDc1MzMxMTA3M2E2MWJkOTM5Yzg1 • Part VIII: Uncle Dennis, Ballmer's $50 Million Sprint and the Side Deal That Wouldn't Die https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/Njk4YjhmZjdiYTgwY2YxZWNiMTdmZTBl • Part IX: Ballmer's Tree Money, the Whistle-Blowers and the Document You've Been Waiting For https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjlhYjA0ODliNDllZWNjMGI3YjU1Mzhh • Part X: Steve Ballmer's Victim Impact, the Man Who Prosecuted Aspiration and the Abacus of Incarceration https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjlmOTFjOWY5YjE1MDdmYmRkZTAxZjc4 • Part XI: Ballmer's Secret I. O. U., Aspiration's "Web of Lies" and the Zenith of Fraud https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmEyMjI5NmFiMGYyOTYyYmU0ODEwOTAx • Part XII: RIFC, the Impossible Deal and Life After Aspiration https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE2YTYxMzMxN2Q3N2JmNzJhMjc3MWVm • Part XIII: The Halo, Ballmer's Bowl and a New Crisis in the Super-System https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE3NGI5YjRmM2I4Nzc5ZDllN2QyODNh • Part XIV: The Jumbotron Emails, the Courtside Cabana and Ballmer's "Highest Integrity" https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE3ZTZjMGRlNzU2OGU0MmU0NjYwODY5 • Part XV: Clippers Judgment Day, the NBA's Hammer and the Investigation That Never Ends https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE5OGM1Zjk5Yjg1NWExZmQzYTkwMTM5 • Part XVI: Steve Ballmer's Sword, the DOJ's Probe and a "Road to Jail Time" https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmFhYTlmMTVlZTI4NzY5NzBlMWJjNDhi (Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Apple Card.) (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 Hunterbrook Media 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, brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  This might not just be an NBA problem. This might be securities fraud.

• 0:13Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

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• 1:19Pablo Torre?

  Ready to upgrade your PC? The Dell Top Tech Event is here. And you can skip the research because independent tech experts already did it. Dell has laptops, desktops, and monitors that have been tested, reviewed, and named a winner by the publishers you trust. So instead of spending hours researching, you get a short list that's already proven. Take the Dell XPS 13 Laptop, built for those who want better. Whether you're studying, working, or just getting things done, its thin and light design makes it easy to take anywhere. It has a touchscreen you'll love using, a battery built to last through your busiest days, and impressive performance powered by Intel Core processors. That's the thing about the Dell Top Tech Event. The experts already found the winners. All that's left is finding yours.

• 2:02Pablo Torre?

  While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards, fast free shipping, premium support, and financing with flexible payment options. Shop the winners now at dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Do you really want the real answer to this?

• 2:28Pablo Torre?

  What frequent flyer status are you at right now?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  All right, so on American, it goes Silver, Gold, Platinum, Platinum Pro, Executive Platinum. That's the highest that you can achieve with flying. But then, there's a level above Executive Platinum called Concierge Key. It's invite-only. That's where I'm at right now.

• 2:47Pablo Torre?

  David, where are you at?

• 2:48Speaker 04

  I gave up my Concierge Key. I lost it because it was a temporary thing. But I have enough miles that I'm good. I'm George Clooney. I have this many miles.

• 3:03Pablo Torre?

  You're also in a series whose outcome remains up in the air. We're calling this Part 17, but I've lost count. I mean, you got your folder? David, do you have your folder? Have you not looked into your folder, as you promised us you would do?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Do not look, David, is the first sheet in David's folder.

• 3:22Pablo Torre?

  What's in those folders is new stuff that is, I think, gonna answer the question that many people, I presume, are asking themselves, listening to us right now, which is, why are you still doing this? Why are you doing Part 17? Especially since the NBA has already given the Clippers the biggest punishment in league history. And Kawhi Leonard has just signed a two-year, $115 million extension with Toronto Raptors.

• 3:46Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 3:47Pablo Torre?

  And the Clippers now have an interim governor, guys, with Steve Ballmer banned for a year. A lawyer by the name of John Gibson, who declared the team's mission for this coming season just last week.

• 4:00Speaker 05

  Build bridges, strengthen our culture of compliance, build on our team and organization. That is the work to be done. So let's move forward together with confidence.

• 4:11Speaker 04

  Did you look at the background they gave him? They couldn't give him a calm, like, beautiful sunset or sunrise. They gave him, like, stormy hurricane-level seas.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  I also thought, I've never heard in any sort of kind of inspirational video, whatever, our main bullet point is to build a culture of compliance. Holy [bleep].

• 4:37Pablo Torre?

  Well, they're building bridges, they're building a culture. And David, who is not the Clippers' governor? Notably.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  The alternate governors were Dennis Wong and Gillian Zucker. And Gillian Zucker is suspended and gone, so it can't be her. Dennis Wong, because of reporting that you've done, seems to be not eligible to be the governor, quite clearly, because he would have been the natural choice to do it in Steve's absence. So they went with someone who represented the Clippers in a lawsuit against Donald Sterling, actually. And he is a well-known lawyer out there in LA.

• 5:15Pablo Torre?

  Well, we continue to search for where Dennis Wong went. But I just should also point out that all of this talk, all of the rhetoric, is the stuff that an interim governor might also say if the Department of Justice was currently investigating your team because of four secret side deals that you made with Kawhi Leonard. An NBA scheme, of course, which may or may not resemble an alleged criminal conspiracy to violate securities law, given that two Clippers sponsors we've previously investigated are now being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission as well. Which reminds me, I mean, of what the NBA's outside counsel, Wachtel Lipton, told us in their 36-page summary report.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Given the scope of this matter and its complexity, there is always more that could be done. And considering the public's interest in this matter, more information will likely surface over time.

• 6:11Pablo Torre?

  But what Wachtel's report establishes for all to see, David, as you well recall, is that before the Clippers', quote-unquote, "sustainability partner", Aspiration, made it steal with the ninth richest man in the world, Steve Ballmer, the Clippers brokered three secret deals with those three other sponsors, all of which were signed in 2020 and paid out per Wachtel in 2021, thanks to Gillian Zucker, Ballmer's president of business.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  During the six-day span in early June 2020, Ms. Zucker made a series of email, quote-unquote, "introductions" to executives at three companies with which the Clippers were in active conversations about potential business relationships. Boingo, a provider of wireless and other communications networks; Daktronics, a manufacturer of scoreboards and video displays; and Lockton, an insurance brokerage.

