Steve Ballmer's Victim Impact, the Man Who Prosecuted Aspiration and the Abacus of Incarceration: Kawhi-Gate, Part X

As the Clippers await punishment, their owner is big mad at Pablo — and appears worried about what Aspiration's founder might have told the NBA. So Pablo and David Samson (finally) sit down with a special guest: Lou Manzo, the former DOJ prosecutor who investigated this whole tree-planting fraud in the first place, to go inside the courtroom, comb through footnotes and focus on the end game. (Additional reporting by Anita Bennett) 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 • Subscribe to Pablo's newsletter https://pablo.show/ for exclusive access, documents and invites • Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson" https://pod.link/1483011704 (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.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Who's Steve Ballmer?

• 0:09Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

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• 1:19Pablo Torre?

  How tall are you, Lou?

• 1:21Speaker 03

  I used to be 6'3", but I'm shrinking.

• 1:23Pablo Torre?

  Shrinking?

• 1:23Speaker 03

  I'm shrinking already. I'm old. Forty-one.

• 1:27Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's all falling apart.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  I plan on being 6'3" when I'm 61.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  Okay, okay.

• 1:32Pablo Torre?

  You're gonna get that leg lengthening surgery?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  I thought about it. Turns out it hurts. And it doesn't work.

• 1:38Pablo Torre?

  We're not here to talk about breaking your own legs to get a couple more inches, although there is certainly a metaphor in there somewhere for us. I want to point out that, like, on screen right now, David looks like a hobbit next to Lou Manzo, who looks like he's Captain America.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Because they do it, just so you know.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  I know, I know.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Welcome to the studio. But the way they work it is, my chair never goes higher.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Because it's some sort of power thing with Pablo and with the guests. They like to have it, and if you look at the picture of the three of us, it's an outrage.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Lyndon Johnson did the same thing.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  I'm fine.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  And Pablo is right up there with him in terms of great Americans.

• 2:14Pablo Torre?

  Our guest of honor is here, David. It's rare we get a new character introduced into this series. I spend my life combing through documents, talking to all of these people that it turns out have become federal witnesses in an investigation that was started midway through 2023. And the name that keeps on coming up belongs to the guy at the table with us. Welcome, Lou Manzo, former DOJ prosecutor.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  You took his call.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  I saw a LinkedIn message among a lot of spam. And I laughed to myself. I said, is this the real Pablo Torre?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  And here you are.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  And here I am, yes. But it's good to see you in person.

• 2:53Pablo Torre?

  Slightly different movie I was living in. A bit more dramatic, but it's true.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  I was walking my dog. I saw the message. I screenshotted it, sent it to a friend with LOLZ and said, I was wondering if he was going to reach out.

• 3:10Pablo Torre?

  Meanwhile, I think we're doing [bleep] in that scene in Heat. Finally, sitting across the table.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:17Pablo Torre?

  I want to establish a couple of things here, which is Lou has listened to the episodes. You know David Samson, you know me, you have been. I guess, have you enjoyed listening?

• 3:26Speaker 03

  I was shocked when I heard the first one because I hadn't thought about this case in a long time and I kind of laughed to myself. So I'm pretty up to date on everything and have enjoyed your journalism. There's not a lot of real investigative journalists out there.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Can we set one ground roll? Can you try not to feed his ego too much?

• 3:45Pablo Torre?

  No, stop it.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  If possible.

• 3:46Pablo Torre?

  Hold on.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Because people come in and out of this room and that's what they do.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  And we're stuck holding the bag.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Long after you leave.

• 3:55Pablo Torre?

  This is a special episode in our Aspiration series in a key sense because David ostensibly, you've been my attorney, but now we have Lou.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  Who I'm definitely not your attorney, just to be clear about that.

• 4:09Pablo Torre?

  But you are.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  An avid listener.

• 4:11Pablo Torre?

  You're an avid listener, but more than that, you're a character in the story that predates us by years. I should say, we are waiting still to find out if the NBA's investigation into the Clippers, into Aspiration, into Kawhi Leonard is going to turn up anything that we have not covered in our. Now 10 parts of this investigation. We're gonna ostensibly find out at some point whether Adam Silver will punish the richest owner in the NBA and/or the superstar who just had an all-NBA season for the Clippers and is now rumored to be one of the most valuable trade targets in the league, absent maybe NBA punishment. But the thing that the NBA has also been waiting on is an event that I've been monitoring, waiting for, for about the last year.

• 4:53Pablo Torre?

  And it has to do with the guy that Steve Ballmer is most concerned about. This person is not me, to be very clear about this. It is the guy by the name of what, David? I'm gonna say his first name could be Joe.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  So joining me now is Joe Sandberg. And Joe's got a great career track record, not only in business, but also in fighting for things like the Earn Income Tax Credit and politics. Joe, welcome to the program.

• 5:23Pablo Torre?

  Thanks for having me.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, Joe, some folks have even compared you to Howard Schultz because you both grew up poor and you both did well for yourselves. And there's been some speculation that you might both run for president. Okay? So before I get to Howard, let me ask you, okay? Might you run for president?

• 5:45Pablo Torre?

  Maybe. Well, even more than that, Joe Sandberg, the guy that Ballmer did nine figures of business with in totality across personal investments and sponsorship deals and carbon credit purchases, the co-founder of Aspiration, who has been, of course, now on the record as pleading guilty to wire fraud. He's been indicted and awaiting sentencing. And we're gonna get inside the courtroom, by the way, to preview the prison sentencing of Joe Sandberg. We had a reporter there in that courthouse in LA. But we are talking with the guy at the table who launched the federal investigation into Aspiration. Thanks, Pablo.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Quite an introduction.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Did it just come on your desk? I'm fascinated by this.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  You just walked into work one day and all right, I got 20 things I gotta do.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  So there's some things that I just can't talk about. But I can talk about kind of what's going on now. I've been out of DOJ for a couple of years and can can talk generally about sentencing and cooperation and do some TV reading for you. But I did start this case.

• 6:44Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, it's kind of like when on ESPN you see Rex Ryan commenting on the Jets.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  But I think it's fair to ask and for you to say when you start a case like this, are you thinking about sort of where it's going to end? Will you be there for the whole thing?