• 7:09Pablo Torre?

  But the NBA's report, notably, stopped in 2022, which is exactly the same timeframe in which we here at PTFO started examining the missing $1.75 million quarterly payments that Aspiration owed Camp Kawhi in September of 2022, and then December of 2022. That's Q3 and Q4 of 2022. Whereas Kawhi, by the way, having just relocated from his quite-nice San Diego County estate to Toronto, continues to be the fun guy whose LLCs were owed a total value of $66 million in those cap circumvention payments, per Wachtel's accounting, even though Kawhi continues to claim

• 7:50Pablo Torre?

  that he did not know about any of the rule-breaking involved in any of this [bleep], thus receiving a relative slap on the wrist of $700,000 from Commissioner Adam Silver amidst the lack of publicly verifiable evidence of Kawhi himself actually doing anything illicit, knowing anything about it, for that money.

• 8:10Speaker 06

  Kawhi Leonard did not have any knowledge of this salary cap circumvention that was going on. He had essentially given all of the power to his uncle, Dennis Robertson. In a statement through his agent, Leonard said he had no knowledge of anyone's intent to circumvent the NBA's salary cap. He said, "I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle and regret the distraction."

• 8:32Pablo Torre?

  Although Kawhi did, interestingly, say this at Raptors Media Day just this week.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  I know why, you know, some of you guys came. You want to hear about the investigation, but, you know, talking with the NBA and the PA, I think the best decision is to move forward. And focus on my time being a Toronto Raptor. Um, I already was a distraction for the past 70 days.

• 9:06Pablo Torre?

  But for the people who've been closely watching our series, I mean, the Wachtel Report is not just a summary. It's also a scavenger hunt. As this blind item suggests.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Investigators did not uncover or receive evidence reflecting that the companies exercised their rights for meaningful player activation. The record reflects that Mr. Leonard's only confirmed activity under any of the agreements was a visit to a military base on a single occasion under one agreement and signing some memorabilia under another.

• 9:43Pablo Torre?

  The idea of signing some memorabilia, of course, had come up in the internal emails between Daktronics and the Clippers, which we covered in, I think, part 14 of this series. To make an extremely lucrative job with a jumbo chop manufacturer seem even vaguely real. We're talking about a selfie promo video. We're talking about an autograph signing. And I just want to hit pause right there because I'd like you to please describe the photo that we used as B-roll in this clip right here from more than six weeks ago, which was weeks before the Wachtel Report came out.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  So it's Kawhi Leonard doing the time honored tradition of doing an autograph, but asking the person asking the autograph to turn around so they can use their back as an easel of sorts, right? Like you lean against it. But I should point out that this individual is wearing kind of an olive green shirt that one might imagine to be all military coded. Except I don't have to say all that because in the background, they're actually military personnel in fatigues, in camo. And it's clearly a kind of VIP tent sort of situation.

• 10:53Pablo Torre?

  What does it say there in the photo credit that we included?

• 10:58Speaker 04

  The photo credit states via MCCS Camp Pendleton slash Facebook.

• 11:08Pablo Torre?

  And if we just remove that photo credit for a second, if we show what that credit was covering up, printed on the tent above Kawhi, what do you guys see?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  No freaking way, man. Is this gonna be a Boingo episode? Are we finally getting the Boingo episode?

• 11:26Speaker 04

  I have waited to see where Boingo comes into this because I hate being scooped by Wachtel, number one. Number two, Boingo? Boingo doesn't have endorsers. Boingo is the authenticating third party through which I get wifi when I'm flying. That's all I know about Boingo. That's all I care about Boingo.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  The definition of a closed economy, right? They're not competing like, oh, should I connect to the Boingo or should I? Oh, that's the only option you have. So for them to have a celebrity spokesperson is literally the most ridiculous concept ever.

• 12:03Pablo Torre?

  The term that you concierge key members should be aware of is captive portal, which also might be a description for a series that happens to be sucking people into it all of the time as if they are prisoners of our own reporting. Yes, we have been waiting, bread crumbing Boingo for a long time here. Because when Boingo pops up, yeah, you don't have a choice. You didn't have a choice at the airport on Delta as I was once subscribing to Boingo monthly. I'm the idiot who was like, yeah, fine. I'll just pay it monthly. I was doing that as a former platinum medallion member, by the way.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Pablo, this is the part where I tell you, the concierge keys, we get it for free.

• 12:42Pablo Torre?

  Okay, all right. Well, speaking of there being levels inside of levels, what else, I mean, did Wachtel say about this company that is known for relentlessly haunting travelers and visitors to the Intuit Dome as the Clippers exclusive wifi provider?

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Boingo, quote, purported initially to cooperate, but then supplied information that was inconsistent or not credible to investigators and ultimately refused to cooperate further, end quote.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  This is not uncommon, Pablo, just FYI. When you're asked questions in an investigation that it's not under subpoena, Wachtel couldn't subpoena, and basically you try to answer them. And then when you say to yourself, wait a minute, are we being implicated here? This, did we do something we shouldn't have done? Oh, crikey.

• 13:38Pablo Torre?

  Our signal, our signal dropped out.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  We are clamming up.

• 13:42Pablo Torre?

  Our service, our service is broken up.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  So when you ultimately refuse to cooperate further, that is a position you never want to be in as a public company, a private company, an individual. You never want to start something you can't finish when it comes to authorities.

• 13:58Pablo Torre?

  And so what we wanted to find out here on the show is why did the service drop out? And so this is going to be an episode about what once in future Toronto Raptors superstar Kawhi Leonard knew personally and what the US government now wants to know itself. And how to connect several important things that the NBA to date has not.

• 14:40Pablo Torre?

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• 15:12Speaker 02

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• 16:19Pablo Torre?

  So guys, before we relive the single occasion when Kawhi Leonard was confirmed to do any activity for Boingo Wireless, which remains the only verifiable sponsorship activation he ever really did across secret contracts totaling $66 million, we do need to reintroduce people to Steve Ballmer's president of business operations and right-hand woman. She, Gillian Zucker, kinda had the job that you had. You were the president of the Marlins. Her job was to also build a new stadium, worked as an executive in motorsports, married an executive in software, served as a commissioner for the state of California under Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm just waiting for I mean to do a quick Arnold Schwarzenegger here.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  What killed the dinosaurs? The Ice Age.

• 17:02Pablo Torre?

  We'll take that. And her mandate, of course, with the Clippers, as directed by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, was to take certain risks that the previous regime under Donald Sterling would not, as she explained to Fortune Magazine, it turns out, in July of 2025.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  So there wasn't a lot of bold thinking and I, I wasn't there. So I don't know what the, you know, propensity was for risk taking, but I think it was actually really, really small. And Steve is exactly the opposite. He is like, hey, go for it. Try things, you know? Be smart about it. But if you realize something's not working, then you pivot. It's not that, you know, if you fail, you're in some massive amount of trouble. And if you don't think boldly and try things that are hard, you can't really have big wins. And he understands that.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  I was in charge of baseball and business. And my job was to do the best possible thing every single moment to make the company more money, to make the team worth more and to win games.

• 18:06Pablo Torre?

  But as for why, as for why there is a one year ban for Steve Ballmer and Gillian Zucker, I mean, I just want to have you here quickly table read the part of Uncle Dennis Robertson, who requested approximately $10 million a year for his nephew beyond his NBA contract in violation of said salary cap, according now to Ballmer's president of basketball, Lawrence Frank, who apparently took contemporaneous notes on an alleged NBA conspiracy. And I will be the voice of the Wachtel omniscient narrator in the firm's summary report to the NBA. Quote, Mr. Robertson complained to Mr. Ballmer that Ms. Zucker was making

• 18:45Speaker 01

  introductions for bullshit deals.

• 18:48Pablo Torre?

  And that?

• 18:49Speaker 01

  I can't wait on her. I have to get paid.

• 18:53Pablo Torre?

  End quote. Uncle Dennis couldn't wait. He was in a real rush, apparently, in 2020. This was months after Kawhi, his nephew, signed with the Clippers. And David, here you go. I will ask you to represent the rest of the Clippers C suite here because, quote, Mr. Ballmer responded by telling Mr. Robertson that he and Clippers personnel were all

• 19:15Speaker 04

  collective workers to try to help Kawhi achieve his financial goals.

• 19:22Pablo Torre?

  And Ms. Zucker assured Mr. Robertson that Mr. Ballmer would

• 19:26Speaker 04

  follow through on his promise.

• 19:29Pablo Torre?

  End quote. Which takes us now, all of us, to the Boingo Dactronics Locked In deal making with Kawhi in June of 2020, the thing we mentioned before. And what does Wachtel say, David, about when those bills got paid to KL2 LBS LLC?

• 19:50Speaker 04

  The total due to Mr. Leonard under the Boingo, Dactronics and Locked In agreements was $18 million. All 18 million was paid to Mr. Leonard by August 2021.

• 20:04Pablo Torre?

  All 18 million given to Kawhi from those three sponsors by August 2021, while all three sponsors, aforementioned, almost simultaneously received lucrative business arrangements, I mean, with the Clippers in exchange.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  In early June 2020, at the time of Ms. Zucker's quote unquote introductions, none of Boingo, Dactronics and Locked In had commercial agreements with the Clippers. But all three companies were in active discussions to provide business services to the team or its arena.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  To put this into layman's terms, this was a case of if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours and we'll live happily ever after.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Quote, within weeks following the quote unquote introductions, either before or on the same day as the companies signed endorsement agreements with Mr. Leonard, each company entered into a multimillion dollar consulting agreement with the Clippers.

• 21:14Pablo Torre?

  David, in your role, that was similar to Gillian Zucker's dealing with franchise sponsors, building a stadium. Had you ever heard of this before? The whole fake multimillion dollar jobs for the companies, the sponsors themselves?

• 21:29Speaker 04

  There's a little bit of, hey, hey, hey, if I've got 10 candidates to be an unpaid intern and there's someone I can help who I do business with, who does business with me, I'm going to do that. But multimillion dollar consulting agreements? Uh, no, I did not do that.

• 21:46Pablo Torre?

  But this brings us, incidentally, to an even crazier blind item from the NBA's independent investigation.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Beyond the Clippers' relationships with the three companies as potential partners in lucrative services agreements, Ms. Zucker had personal relationships at two of the companies. At one, her husband was chair of the board of directors during the relevant time period. And she also had a 30 year working relationship with that company's CEO.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  That reads salacious, but it's a small world with CEOs. It's not uncommon to know people at different companies for two married couples, a power couple, one to have a huge job at one company and one to have a huge job, even sometimes at a competitor's company. It is possible that things like that exist. I don't want to use that as the sole basis of impugning Zucker whatsoever.

• 22:44Pablo Torre?

  But I do want to dwell on what David was just referencing. The chairman of the board that Clippers president of business, Gillian Zucker, married, the software executive that we alluded to before, because this dude's name is Lance Rosenzweig. And here he is now in a photo, naturally, in the Philippines.

• 23:05Speaker 04

  Full circle.

• 23:06Pablo Torre?

  He's meeting with a bunch of employees overseas. This was before he took the reins as chairman of the board of, you guessed it, Boingo Wireless, beginning in 2019, taking us into the relevant time period we are diving into here today. And during this same window of time, guys, the same window in which Lance Rosenzweig's partner seemed to be very interested in Lance Rosenzweig's company, there was this headline.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Boingo Wireless faces alleged securities violations over acquisition by private equity firm.

• 23:49Pablo Torre?

  Which now raises a very important question. What exactly was Boingo board chair Lance Rosenzweig's whole role in selling that company? And what does that have to do with the deals that Boingo was making with both Kawhi Leonard, individually, as well as the Clippers, as reportedly negotiated by Lance's wife, Gillian Zucker? To answer this, we now turn to the guy who had previously helped us break down the finances of Dactronics and otherwise works as the publisher of Hunter Brook Media, the funding arm of which holds no positions against either Boingo or Dactronics. And of course, I am talking about our old friend, Sam Koppelmann, who describes the chairman of a company's board this way.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  It can be kind of a cushy job where you're signing and reclining. In this case, though, Lance wasn't just some passive chair of the board. Because Boingo, which was a publicly traded company regulated by the SEC, it was getting acquired. It was being taken private.

• 24:51Pablo Torre?

  And who was acquiring Boingo Wireless to take it private?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  A private equity firm that would become known as Digital Bridge.