• 6:59Speaker 03

  It was a very interesting case, one of my more interesting ones that I did at DOJ. Anytime you've got allegations of a financial fraud, it's going to be interesting. Obviously, there's some details of it that that you guys have caught on to that are more interesting than than your average.

• 7:15Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, and I just realized that I compared Lou to a guy with a foot fetish.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  I was wearing loafers today and I almost took them off.

• 7:23Pablo Torre?

  Get comfy, get comfy. I do want to present the bio, though, because Lou is a couple of years out of the DOJ. And Lou started off, David, as a violent crime and sex prosecutor at the US Attorney's Office, spent about a decade at the Department of Justice, becoming a trial attorney in the fraud section at Main Justice. And Lou, you worked on everything from opioid over prescription cases to healthcare fraud to large scale market manipulation cases. And you left the DOJ to become a partner at Beveridge and Diamond, focusing on white collar investigations and criminal defense.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Needed to earn more money. It's a very common sort of, it's a common path and it's a great path.

• 7:59Pablo Torre?

  It's not like there's any chaos happening currently.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Everyone needs a defense.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  And I should say, my opinions today are my own. My GC would be happy if I didn't say that.

• 8:08Pablo Torre?

  What I can say on my end is that this started in about mid 2023, when two aspiration employees filed a confidential 11-page whistleblower complaint with the federal government under penalty of perjury. And Lou was not my source on how I obtained and published excerpts of this in the last episode we did, part nine. But it is important for me to observe here at the top that this whistleblower complaint, which was filed years before I got ahold of it, is something that Lou would have seen. And because of its filing, it helped launch the federal investigation that brings us here today. And so, David, for people who did not watch Part 9, would you please open your folder and just remember for us

• 8:52Pablo Torre?

  the key paragraph relevant to our interests, to the NBA's interests. This comes under a subsection titled, "Examples of Aspirations Fraud", where the two whistleblowers allege, under penalty of perjury, that the Clippers used a $32 million account to pay for carbon credits, past agreements with the Clippers, and, quote,

• 9:11Speaker 01

  "Even to pay Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard an incentivized bonus to circumvent the NBA's salary cap disguised as an organic marketing sponsorship agreement."

• 9:24Pablo Torre?

  So Lou, I want to ask about this generally. Whistleblower complaints and the importance of them as a matter of how the DOJ functions. For people who don't understand what a document like this even is, how significant it would be, how can you help explain and decode what they are?

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. DOJ initiates cases probably with three main ways. Disaster, it gets investigated, plane crash, explosion, injury, something like that. Those are some examples. Statistical analysis. So, a lot of healthcare cases are generated by looking at Medicare and Medicaid data and then looking for outliers and seeing if those outliers make sense. So when I was doing opioid cases, there are good reasons why some doctors might prescribe lots of opioids. They're working with cancer patients, end of life. There's also many occasions where there's no good reason for a doctor to be dispensing large amounts of opioids. And so that's how another lead source happens. And then the third, probably most significant way is through whistleblowers, either who walk in to DOJ and say they've got information, or who file a KEY TAM.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  And then that information gets its way over to the DOJ criminal side.

• 10:32Pablo Torre?

  And this one was filed first to the Securities and Exchange Commission, then making its way to the DOJ, to the CFTC as well, according to my reporting. And it's also worth noting perhaps that according to various talking heads, where certainly not me, Kawhi Leonard has also been described as both an injury case and a disaster at times.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  You don't have to comment. Why are you the attorney's attorney now? I'm trying to just help him settle in. You're a lot, Pablo. And for people who just walk into it, right? It's you have to just get your sea legs. Yeah, yeah.

• 11:06Pablo Torre?

  So in general, again, a question, because you are the person who, of course, saw all of this before I did, who studied all of this, vetted all of this before I did. Could a salary cap or convention scheme by a sports owner with a fraudulent team sponsor, he was also a major investor in, could that be relevant to the DOJ's investigation of the person suspected of running that fraud?

• 11:30Speaker 03

  So, speaking in generalities, DOJ Justice Manual says prosecutors should go after the most serious and readily provable offense. That's just black letter law, that's what every prosecutor is told to do, and that most serious readily provable offense is typically the easiest to prove fraud.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  But what's interesting to me is the information that you had in front of you at the time. You're weighing it, and you're looking for the easiest to prove, and I say easy in quotes, but also the most serious. So when you're facing fraud, or someone, let's just say what it is, you're taking money and you're using it in ways that may not be legal, and it may be disappearing, you could think Ponzi scheme, you could think fraud, whatever you want. And then NBA salary cap, if you are DOJ looking at those two, and I don't want to speak for you, so please, you're looking at those two to go by the letter of what your job is, salary cap would be put over here because you've got a big fat fraud right in front

• 12:27Speaker 01

  of you that is provable, serious, and would just take its place, I would think, before salary cap or convention.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  And again, if this wasn't Podcast Court, I could confirm or deny that statement.

• 12:41Pablo Torre?

  But I think what's interesting is that in the complaint, of course, it is both. The roadmap laid out has all of this mentioned under penalty perjury in writing years before I ever heard about any of this. But the good news today is that we have a new letter, a different letter, that I would love to decode with Lou, in his unique capacity to have expertise on this subject. And the writer of this letter, via his legal representatives, happens to be, I want to get this name correct here, yeah, happens to be one Stephen Ballmer. So I think there might be some value in the analysis.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  Owner of the Clippers. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, yeah. Aware. I didn't know if you could say that you know that. I am a Celtics fan. I should disclose that.

• 13:40Pablo Torre?

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• 14:14Speaker 05

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• 15:19Pablo Torre?

  So I do want to talk about the idea of Steve Ballmer as a victim through the lens of a concept that I think the average listener should understand as well, Lou, which is the victim impact statement. Because Joe Samberg is actually proceeding in real life towards a sentencing hearing out in Los Angeles, the Central District of California, and victim impact statements have been submitted. And what are they?