• 24:59Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, we're building a lot of bridges in this episode, it turns out. And I want to connect this now to the Wachtel report. And so how does that timeline specifically overlap with Lance Rosenzweig as the board chair trying to sell Boingo to Digital Bridge?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Those email introductions from Gillian Zucker that connected Boingo with Uncle Dennis, that was around June 6th. Lance sat on the steering committee overseeing this sale, which met on June 5th, the day before, then June 24th, and then again on July 2nd of 2020. So it brackets the dates when this deal allegedly took place between the Clippers and Kawhi and Boingo.

• 25:44Pablo Torre?

  Which is one hell of a convenient threesome. Because in June of 2020, Kawhi's uncle, let's call, had set those, quote, financial goals, end quote. And then Boingo proceeded to get revenue from the Clippers, seven figures. And Steve Ballmer's problem, in this story, I will remind you as well, was not the money itself, but how to funnel it, allegedly, to Kawhi. Which now brings us back to Gillian's husband.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Which is basically to say that this guy is the chairman of a public company actively selling that company at the same moment his wife's team became a Boingo counterparty, twice, on 12 that the NBA's law firm says were induced by Clippers business on a deal that was never announced.

• 26:37Pablo Torre?

  You know, Sam, the thing I kind of helped but recognize almost immediately, having done a couple of parts of the series with you, is the level of economic urgency, which reminds me of the story of aspiration and Dactronics, both of whom really needed Steve Ballmer's money. They relied on him to the tune in total of over nine figures of revenue in order to keep their entities afloat. And my understanding at this point is that when you do a move like this to go public, you know, there might be some sloppiness. There could be things, paperwork falling through the cracks.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  And in this case, Boingo did actually have to amend some of its SEC filings, which we found grinding tape with your producers in April of 2021. And there's something very interesting in this amended filing.

• 27:29Pablo Torre?

  Which happens to be, I mean, in the folder in front of you as you sit in Miami right now.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Item 13. Certain relationships and related transactions and director independence. And then we move down to the section labeled related party transactions. Quote, "Since January 1, 2020, there has not been a transaction in excess of $120,000 in which any director or any member of the immediate family had or will have a direct or indirect material interest," end quote.

• 28:12Pablo Torre?

  And so, David, for anyone in our audience who did not also watch the episode we did together with Sam Koppelman about billionaire owner Mark Walter and the Lakers and the Dodgers, can you just briefly explain how, yes, lots of couples can do business together across different companies, but related party transactions and the disclosure thereof are a thing, a part of securities law, because why?

• 28:37Speaker 04

  I fill out these forms with any board I've ever been on. You have to fill out related party transaction forms. Do you do business with any of the companies that our company or our charity does business with? This is all standard. And the reason why disclosure matters, it's the way to level the playing field with ordinary everyday investors.

• 28:57Pablo Torre?

  Yes, this is something that guards against conflicts of interest not being disclosed. It guards against alleged self-dealing, in which the two individuals are favored at the expense of perhaps the people whose money is also riding on such businesses. Yes, the disclosure matters. And the president of the Clippers being married to the chairman of the Boingo board, this power couple, I might argue, just based on my understanding of science, that might qualify as immediate family.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:27Pablo Torre?

  With direct or indirect material interest that Boingo's investors and/or buyers should probably know about.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  I spoke to several former SEC enforcement officers about this deal. And they all said that this is the exact kind of thing that related party disclosures are there for. One of them told me, quote, "There would be disclosure issues about the fake private deal because it should be known by both parties. It was a material deal, so it should be disclosed." Another former SEC enforcement officer said of this deal, "It's clearly over the line," end quote.

• 30:07Pablo Torre?

  So we should say here that we did reach out for comment from Lance Rosenzweig, as well as Gillian Zucker via Clippers PR, as well as a spokesperson for Boingo Wireless about the seemingly material interest. And we received no response to our detailed questions from Boingo PR and no immediate response from Rosenzweig or the Clippers or Digital Bridge, for that matter. What you guys should now know is that we have spoken to four former SEC attorneys about Boingo Wireless and Steve Ballmer and Gillian Zucker and the Clippers. And as one put it simply to us, quote, "The SEC might wrap this into the Kawhi investigation."

• 30:44Speaker 01

  We'll see what exactly happens, where these investigations go. But repeatedly, SEC officers told me that if they're investigating Daktronics, and if they're investigating aspiration, and if they're looking into this whole arrangement, there is 100% going to be a desire to establish the, quote, "pattern and practice taking place." And they're going to want to scrutinize all of these kinds of interactions, which could mean that Kawhi, or Gillian, or Lance, all of these people, people like Steve Ballmer, might be hauled in to testify and share their side of the story because the public story,

• 31:28Speaker 01

  the story in the filings, doesn't really add up.

• 31:30Pablo Torre?

  Which in retrospect may, may also explain why Boingo subtly stopped cooperating with Wachtel Lipton's NBA investigation.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  I imagine Boingo, they're like, sure, we'll help out with your NBA investigation into the salary cap. We love the NBA. Yeah, whatever, man. And then at some point, some lawyer was like, guys, um, this might not just be an NBA problem. This might be securities fraud.

• 31:58Pablo Torre?

  Right. At that point, I imagine what Boingo was asking themselves is, so are we free from this? What's the statute of limitations, Sam? In other words, on this sort of a thing?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  When I asked the former SEC enforcement officers, they all kind of said that the statute of limitations is generally for this kind of securities fraud, five years. It could be six years if it's conspiracy. And given that a lot of this conduct was in 2020 or 2021, it might be a, you know, three-pointer from the corner, hits the back rim, up in the air, swish, kind of a buzzer beater for the SEC. Just like Kawhi Leonard against the Philadelphia 76ers in 2019.

• 32:38Pablo Torre?

  How many bounces? Four bounces for sponsors. David?

• 32:44Speaker 04

  I think it's important to note that in Kawhi's statement after the punishment came out, he was very careful not in any way to acknowledge his knowledge of any salary cap circumvention, of any issues with any endorsement deals of any kind, because I assume he started listening to an actual lawyer and someone who pointed out that there is some exposure here for Kawhi Leonard when it comes to the SEC investigations. And while you turned on Ballmer and while you got away with $700,000 slap on the wrist and you get to have your contract not voided and end up in Toronto with an extension, do yourself a favor and shut the yapper.

• 33:26Pablo Torre?

  Quote?

• 33:27Speaker 06

  Leonard said he had no knowledge of anyone's intent to circumvent the NBA's salary cap. He said, "I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle and regret the distraction."

• 33:38Pablo Torre?

  Look, the people, Kawhi Leonard, Steve Ballmer, that we started our whole series with, they have very consistently, in public, divorced themselves from the actual wrongdoing that we have been reporting on for a year, as we consider the ticking clock. Amin, bringing us back to Wachtel's sense of time.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  I'm really curious because when I think about the autograph session that we had at the beginning of the episode, where Kawhi's signing the item on the lady's back, using her back as kind of support, when did that actually take place? And does that event then delay the start of the clock for the SEC in terms of their investigation and the statute of limitations?

• 34:22Speaker 04

  I mean, now you're on to something big, Amin, because when you're investigating somebody and you're part of the SEC, the first thing you're doing before any resources can be spent is figuring out what's the statute of limitations for the crime that we think was committed? And when does that clock start ticking? And so what they're always looking for is an event that can delay the start of the clock. So you don't need a four-bounce three-pointer from the corner over the outstretched hands of Joel Embiid. You can just have a nice tip-in by OG with 1.4 seconds left.

• 34:55Pablo Torre?

  But I do think it is worth asking that question. What did San Diego State's finest, two-time NBA champion on the back of, in part, that buzzer beater, Kawhi Leonard know? And when did he know it? What did he do? And that question, Amin, we will answer.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  When?

• 35:17Pablo Torre?

  After the break.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 35:30Pablo Torre?

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• 36:11Pablo Torre?

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• 36:50Speaker 02

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• 37:18Pablo Torre?

  Enrollment in any Humana Plan depends on contract renewal.

• 37:27Pablo Torre?

  So we have been spending a truly absurd amount of time learning about two things here that most Americans only think about when they are furious at their failures. One, wireless internet. Two, the federal government. And in the world of Wi-Fi, guys, there is this thing called a DAS system. And all you got to know about the DAS system is that it's kind of like the central plumbing system for all, let's say, 20,000 fans trying to get online inside of the Intuit Dome. Because in a way, the internet, as a US senator once said, It's a series of tubes.

• 38:05Pablo Torre?

  But this takes us now, at long last, to the Boingo CEO, who had a 30-year working relationship with Gillian Zucker, who's a guy, Amin, named Mike Finley.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  The Michael Finley? Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spur, Phoenix Suns?

• 38:22Speaker 04

  Badger.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  The Badger, yeah.

• 38:24Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, not former Wisconsin Badger and former Phoenix Suns great and current Dallas Mavericks executive, guy who took that beer out of Luka Doncic's hand before he got traded to the Lakers. Not Michael Finley, but Mike Finley.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 38:41Pablo Torre?

  This guy.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, he doesn't look anything like him.

• 38:45Pablo Torre?

  Kind of looks like the opposite of him, actually, in some ways. But a lot like Gillian Zucker, he used to be an executive associated with motorsports. And this Mike Finley loves him some DAS or DAS systems, as he explained on Boingo's earnings call in November of 2020.

• 39:08Speaker 05

  One of the new venues signed in the third quarter was for long-term DAS right at the new Aztec Stadium at San Diego State University. And speaking of stadiums, we've also been engaged to consult on the connectivity solutions that will be built into Inglewood Basketball and Entertainment Center, the new home of the Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers have been clear that their vision is to create the best home in basketball, and we're honored to help bring this vision to life.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  San Diego State, what a pleasant coincidence, because that's the alma mater of the one and only Kawhi Leonard.

• 39:43Pablo Torre?

  An alma mater which went unmentioned in the Wachtel report, as we will note just for a second here. But about a year after that earnings call now, we're now in October of 2021, which is again, after Wachtel said that the millions Boingo secretly owed the Clippers and Kawhi got paid, CEO Mike Finley then hosted a keynote panel at something called the Mobile World Congress. And this keynote panel was titled, and I [BLEEP] you not, "Connect Everything."

• 40:18Speaker 01

  That's the slogan for our podcast, right there. PTFO, subtitle, "Connect Everything."

• 40:24Pablo Torre?

  And now, we might make the connection of who Mike Finley is talking to in this keynote panel.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Come on. It's one of the reasons we've been working so closely with Boingo for so long. For many years now, I think you've been involved in this project over three years. We just put the shovel in the ground. And it's the idea that if we don't get the foundation right, none of the rest of it's going to work efficiently.

• 40:45Speaker 06

  Right. So, I mean, that's a perfect cue, obviously, for Boingo. But that is why we think that a converged, neutral network where you're...

• 40:53Pablo Torre?

  You will notice there that Gillian Zucker estimated that the Clippers were closely with Boingo for over three years.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:00Pablo Torre?

  So again, this "Connect Everything" keynote was in October of 2021. That means, Amin, let's do some math here. Over three years would mean they were working together closely as of?

• 41:11Speaker 01

  2018, pre-pandemic, folks.

• 41:14Pablo Torre?

  A timeline which also came as news to at least one former Boingo executive that we interviewed, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the inner workings of the company, because this executive, Amin, said this.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  All that they would tell us was they had a deal with the Clippers, and it was a consulting agreement, and it meant that we were going to get the business as the Intuit Dome was built. It's not uncommon for Boingo to offer upfront money as a sponsorship to get a deal, or like sometimes they'll offer to pay a nonprofit at the stadium or airport or whoever's in cahoots with, and that's how they get around that.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  Hey, you buy a table at my charity event, I'll buy a table at your charity event. So it makes it look like we're doing business at all these different charity events. We wouldn't do business in our stadium with a company if they did not buy season tickets or they did not do some sort of corporate sponsorship deal. That is normal.

• 42:10Pablo Torre?

  But this, Amin, is what may be abnormal as our source continues.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  But a couple times, they mentioned that the Clippers had paid us. And that's not normal, because usually, we're paying them. This all happened very quickly, and then nobody talked about it. Usually, they would play the "All I do is win, win, win" song at our meetings. They didn't do that for the Clippers.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  This is great. These are some great quotes.

• 42:41Pablo Torre?

  But in terms of what Kawhi Leonard himself knew here, guys, a very popular theory is that he had no idea.