• 15:43Speaker 03

  So it's just a way to inform the court of what the victim thinks should be a just outcome. And some victims, quite frankly, don't think somebody should go to jail. They think, you know, that this case should move on, or they've apologized, or they don't believe in incarceration. There's many reasons why a victim doesn't want somebody to go to jail. And other people, other victims, want somebody to go away for the rest of their life. And so the victim impact statements are just generally a way for the court to become aware of what the people who are affected feel should happen. It has no binding control in the court, but it's something that a court does take into account.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  It differs how much they take it into account.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Obviously. And it really is part of a file. And it really, to us, it's always been looked at as a CYA in that both DOJ and the judge, the sentencing judge, they get to say, yeah, we reviewed every victim impact statement. We reviewed it. We took everything into account, and then we did what we wanted to do according to the guidelines. And in this case, it's just funny that a victim, in quotes, the Steve Ballmer as victim, that's part of his narrative. And we've talked about it on these episodes. He needs that to be part of his narrative. To me, he needed to file this statement to continue the narrative of him being a victim of Joe Samberg.

• 17:01Pablo Torre?

  My only regret as we get into what he filed is that this is not a victim impact podcast that he recorded, which I think the DOJ should encourage as a matter of the evolution of the medium. But this one was written to the Honorable Stephen V. Wilson in the US District Court in the Central District of California. And I first heard of this, actually, on April 22nd, when ESPN obtained a copy of it, apparently, before it was published for public consumption. And the letter said, quote, "It had been filed in court, according to a source with knowledge of the situation." So ESPN got a copy of it early. The author, of course, one Stephen Ballmer, who, through his high-powered attorneys, David, wrote this. According to the version, Ballmer then tweeted out--

• 17:44Pablo Torre?

  For all of us to read on April 23rd.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  That's some kind of impact statement when you tweet it out, isn't it? That's exactly what DOJ wanted. Mr. Ballmer's connection to Sandberg is what caused a former talking head and television personality Pablo Torre to launch a relentless, vitriolic public campaign against Mr. Ballmer, alleging principally based on anonymized gossip, as well as on a misapprehension or intentional disregard of the facts that Mr. Ballmer conspired with Sandberg and aspiration to engage in the circumvention of the NBA's salary cap by virtue of an endorsement deal between aspiration and one of the team's star players, Kawhi Leonard.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  I'm just laughing because that, that pretty much has never appeared in a victim impact statement before. What the hell?

• 18:42Speaker 03

  It's unusual to take a shot at a podcaster in a victim impact statement, or talking it, and I think you're more than that.

• 18:47Pablo Torre?

  Thank you, Lou. I am, if nothing else, a current talking head still on television. Fact checking is important here.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  So what I did when I saw this is I pictured the judge reading it. And reading this, I can't believe this got approved by his lawyer, because I don't view any judge as reading this and saying, oh, you're a victim.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Any attorney has to take in a larger system of litigation that's going on. So there's a civil case, there's probably other cases that I'm sure Melvany is considering, and then there's the criminal case that's going sentencing. So this might not have been just for the judge.

• 19:22Pablo Torre?

  I dare say it might have been for the court of public opinion.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Or the court of Adam Silver.

• 19:28Pablo Torre?

  Well, this takes me to the other fact checking matter, which is that the reason I started looking into the story was not because of Joe Sandberg. It was because mechanically Kawhi Leonard got paid millions of dollars as part of a no-show endorsement deal with the Clippers team sponsor that was never announced by anyone, while simultaneously being paid more than four times as much as all of the other Hollywood A-listers' deals combined. Like, that's the reason I got into this. It's funny now to be bankshotted through Joe Sandberg, but, you know, I want to point this out. You're trained to read what is very intentionally said and what is not said in the paragraph that David read as a matter of just factual concern.

• 20:13Pablo Torre?

  Did anything deny my reporting that cap circumvention by the Clippers took place?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Certainly not in my reading, though I do like that it was principally based on anonymized gossip. That is a very carefully crafted sentence by an attorney. Obviously, when you say the word principally, that leaves room. That is not completely. That is not fully.

• 20:34Pablo Torre?

  Right. 3,000 pages of internal documents could be in the minority.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  100%. So principally. And then the gossip part, it could be referring to the jockey lerty, the nature of some of the episodes. It could be referring, it's funny when he says that sources.

• 20:48Pablo Torre?

  Right. Our two anonymous whistleblowers under penalty of perjury gossiping.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  It's just a funny paragraph. It's a very interesting paragraph to me.

• 20:58Speaker 03

  It's unusual.

• 20:59Pablo Torre?

  The first statement we got in the reporting, by the way, because David, you remember this. We were so young, so much taller back then. It was September 2nd, 2025. And Lou, you have a quote to read, actually, because this is from the Clippers' public relations department.

• 21:16Speaker 03

  I've always dreamed of opening a folder on your show.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  Okay. Neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to aspiration. And a contrary assertion is provably false.

• 21:33Pablo Torre?

  Provably false. When we got that, Dave, if you ever recall, I was like, holy [BLEEP].

• 21:38Speaker 01

  This is awesome.

• 21:39Pablo Torre?

  They're about to prove that we're false. And that statement has not been repeated a single time in the seven months since, including in that letter that we're citing here, the victim impact letter.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  So that was just from a timing standpoint. The show came out September 3rd. He was asked for a comment, and then the Clippers released this the day before the show. And what we then waited for was what was provably false. And what happened is that-

• 22:08Pablo Torre?

  They sent a new statement to the rest of the media that didn't have provably false in it.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Like immediately.

• 22:14Pablo Torre?

  So, look, the sentiment, right, takes us back to the present tense. Because Ballmer's victim letter, David, goes on.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  In the immediate wake of the allegations, Mr. Ballmer commissioned a comprehensive internal review of the Clippers' organization and directed his employees at the Clippers and his home office, the Ballmer Group, to participate in and cooperate with the league's inquiries. As part of that review, we, as Mr. Ballmer's attorneys, have contacted Sandberg's attorneys to obtain any relevant information and insights Sandberg may have. But despite repeated requests, Sandberg has refused to share any meaningful information with us or Mr. Ballmer.

• 22:58Pablo Torre?