• 42:50Speaker 05

  Kawhi Leonard did not have any knowledge of this salary cap circumvention that was going on?

• 42:55Pablo Torre?

  About any of this salary cap circumvention stuff, of course. That it was simply his Uncle Dennis docu-signing Kawhi's name twice across the $28 million KL2 Aspire LLC contract that we have obtained and published, and that Uncle Dennis's nephew additionally, and purely obliviously, also got pledged $20 million in equity from Aspiration to do nothing. But now, it is worth us finally, finally diving in to the one and only instance we could find of Kawhi actually showing up for any of his three secret additional no-show jobs worth $18 million and counting, because this, David, happened when?

• 43:40Speaker 04

  This looks like a Facebook post from September 21, 2022. "Special thanks to Boingo and Kawhi Leonard, two-time Finals MVP, two-time World Champion, member of the LA Clippers, for coming out to this event. #BoingoForMilitary, #KawhiClippers, #ClipperNation, #CampPendleton."

• 44:06Pablo Torre?

  The account that's posting this on Facebook is MCCSCampPendleton, Amin. And how would you describe the photos, for those not watching on YouTube or Apple Podcasts? What's going on here?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  We have Kawhi signing an item for three servicemen. "Thank you for your service." And then the other photo is, it looks like a single solitary serviceman receiving the item and turning away. But in the background, Pablo, we see servicemen all lined up in uniform, hats on, fatigue, camel, all that stuff, lined up clearly to meet the one and only Kawhi Leonard.

• 44:41Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, and these photos from late September 2022, just to do the accounting here, again, not posted by Boingo Wireless, but by the Marine Corps Community Services Division at Camp Pendleton. This is, look it up on Google Maps, we'll show you the map here, about a half hour drive from Kawhi's estate, his very nice estate in San Diego County. And just the number of likes this post has, Amin. This lone endorsement appearance he made, how many likes does it have as of today?

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Well, it went crazy, folks, because a grand total of 119 people felt compelled to hit that thumbs up like button on this Facebook post. Also, you got six comments and four shares.

• 45:26Pablo Torre?

  Not exactly mass advertising. As one former Boingo employee, directly familiar with Kawhi's sponsorship, put it to us, David.

• 45:35Speaker 04

  "I can't remember us having a celebrity or a basketball player come and do that type of thing. To be honest, that was honestly the only time. So I really don't know why we would partner with him to do that." End quote.

• 45:49Pablo Torre?

  What another person familiar with the planning of this event told us is that a Boingo executive had explained to them that Kawhi was showing up at this US military base, quote, "out of the goodness of his own heart," because he cares about the military. But what we here did, a pal of Victoria finds out, when presented with this set of facts, is, in early August, file Freedom of Information requests of the, I guess it's now called the Department of War?

• 46:17Speaker 01

  No, we're not doing that.

• 46:19Pablo Torre?

  Well, what we did with these FOIA requests resulted in more than 100 pages of emails, internal emails from Camp Pendleton, the first of which, Amin, is now in the folder in front of you.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I'm so excited to read this. Sent Friday, August 5th, 2022. Subject: NBA Player/Boingo Event?

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Question mark, question mark? Hi, redacted.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Would you be open to Boingo bringing an NBA player to one of your centers in early/mid September? It's a Clippers player. Leonard something? Question mark? LOL. Maybe something similar to the Padres with a food and a meet and greet. Have a great day. Redacted: Corporate Sales Manager, Camp Pendleton.

• 47:19Pablo Torre?

  To which a Marine program coordinator responds to this whole Leonard something LOL email, David, in your folder, right on your little glasses.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  Yes, we would be open to that. Even maybe SMP, which means Single Marine Program, even maybe SMP co-host it at a fitness center and tie it in a little three-point shootout for basketball or something.

• 47:47Pablo Torre?

  But the sales manager for this base writes back, I mean?

• 47:51Speaker 01

  I think she wants smaller and more intimate for the meet and greet and not overwhelming. Though if 500 ADs show up, no worries, LOL. Have a great day.

• 48:03Pablo Torre?

  AD, of course, meaning active duty. Um, all of this was being planned in August of 2022. That's the chain that we're reading here. This is weeks before the September event at Camp Pendleton and weeks before an additional Boingo event with Kawhi that apparently got planned for September at San Diego State, according to an email written by a Boingo marketing manager, although a spokesperson for San Diego State's Athletics Department tells us now that there was, quote, "100% nothing scheduled for Boingo or Kawhi at San Diego State." Period. Never. End quote.

• 48:39Pablo Torre?

  But that email from Boingo to the military also did something else. It acknowledged the quote-unquote "last minute organizing" here. And so, as we try to suss out, why is this happening? What is the driving force behind this event with the troops and Kawhi Leonard? What a former Boingo employee told us is that on August 26th, 2022, Boingo and its sales team had a meeting scheduled with the Clippers. Quote, "Steve's people," specifically, end quote. And this former employee, David, then provided a screenshot of a Boingo calendar for that same date where the meeting is titled?

• 49:21Speaker 04

  Boingo Friday Forum. Teams Live. Open. Mike Finley. Clippers Financials follows that meeting.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 49:32Pablo Torre?

  This

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 49:34Pablo Torre?

  former employee also provided a photo to us. I mean, this was taken in August of 2022 as well, from inside of Boingo, of a couple of fun tchotchkes. Here are some golf balls that are patterned as what?

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Basketball. And so they're painted like basketballs with like the paneling and the seams and everything, but also they're branded. Ladies and gentlemen, these are Boingo golf ball basketballs.

• 50:00Pablo Torre?

  Right. Orange, dimpled, has the Wi-Fi full-service thing going over the eye. And what the sources inside of Boingo told us is that they recall the company suddenly making these to celebrate, apparently, this deal with the Clippers in 2022, in August, September. Although, you may recall Gillian Zucker telling her old friend, Boingo CEO Mike Finley at Connect Everything, that they had been working together, I mean, since when?

• 50:31Speaker 01

  It's been three years, so since 2018.

• 50:35Pablo Torre?

  A Clippers spokesperson, for the record, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But one theory floating around the group chats of current and former Boingo executives as to why the company was suddenly rushing to do something, anything, David, comes from a former Boingo marketing executive who told us this.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  Quote, "Something clearly spooked them in 2022. There were meetings with Steve and his people, and then this random event came together. It is really gross that Boingo would use their military connections to do this. Those Marines had no idea they were participating in fraud?" Question mark? Close quote.

• 51:21Pablo Torre?

  A public information officer for Camp Pendleton did not provide any further comment when asked about all of this.

• 51:29Pablo Torre?

  But when you keep reading these emails from Camp Pendleton, there is yet another kind of awkward dynamic to Kawhi's autograph session from September of 2022. This besides the fact that the military base's corporate sales manager apparently had never heard of him, which is that a bunch of the messages that we got are from people working at Camp Pendleton who were genuinely complaining about how they think the base's internet service isn't good. They were asking whether they can get Boingo, which appeared suddenly pretty interested in them, to actually fix it. To which someone replies, David?

• 52:08Speaker 04

  You will see below Boingo wants 12K from us to install some equipment so our internet work correctly.

• 52:16Pablo Torre?

  You will recall that Mike Finley, CEO of Boingo, and Gillian Zucker, President of Business at the Clippers, talked about, yeah, the big budget ambitions that they were gonna pursue together. And this takes us to what someone else in this email chain quite pessimistically replies, which is that Boingo had, quote, "a limited budget here," which, according to multiple former Boingo marketing executives, in the case of the military, appears true. They recall that the company's military marketing budget for the entire year across bases all around the world was about $150,000.

• 52:55Pablo Torre?

  And so instead, about the best that Boingo could do for the troops, I mean, was this flyer.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Boingo Wi-Fi meet and greet. Two-time world champion, two-time Finals MVP, member of the LA Clippers, Kawhi Leonard.

• 53:11Pablo Torre?

  David, you love deliverables in a contract. As for the deliverables for Kawhi Leonard as part of this meet and greet, you know, how long, for instance, he had to meet and or greet? What you will find next in your folder is a sponsorship contract on Marine Corps Letterhead.

• 53:29Speaker 04

  MCCS, which is Marine Corps Community Services, shall provide a active-duty center event for Kawhi Leonard appearance on September 21, 2022, from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM.

• 53:46Pablo Torre?

  Meaning that Kawhi, in other words, David, was in and out within?

• 53:49Speaker 04

  Two hours.

• 53:50Pablo Torre?

  Although, according to Boingo's run-of-show for the event, which we also obtained in his FOIA request, Kawhi, more specifically, was set to greet the Marines at the event location at 11:30 AM and then be back in his car by 12:30 PM. So really, I mean, we're talking about how much meeting and greeting?

• 54:12Speaker 04

  An hour. When we went to meet troops overseas, guys, we did a ton of meet and greets with the troops with long lines, and we would sign and do stuff for about an hour. That, that really does make sense to me.

• 54:24Pablo Torre?

  And for that hour of meeting and greeting, it turns out Kawhi did not show up to greet Camp Pendleton alone. Among the more than 100 additional photos that we also obtained from the meet and greet through FOIA, taken by a military photographer, you guys may also recognize this guy.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Oh, it's Uncle Dennis, wearing a very form-fitting KL2 t-shirt. I believe that's a New Balance shirt. Yes, it is. I see the logo on the top of the shoulder right there. It's a New Balance KL2 shirt and a white belt.

• 55:00Pablo Torre?

  But that's not all, because if you look at this photo now of Kawhi signing the hat of an officer who was in the receiving line, and we enhance

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 55:11Pablo Torre?

  Look at the guy sitting behind them to the right. The person you see, I mean?

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's Jeremy Castleberry, man.

• 55:20Pablo Torre?

  Who is Jeremy Castleberry, Ameen?

• 55:23Speaker 01

  So Jeremy Castleberry, if I'm not mistaken, Pablo, this is, this is how, ladies and gentlemen at home, this is how you know I'm going off the top of the head. I believe his connection to Kawhi dates back to their time at an academic institution known as San Diego State University.

• 55:41Pablo Torre?

  Well, you are on top of this, but also undershooting it, because it actually started when they were 14 years old. At Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, they played AAU together, they played high school ball together, they did play, in fact, to your credit, extemporaneously at San Diego State. Castleberry was a walk-on.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  But at the time of this photo, is on the staff with the LA Clippers, on their coaching staff, you say, well, where did he come from? Well, he was on the staff with the Toronto Raptors prior to that. And if you're asking, well, when did he make the transition to the Raptors to the Clippers? Oh, I would place it probably summer of 2019. Did anything else happen then? Ah, you know, I guess Kawhi Leonard signed with the Clippers.

• 56:28Pablo Torre?

  And as for where he is now, David, I will give you one guess as to what just happened this month.

• 56:36Speaker 04

  Oh, Canada.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  He had a great year there before. They really liked his work. They said, you know what? Come on back. We'd like to have you back a part of this.

• 56:47Pablo Torre?

  And that's why I think actually what's most interesting is that Jeremy Castleberry is not just Kawhi's guy, has been for so long, decades. It's that he's a Clippers assistant coach at this event.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  He's an employee.

• 57:02Pablo Torre?

  He's an employee of the team. And that brings us to just another face that I want to show you, in addition to Uncle Dennis Robertson and Jeremy Castleberry. Because this guy in the sunglasses here?

• 57:15Pablo Torre?

  Standing next to Kawhi and another service member, do you guys have a guess as to who that is?

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Is that our guy? That's not Mike Finley, is it?

• 57:22Pablo Torre?

  That would be Boingo CEO slash friend of Clippers executive Gillian Zucker for 30 years. Her guy, Mike Finley.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  There it is.

• 57:32Pablo Torre?

  And so we asked a Boingo spokeswoman, why Boingo's C-suite would have showed up at this event, why Boingo wouldn't post any of this on their own social media channels, despite a person involved with Boingo's planning, who told us, quote, "I don't know why they wouldn't post it," end quote. And whether Kawhi Leonard did indeed sign all these autographs out of the goodness of his own heart, for free. We are trying to get to the bottom of why certain things were never disclosed. And inside of that Pandora's box, there are lots of very relevant questions that the federal government might be interested in as it concerns a possible conspiracy to commit securities fraud. And by the way, I should say here that for the record,

• 58:18Pablo Torre?

  Boingo PR did not respond. But as you can imagine, we did not take that lack of comment, here at Palatore Finds Out, for an answer. And so David, what we did was obtain the following document, which was attached to this autograph signing. This did not come from a FOIA request, but rather from inside Boingo's accounting department. And Amin, it is inside of your folder. For an hour of meeting and greeting for the troops, Kawhi Leonard, 30 minutes from his house, got what?