  I guess, first off, Lou, the weight the federal government might place on a self-commissioned internal review. What does that signify? What does that mean to the DOJ?

• 23:09Speaker 03

  Any internal investigation, generally minimal importance to DOJ. They have their own investigators. They have their own subpoena power, search warrant power, the power to compel arrest, to show up at a grand jury. So, an internal investigation, if it was placed in DOJ's desk, doesn't really mean anything.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  When the owner of the team

• 23:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  is accused, or there's a problem, it's very common for what an owner would do, is say, "All right, we're gonna clean it up. Let's find out exactly what happened. We're gonna make sure it never happens again."

• 23:38Pablo Torre?

  And you've done this.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Yes. Because it's a great PR thing to say that we're doing it, and we don't expect someone like Pablo to come around and basically impugn anything that we find because we know what we're gonna find before we start.

• 23:51Pablo Torre?

  Right. The federal government's powers are vast in comparison to a self-commissioning of all my companies needing to tell me, their boss, what I have done wrong.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  They're even vast to the independent counsel and the independent investigators. Because what Wachtel will do, and they did in the Rozier case, is they hid behind the fact, "Well, you listen, we did the best we could, but hey, they've got subpoena powers. They've got the ability to do way more than we can."

• 24:18Pablo Torre?

  This is Terry Rozier, who was the player the Miami Heat acquired. While, it turns out, surprise, he was under federal investigation, leading to Cash Patel. FBI director at a presser behind a dais announcing as much, making the NBA and Wachtel extraordinarily concerned.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Embarrassed, too.

• 24:36Pablo Torre?

  Anyway, the real meat of the quote here, in my view, it does concern Joe Sandberg refusing to quote "share any meaningful information with Ballmer's legal team," and this is dismaying, David, because the letter continues to point out that Joe Sandberg has decided to cooperate with somebody else.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Sandberg continues to exploit his fraud of Mr. Ballmer for his own benefit, providing information to the NBA in return for a sentencing letter that the league submitted on his behalf. The reliability of Sandberg's information is suspect, given that he has pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges, and the government has made its own determination that he is not credible. Clearly, Sandberg continues to prioritize his own interests over those of his victims in his desperate pursuit of a lighter sentence.

• 25:30Pablo Torre?

  And so, I think it's safe to say, there's a bit of a game within a game being played here, Lou, but as the guy who started the DOJ investigation into Joe Sandberg, Aspirations co-founder, when you first read that, what was your reaction?

• 25:45Speaker 03

  My first reaction was, if a judge read that letter, he would say, "I have no idea what you're talking about right now." It's not, a judge would be calling his clerks, and maybe you're a bit younger, and saying, "What's going on here? I am very confused. What does this have to do with carbon credit offsets and accounting fraud, or wire fraud?"

• 26:08Pablo Torre?

  Right, right.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  It's just not meant for the judge.

• 26:12Pablo Torre?

  Had you seen any example analogous to this?

• 26:15Speaker 03

  In the fraud context, you get fewer victim impact statements, because a lot of times, large-scale fraud is perpetrated against venture capital. Venture capital does not have a great interest in seeing federal prosecutions. They want their losses just to be written off and to move on. So they don't really have an interest in signaling that they made a mistake. So, this is an unprecedented letter, in my opinion, to kind of be going down this road to a federal judge who... You know, may have no information about this issue.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  To me, it makes it even more clear, though, that this letter was actually not intended for the federal judge.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  No, no, I, I think, the only thing you can say, and again, I have no information, no inside information, this is just me, years removed from this case, you know, maybe they were concerned that there was a more fulsome letter coming from the NBA, um, or an interested party that said, you know, that Joe Sandberg has provided very demonstrative, uh, information against Steve Ballmer or the Clippers.

• 27:19Pablo Torre?

  Well, let's now read the letter that Steve Ballmer's letter is referring to when he says that Joe Sandberg has provided information to the NBA in return for a sentencing letter that the league submitted on his behalf, because you're right, if the judge is not scrolling NBA Reddit, he might not appreciate that, oh, wait a minute, the opposite of a victim impact statement has been filed by Wachtel Lipton, by David, our old friend.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  David Anders.

• 27:47Pablo Torre?

  The lead investigator on all of these NBA scandals we've been referencing.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  I don't throw the word friend around like he does, by the way.

• 27:54Pablo Torre?

  Interlocutor in an off the record meeting that we were able to say happened via mutual agreement with David Anders.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  That we made very much on the record.

• 28:03Pablo Torre?

  I think we threaded the needle of ethics there. This statement, Lou, right, so there are the victim impact statements, and then there's the other version, which is what I'm holding in my hand, and this category just to describe generally, what purpose are they supposed to serve?

• 28:20Speaker 03

  Just a letter of support, there's no statutory term for it, but at any sentencing, the family, friends, anyone who wants to support the defendant can submit materials, they can speak up at sentencing, and that's what happens in some cases, not all.

• 28:34Pablo Torre?

  The letter I'm holding in my hand, I, I would like to read this one, because the letterhead from Wachtel Lipton Rosen and Katz is like 60% of the page, a real flex to have the whole masthead at the very top, but there it says, WLRK, April 17th, 2026, to the Honorable Stephen V. Wilson, et cetera, et cetera. Ray, NBA Investigation/LA Clippers is the title, is the subject. Dear Judge Wilson, my name is David Anders and I'm a partner at this law firm. I write with respect to the upcoming sentencing of Joseph Sandberg. In September 2025, the National Basketball Association, NBA, hired my law firm to conduct an investigation, which I have been leading, into potential NBA rules violations, including the LA Clippers basketball team.

• 29:18Pablo Torre?

  In connection with our investigation, we sought Mr. Sandberg's cooperation, which he voluntarily provided. Mr. Sandberg's defense counsel has requested that we advise the court of the nature of Mr. Sandberg's cooperation. Mr. Sandberg sat with us for two in-person interviews, produced documents, and, through his counsel, provided additional information that was relevant to our investigation. In all our dealings with Mr. Sandberg, both directly and through his counsel, he provided information that was consistent with our review of contemporaneous documents and other evidence. Mr. Sandberg's cooperation substantially assisted our investigation, including our ability to develop a more complete understanding of key events. At no time during our dealings with Mr. Sandberg and his counsel

• 30:01Pablo Torre?

  did they seek, nor did we make, any promises in exchange for his cooperation. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Respectfully submitted, David B. Anders.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  My favorite word in that, since we're just talking about favorite words, is when he makes sure that the judge understands he voluntarily, as though Wachtel has the ability to get anyone to talk other than voluntarily. It is the most unnecessary word in a letter of fully unnecessary words, but it's meant to be a triggering word to try to make the judge or whoever's reading it understand, hey, he voluntarily did this.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  My favorite word is substantial assistance. Because that is, you know, that's a term of art that the judge would pick up on. Because what any defendant who's cooperating wants is a 5K, and that is a part of the sentencing guidelines, where if you provide substantial assistance in an investigation... The government and the defense can recommend a departure from the guidelines. And so that is a hot button word. I've never seen a substantial assistance letter from an NBA or any third party. That's that doesn't really carry any weight to the court, I would imagine. But that is a term of art. So it's interesting.

• 31:14Pablo Torre?

  And a 5K, for those not familiar, would be?

• 31:16Speaker 03

  5K is just the sentencing guidelines chapter. Sentencing guidelines are a giant book. You add up the enhancements and you take away points for, you know, kind of positive things. And you get a score.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  It's the abacus of incarceration.

• 31:31Pablo Torre?

  Well, the whole abacus of incarceration, figuring out, are we moving one bead this way or that way because he's participated in effectively a version of podcast court is very interesting to me. And this letter, David, given Ballmer's description in his letter, the victim's letter, I suppose let's ask an operative question that is directly something that we talk about all the time, which is, do you think Joe Sandberg, the co-founder of Aspiration, snitched on Steve Ballmer to the NBA?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  They're trying to figure out, how can we write a report and advise the NBA in a way that the NBA has cover, we have cover, and that we'll be hired again? And what I love about what they're saying here is when you are dealing with Joe Sandberg, Wachtel is not interested in what you're interested about him. It actually is not relevant to them.

• 32:20Pablo Torre?

  You as the DOJ prosecutor.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Sorry, you as DOJ, much like the DOJ may or may not have been interested in the salary cap circumvention. All Wachtel's interested is the circumvention part.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Everyone is playing for their own team. And it's up to the judge in general to figure out, everybody's slant. And these letters are incredibly slanted.

• 32:40Pablo Torre?

  It's notable, like Wachtel, David Andrews is saying, information consistent with our review of contemporary documents and evidence, perhaps noting that whatever Sandberg said to them, they have information elsewhere that they are corroborating. This information with.

• 32:57Speaker 03

  So when I was a prosecutor and somebody is cooperating in an investigation, that cooperation is pretty much worthless unless there's contemporaneous support. Because you can tell, a jury can tell that if someone's just making up a story because they're going to get a reduction in sentencing, they're very highly motivated to say whatever the government wants you to say. And so anytime somebody's going to cooperate, you really need to build a world of evidence to surround that to explain why it's trustworthy.

• 33:24Pablo Torre?

  Well, listen, that's not so dissimilar from what I try to do as a journalist.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  As a podcast.

• 33:29Pablo Torre?

  As a, well, as a former talking head. I thought you called him a journalist. As a former, as a former talking-

• 33:33Speaker 03

  You know, you told me I couldn't give him a free pass.

• 33:34Pablo Torre?

  As a former talking head. I should also clarify that Joe Sandberg, if you're wondering, has never been one of my sources and I've never relied on information directly from Joe Sandberg for any of the reporting that I've done. Not that we haven't reached out to him, because we reached out to Joe Sandberg's lawyer, Mark Bukasey, and he declined to comment. The next thing, though, of interest that Ballmer's attorneys observe elsewhere in their statement, David, is also worth reading.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Mr. Ballmer now understands that without his knowledge and contrary to the truth, Sandberg was touting a close relationship with Mr. Ballmer to other investors and using Mr. Ballmer's investments to attract additional similar investors. This is particularly insidious, given that other than greeting Sandberg at a Clippers game, they had barely spoken. Indeed, Mr. Ballmer recalls speaking to Sandberg only once, and that was only briefly while they both attended a public event.

• 34:34Pablo Torre?

  And so I just want to handle this a bit quickly here because- I can't believe they wrote that. Look, I love how deep in the weeds on the NBA story the victim impact letter is, because it reminds me that as much as Ballmer says he barely spoke to Sandberg before striking a founding partnership and jersey patch deal with the Clippers in September of 2021- That also, that same month, September 2021, according to emails we've obtained, he very quickly closed the deal to invest $50 million of his personal money. And then also gave another $10 million of his personal money in March of '23, even though Ballmer was informed via written disclosures in his purchase agreement that Aspiration was in default and being probed by FINRA and the SEC,

• 35:19Pablo Torre?

  and had its independent auditor recently resign, none of which the letter unfortunately mentions. The thing that keeps coming up, though, among Aspiration employees who tell me they find it ridiculous that Ballmer would be horrified that, quote, "Sandberg used Mr. Ballmer's investments to attract additional similar investors," end quote, is that what Ballmer got was a $300 million founding sponsorship paid by Aspiration to the Clippers, as well, as you may have heard, as a secret, never-announced deal with Kawhi Leonard, who was demanding such a deal. But as for when Ballmer first met the Clippers and Joe Sandberg, David, Ballmer's letter continues to spell out his version of events.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  In 2021, Sandberg personally joined and aggressively pursued, on behalf of Aspiration, the bidding process to acquire the naming rights to the new arena that would be the home for Mr. Ballmer's NBA basketball team, the L.A. Clippers. Although Sandberg was the point person for Aspiration in the bidding process, Mr. Ballmer was not introduced to him until late 2021 at the conclusion of that bidding process. While Sandberg was pitching Aspiration as a worthy sponsor for the Clippers, Clippers employees, and through them, Mr. Ballmer, became familiar with what appeared to be Sandberg's shared interest in sustainability.

• 36:44Pablo Torre?