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Total contract value, $672,000. Date? September 1st, 2022.

• 59:07Pablo Torre?

  Prepaid. David, just made sure that hit the account before you even pull up to the base. And so what this also means, just to keep track here, right? We've been talking about timeline and ticking clocks. What this also means is that even beside the amount, we have now found evidence that Kawhi Leonard was in fact paid more in September of 2022 than just the $18 million that Wachtel Lipton said he received from Boingo Locked In and Daktronics by August of 2021. Right? And perhaps therefore, Amin, that statute of limitations that you were asking about, perhaps that clock might be ticking a bit longer.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Perhaps.

• 59:55Speaker 04

  It's hugely important to keep in mind that it's not that the number that should make anybody's hair stand up on the back of their head. It is what would be the reason for Boingo to actually agree to that? Because a player getting 600-plus grand to go make an appearance? I'm not going to tell you that that doesn't happen because I've seen it happen. I've made it happen. What I am going to say is, what's the payoff? What is the provenance of such an agreement? Why would Boingo do it? Because they want to be associated with the military? Because that is part of their community budget? Where they get associated with community events and troop-related events?

• 1:00:35Pablo Torre?

  Well, well.

• 1:00:36Speaker 04

  But it certainly makes it seem as though, given the timeline, that it is related to the Clippers? No question about it. But I assume Boingo is going to have to come up with a better answer than, yeah, Kawhi was worth 600 grand to us for the hour.

• 1:00:53Pablo Torre?

  They didn't know who he was at the base.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Leonard something, question mark, lol? Maybe he can do a three-point contest. They literally just, like, yeah, sure, whatever.

• 1:01:06Pablo Torre?

  $672,000 for the hour for a post that was not posted by Boingo, but was posted by the base for 119 likes and a couple of shares. And I should say as well, as we acknowledge here, that Kawhi's agent, his new agent Harrison Gaines and his uncle, Uncle Dennis, are not responding to our request for comment, that we did review a couple of other Boingo documents, including a strategy deck from inside of Boingo that attests to the fact that, yes, they had a relationship with the Department of Defense, the Department of War. But I don't know if that explains the next thing that is in your folder, David, from inside of Boingo's accounting department as well. What does this document say?

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  Clip Agreement. Total contract value, $1,213,700 from September 1st of 2022.

• 1:02:06Pablo Torre?

  So here is another document.

• 1:02:11Pablo Torre?

  $1.2 million for Clip Agreement, signed the same day as Leonard sponsorship. And unfortunately, as we do some math here, Amin, the folks at Boingo Wireless did not immediately provide any further context for these two financial documents as well, making us feel a little bit like Wachtel Lipton. But given that they were paid on the same day and given that they're called Leonard Sponsorship and Clip Agreement, it does not appear to be coincidence. And in the spirit of connecting everything, in terms of how much Steve Ballmer's Clippers might be behind all of this, here's where some fun math can be done for a second. Because I just want to note

• 1:02:54Pablo Torre?

  that if you add up $672,000 to $1.213 million and a little change, what do you guys get?

• 1:03:05Speaker 04

  That's right around the 1.9 there, Pablo.

• 1:03:09Pablo Torre?

  That's about a 1.887,500, a 1.9. And if you've been watching a 16 or 17 part series over the last year, that number might sound familiar. Because in September of 2022, guys, remember that date? September of 2022? Kawhi Leonard was separately do something else, which we discussed back in part one of this series.

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  That's when Dennis Wong.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Dennis Wong?

• 1:03:39Speaker 04

  The non-interim governor of the Clippers made his, what I seem to recall was around a $2 million investment in Aspiration. A company that was crumbling with auditors quitting because it was such a house of cards.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  And a company at which his daughter worked.

• 1:03:59Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  So it's not even like, ah, I'm not, I don't have a pulse on what's happening in this business I'm going to invest $2 million in. His daughter worked there.

• 1:04:09Pablo Torre?

  Dennis Wong, for the record, has not responded to our request for comment. And neither has Dennis Wong's daughter. But you will accurately remember that, yes, in September of 2022, Kawhi Leonard was owed his quarterly payment of $1.75 million from a carbon credits company called Aspiration that had already gone broke. Perhaps you've heard of it. And that at some point, Clippers co-owner Dennis Wong swoops in to pay 1.99 to Aspiration. Kawhi gets paid nine days later, the 1.75, finally, as Uncle Dennis Robertson, as we now know from the Wachtel Report, was not shy about making demands,

• 1:04:52Pablo Torre?

  demands which led to Steve Ballmer and Gillian Zucker pledging to, quote,

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  follow through on his promise.

• 1:05:00Pablo Torre?

  To be, quote,

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  collective workers to try to help Kawhi achieve his financial goals.

• 1:05:09Pablo Torre?

  And so whether this was the Q3 payment or the Q4 payment, Kawhi had payments due in September and December of 2022, all I know is that this seems like something that might be worth connecting.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Connect everything.

• 1:05:22Pablo Torre?

  Or maybe, maybe that's just a bridge too far. I don't know.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Ah, I see what you did there.

• 1:05:29Pablo Torre?

  But there is one more note, guys, before you have to go catch your respective flights and log on to captive wifi. Because I would be remiss if I didn't inform you that Boingo Wireless, very conveniently, did post a press release itself in late July of this year, 2026, as the NBA's investigators and the feds and us were all closing in. Amin?

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Boingo Wireless to expand high-speed wifi for military families at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

• 1:06:05Pablo Torre?

  They did it.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:07Pablo Torre?

  After all those emails, after all of that wondering, they fixed the busted wifi at Camp Pendleton, which had been a request, apparently, since 2022. And I just got to say, we've done a lot on this series, a whole lot since we published part one. But Boingo Wireless finally investing in wifi at Camp Pendleton? I don't know that that happens if we don't start this whole weird project together.

• 1:06:40Speaker 04

  It's of more value than a planted tree. I'll tell you that.

• 1:06:45Pablo Torre?

  David Samson, Amin Elhassan, I just want to thank you and your respective wireless providers for your service.

• 1:06:54Speaker 04

  I don't deserve that.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Stolen valor.

• 1:07:05Pablo Torre?

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

• 1:07:11Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.