  So Ballmer didn't know Sandberg at all, according to this story, this letter, until late 2021. Clippers employees only became familiar with Sandberg and sustainability in 2021, that same year. But what they don't mention is that the Ballmer Group, the aforementioned charity, in January of 2018, this would be three years before Ballmer says he was introduced to Sandberg in 2021, the Ballmer Group donated to the charity Joe Sandberg had personally founded and served as a chairman of, Golden State Opportunity, and his face was all over the website.

• 37:20Pablo Torre?

  But that's not the only thing that happened back in 2018. The year before Kawhi Leonard had signed with the Clippers in 2019 as a free agent, by the way. Because while the Ballmer letter says that 2021 is when, quote, "Clippers employees, and through them, Mr. Ballmer, became familiar with what appeared to be Sandberg's shared interest in sustainability," end quote, avid PTFO listeners slash Celtics fans like Lou Manzo may recall this tweet from Aspiration's old Twitter account, which someone, maybe, forgot to delete. This is August 23rd, 2018. And David, who do you see in this photo?

• 38:04Speaker 01

  That's Doc Rivers. I need my glasses, but that looks a lot like Doc Rivers. I recognize that hunch anywhere.

• 38:12Pablo Torre?

  It is Doc Rivers, the then-head coach of the Clippers, who was at the time, by the way, reporting directly to owner Steve Ballmer and talking to a bunch of employees with the big word you can see on the blue wall that says what?

• 38:27Speaker 01

  "Aspiration."

• 38:29Pablo Torre?

  Aspiration's offices were less than 10 minutes away from the Clippers' facility. At the time, this was Marina Del Rey, and multiple Aspiration employees who were in those offices tell me that Doc Rivers was not the only Clippers employee who visited back then. In fact, according to Aspiration Financials we obtained, both Doc Rivers and his then-wife became Aspiration investors in February of 2018, the month after Ballmer donated to Sandberg's charity, Golden State Opportunity, which the Ballmer Group called a well-respected organization just last September.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  I've never had a manager in my career who would do, we'd send him on a speaking engagement and not know what it is, and then he'd be personally involved, invest in it, and we'd be like, oh, we had no idea.

• 39:15Pablo Torre?

  Right. Well, and if nothing else, it just simply complicates the timeline, which is meant to be very simple.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  And Lou, this is sent to the judge.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  So that, to me, is an even funnier point.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  Yes. And again, I think the judge would say, "What is going on here? I have no idea."

• 39:33Pablo Torre?

  Like and subscribe, Judge Wilson. That's what I would say to him. But I am also glad to have talked to multiple other sources who are directly familiar with the federal investigation of Aspiration. This is beyond Lou Manzo, incidentally, over the last several months. And you should know that all of them have vouched for the credibility of the two whistleblowers that led both the SEC and the DOJ to investigate Aspiration. In part because, yeah, they provided Lou Manzo with this 11-page roadmap under penalty of perjury that resulted in the successful conviction of Joe Sandberg. All of which strengthens our reporting here that Steve Ballmer, one of the 15 richest

• 40:14Pablo Torre?

  people in the world, was drained for more and more money in increasingly obvious ways by the friendly founder that Ballmer's Clippers had also trusted to deceive the NBA. But I also think it is quite important for people who are less familiar with this 10-part saga to just get a sense of Ballmer and Sandberg together onstage at Clippers Media Day in 2021.

• 40:42Speaker 06

  So it was great that Joe and the group at Aspiration was interested in working with us, and we'll talk more about what we're doing. But I'm pretty keen on all of the projects, and we're keen to have these guys as a marketing partner. So with that, let me turn things over to Joe Sandberg.

• 41:03Speaker 07

  Thanks so much, Steve. There are a few people in the business world and in the sports world that I admire as much as Steve Ballmer. This is a true visionary and an original thinker, and those are rare.

• 41:16Pablo Torre?

  But let's go back to the criminal proceedings here because in footnote one, love a footnote on this show, David, we return to maybe something resembling Judge Stephen Wilson's interests.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  While the verifiable carbon offsets for the Clippers and the Forum paid for under agreements with Aspiration were received, Mr. Ballmer lost the entirety of his $60 million investment, and the Clippers lost virtually all of the $300 million sponsorship payments, and more than $20 million held in escrow for additional carbon offset purchases, which were never made and the money not returned.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  More importantly, however, the entirety of Mr. Ballmer's dealings with Aspiration have caused immeasurable damage to his reputation.

• 42:08Pablo Torre?

  And again, he blames Joe for that, continuing to say,

• 42:11Speaker 01

  "The collateral damage of Sandberg's fraud extended to the Clippers organization. As Aspiration began to unravel, the Clippers were forced to terminate the Jersey Patch sponsorship agreement and scrambled to find a new sponsor, a process that took years and significantly disrupted business operations. This harm is directly attributable to Sandberg's criminally fraudulent conduct."

• 42:40Pablo Torre?

  So, I should say that this harm, this unraveling, was actually brought to his attention directly by Lou, by federal investigators mid-2023, not long after he invested in March 23. That $10 million, it got covered by Bloomberg in national headlines in January and July 2024, was made painfully clear, by the way, by the arrest of Joe Sandberg's co-conspirator, also a focus of the DOJ investigation, Ibrahim Al-Husseini. He was arrested and convicted on securities fraud charges, pled guilty, but the arrest happened in October 2024. And I bring this up to say that the immeasurable damage, the totality

• 43:20Pablo Torre?

  of destabilization, led Steve Ballmer in November of '24 to do something notable, which was donate another $1.875 million to the charity founded and chaired by the scammer who had done all of this to his reputation, Joe Sandberg. And I know, Lou, you can't speak to this directly. I do appreciate that you're enjoying Podcast Court at the moment. And so I will just need to quote source number one from the Finance Department at Aspiration, who previously on this specific point had told us this.

• 43:52Speaker 08

  Am I taking crazy pills?

• 43:56Speaker 08

  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.

• 44:12Pablo 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's sort of distinction he's drawing.

• 44:32Speaker 08

  No, it does not make any iota of sense to

• 44:42Speaker 08

  invest in 2021, contribute nearly 100 million in carbon offset pre-purchases, reinvest in 2022 or 2023 around,

• 44:57Speaker 08

  claim all of that to be lost in 2023, and then come back for more in 2024. It'd be a charitable donation. Maybe Steve Ballmer's a secret masochist.

• 45:10Pablo 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.

• 45:20Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 45:22Speaker 08

  Rob me blind, daddy.

• 45:26Pablo Torre?

  So Lou, does being a victim, right? And I want to make clear, Steve Ballmer, according to our reporting, is a victim of Joe Sandberg. Does being a victim, according to the DOJ, say anything about whether he was hypothetically also involved in a scheme to circumvent the salary cap?

• 45:46Speaker 03

  Generally, victims can be very complicated. You can have a victim who also might have participated in an offense. There are many cases in financial crime and violent crime where victims can both be a perpetrator and a traditional sense of victim, somebody who's been scammed or hurt by an offense.

• 46:07Pablo Torre?

  In other words, can two things be true at the same time?

• 46:10Speaker 03

  Two things are almost always true at the same time.

• 46:13Pablo Torre?

  Meanwhile, David, look, we've done exhaustive exegesis to summon the Catholic teachings that Lou and I have had of this letter. What was your favorite part?

• 46:23Speaker 01

  I can picture the meeting that Ballmer had with his attorneys where he's saying, here's what we have to do. And the lawyers, they had no choice in that because it's not, you don't get disbarred for this letter at all.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  No, it's appropriate.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  It, well.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  It's a decision within reason.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  It's a decision within reason. It will not be dispositive in any way in the sentencing, in my opinion. And I believe that Ballmer saw this letter as it was written, and he loved it because it furthered his narrative of what he's trying to get Adam Silver to believe and Wachtel. And that's my favorite part, is that Stephen Wilson, I'm picturing him, my favorite part is picturing him reading this letter.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  It's a strategic choice the attorney has to make, where generally you want less focus on your client when federal investigators are around. That's what I preach every day. Let's get them out of our hair, move on, et cetera. So by writing this letter to the judge, it does raise the question that the judge will start asking questions and say, what does the NBA have to do with this? And then it's going to prolong the process, which is exactly what I would think Stephen Ballmer would not want. On the other hand, it's a self-serving letter, so it can help you in the court of public opinion. And I think that's kind of the trade-off that they must have made.

• 47:48Speaker 05

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• 48:47Speaker 09

  Hey, I'm Max Brown. You know The Athletic is home to the world's best sports journalism, but this fall, just in time for football season, we're launching something unlike anything we've ever done. We're building a daily show streaming live on YouTube. Me, Kofi Yoboa, Charles McDonald, and The Athletic's own Zach Harper and Daniel Popper. We'll be hosting live watch-alongs of the biggest games with award-winning analysis and behind-the-scenes insights from Athletic insiders. On off days, we'll go deeper into the hard-hitting stories you can't get enough of. And we want you, the smartest fans in sports, to be part of it. Come drop questions in the chat and we'll bring the answers straight from the source. The Athletic Live, presented by Google Gemini. Follow us on YouTube and we'll see you in the chat.

• 49:45Pablo Torre?

  This is all a buildup towards the sentencing hearing, which was scheduled for Monday of last week, April 27th. Everyone had this date on their calendar circled. According to notes that our reporter, Anita Bennett, took for us out in LA at that courthouse, it came into sharp focus. You had Joe Sandberg seated up near the front, dressed in khakis, a dark blue sweater over a light blue shirt, sneakers. He was seated with his four defense lawyers, one of whom is former Trump attorney Mark Mukasey, a noted lawyer in his own right. And the judge, Stephen V. Wilson, was in fact asking a ton of questions. And David, you have some transcribed selections that Anita, our court reporter, took down for us.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  There are some questions I have that are not answered in the pre-sentencing report. There is no explanation as to how the money was used to plant trees or resurface to investors. You're asking me for a very large sentence, but for the court to do that, it has to understand the fraud.

• 50:46Pablo Torre?

  The line of questioning, the pressure testing this judge is doing, was that a surprise, Lou, in your view, as somebody just observing from afar what was happening to the case that you had started and now had nothing to do with anymore?

• 50:58Speaker 03

  Totally depends on the judge. There are some judges who use the sentencing guidelines as a Bible. And they say, okay, we'll take the bottom to the top. I'll find a spot in the middle, and that's where we'll settle. So those judges are more circumscribed and probably ask less questions because there's a smaller decision tree. The sentencing guidelines, though, are completely voluntary, and that's that way for, what, 20 years now. So a judge can say, thank you sentencing guidelines for your advice. I'm going to depart upward or depart downward, and that is subject to fairly minimal review on appeal. In Southern District of New York, where we are now, the sentencing guidelines are 90% of the time in white collar, downward departures. Other jurisdictions that have less white collar are usually more within

• 51:42Speaker 03

  the guidelines. So Los Angeles, and this judge, I don't know in particular what his background is and whether he departs or stays within. He's gonna want to know. The basics of this before he makes a decision.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Scouting reports on judges, like in baseball.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  They go in and they know what they're dealing with before they go before the judge.

• 52:01Pablo Torre?

  So here's the scouting report, the back of the baseball card for Steven Victor Wilson. He was appointed by Ronald Reagan, 1985. He is 85 years young. And he, according to our court reporter, was kind of flustering the DOJ in terms of all of the questions he wanted to ask as somebody who did not seem to be familiar with the case on even the level that the DOJ was pursuing it. And the weird thing is that we had read, of course, extensively from the victim impact letter filed by Steven Ballmer, the one that was first leaked to ESPN and then tweeted out by Ballmer himself two days later. ESPN had reported, as we mentioned, that the Ballmer letter, quote, "had been filed in court," according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

• 52:44Pablo Torre?

  But for whatever it's worth, we're looking through the public filings and the letter does not appear there, among the other victim impact statements, even though Ballmer had publicly tweeted it out. So we went to the US Attorney's Office for the Central District of California in Los Angeles and a spokesperson told us, quote, "I suggest you contact Mr. Ballmer or his lawyer. He likely filed it under seal, which means you won't be able to read it without a court order."

• 53:11Pablo Torre?

  But I guess presumably, Lou, just as a matter of process, the judge would have read this letter before the hearing in the assessment of the documents in the case.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  If the judge was expecting to go to sentencing, he would have read all the materials and had, would have seen a victim impact statement from Mr. Ballmer. That said, there's probably many, many victim impact statements and he might not remember everyone.

• 53:37Pablo Torre?

  So one piece of information that did stick out to our reporter, as I immediately called Anita and was like, "Did Ballmer come up? Was he mentioned in the proceedings?" David, I give you the one mention of Steven Ballmer, and this is from the lead prosecutor.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Steve Ballmer invested $60 million and came forward. He was the biggest investor and lost his investment.

• 54:04Pablo Torre?

  This was as he was reciting the range of victims, from the little guy to the biggest owner in sports, to which the judge then says, "Who's Steve Ballmer?"

• 54:16Speaker 03

  He does not like and subscribe.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Oh, it's even better. They're in LA where Ballmer is the owner of the Clippers basketball team in LA.

• 54:24Pablo Torre?

  I can't tell who's more offended, me or Clippers fans.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  He's probably a Lakers guy.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  I needed to hear the tone of it because I can't, I find it hard to believe, but that's me living in my world of owners and sports.

• 54:37Pablo Torre?

  I just laughed so hard when we got this note back, like the amount of time I've spent thinking about Steve Ballmer and then the judge who is presiding over the lever that decides so much of what people stressed out over this case are hoping and fearing. He's like, who's the, who?

• 54:56Speaker 03

  We need a court reporter for that moment, or a sketch artist better.

• 55:00Pablo Torre?

  What we need is more, more podcasts. I want in-court recordings. Look, we have the other four victim impact statements that were in the public filings. And look, I want to acknowledge, it's sad. You have a woman born in poverty in Indiana who was working as an ultrasound technologist who put in $100,000 and has not been able to pay off her home. You got a federal law enforcement officer who invested their entire Roth IRA, almost $400,000. You got a couple that invested $300,000 roughly, their entire retirement fund. And a couple in their 70s who also invested their IRAs. And, you know, notably, one of those victims, not co-owner of the Clippers, Dennis Wong, the close friend of

• 55:43Pablo Torre?

  Steve Ballmer from Harvard, who bought $1.99 million worth of aspiration stock, nine days before Kawhi got paid $1.75 million to do nothing by aspiration. But such is the range of people who were affected.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  People don't talk enough about it, but in any Ponzi scheme, there were so many people who lost their life savings in that scheme. And they don't get attention because no one wants to podcast about it or care about it. The saddest part of this is not Ballmer's $60 million. It's not salary cap circumvention. To me, the saddest part are these people who thought that they had a chance to make a wise investment. And it happens every day.

• 56:18Pablo Torre?

  The other part of that too is carbon credits are real. People do buy them. They buy them for good reason.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  And I think this case has raised some doubts about that and kind of made corporations less interested in pursuing that.

• 56:33Pablo Torre?

  But the upshot of all these questions is that the judge, David, said this to DOJ prosecutors.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  I'll give you two weeks to file a new sentencing memorandum. I'll give the defense one week to respond.

• 56:46Pablo Torre?

  And so the sentencing is tentatively postponed until June 1st at 10 a.m. And I should point out also, the bigger picture here, if we zoom out near the end, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge, the federal investigation into aspiration beyond the DOJ is not yet over. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency that the two whistleblowers filed that complaint to under penalty of perjury confidentially, they're still looking into aspiration.

• 57:11Speaker 03

  So, parallel investigations, totally normal, especially with large-scale financial fraud. Criminal investigations generally lead. DOJ definitely considers itself the top dog. So it's very normal that civil investigations would continue after a DOJ criminal investigation is wrapped up, and that's probably what's happening here.

• 57:31Pablo Torre?

  So let's talk about what happens when the DOJ's criminal investigation is wrapped up. Whatever happens there, Lou, whatever Joe, who pleaded guilty, ultimately receives from the government, what does that suggest about the question that you had raised earlier, which is possible cooperation with the government, right? Like, whether or not that's about Steve Ballmer, I'm curious, what can be concluded about whether that's still possible once his sentence has been delivered?

• 58:00Speaker 03

  Anything is always on the table. That's probably the shortest answer, that once you get sentenced, you're no longer eligible for a 5K, but you are eligible for what's called a Rule 35 reduction. So, the government can move post-sentencing and say that this person substantially assisted in an investigation and needs to have a reduction in sentence, gets kicked back to the sentencing judge. Sentencing judge, then, they re-sentenced to a reduction. So, the process can always change. There's definitely opportunities that DOJ could restart something and look at something later.

• 58:35Speaker 03

  Maxwell had a major DOJ official.

• 58:38Pablo Torre?

  Ghislaine Maxwell from the Epstein files.

• 58:40Speaker 03

  Right. You would never have expected her to be talked to by high DOJ officials to, you know, get more information post sentencing. That would be incomprehensible when she was convicted a few years ago. And now that those conversations are happening, what would result from that is if she assisted in some investigation, then she would get a reduction under Rule 35 or even a pardon.

• 59:03Pablo Torre?

  So the calculus, David, is, I think, kind of simple in this regard. If you're the NBA, right? And you're looking at what happened with Terry Rozier, and the entire specter of what you don't know is sort of looming, what could the government do to embarrass us? This feels like a book they wish would close when the sentencing, when the journey started by Lou Manzo and finished by other people at the Department of Justice is finally ostensibly complete. And what we're learning here at the end here, what we're finding out is that whatever revenge Joe Sandberg could hypothetically exact,

• 59:43Pablo Torre?

  using the information that he may or may not have on the biggest investor at aspiration that he was in business with over the course of nine figures of transactions. The question is, what does this administration care about? Is Joe Sandberg holding anything of value to offer the Department of Justice? Wait to see. I mean...

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  Part 11?

• 1:00:05Pablo Torre?

  Why are you just nodding now? You're clamped up?

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Oh, I thought that was your clothes.

• 1:00:18Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

• 1:00:45Speaker 10

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