Pablo Torre Finds Out - Ballmer's Tree-Money, the Whistle-Blowers and the Document You've Been Waiting For: Kawhi-Gate, Part IX

Episode Date: March 7, 2026

How did millions travel from the Clippers to Aspiration to Kawhi Leonard? Amin Elhassan and David Samson join Pablo — live onstage at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, right where Adam Silver was just sitting — to examine new and extremely credible evidence.Previously on PTFO:• Part I: The Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree• Part II: An Argument with Mark Cuban• Part III: The Mystery Investor, the No-Show Payday and the "Smoking Gun"• Part IV: Steve Ballmer, the Other Cuban and the $118 Million Infusion• Part V: Steve Ballmer's "Inconceivable" Donation, the $20 Million Guarantee and a Head on a Spike• Part VI: An IRL Showdown with Mark Cuban• Part VII: The Briefcase, Ballmer's Social Network and Aspiration's House of Cards• Part VIII: Uncle Dennis, Ballmer's $50 Million Sprint and the Side Deal That Wouldn't Die• Subscribe to Pablo's newsletter for exclusive access, documents and invites• Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson"• Subscribe to "Basketball Illuminati" with Amin Elhassan(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 for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today you're going to find out what this sound is. Even to pay Clippers forward Quay Leonard and incentivized bonus to circumvent the NBA salary cap, disguised as an organic marketing sponsorship agreement, that's a smoking gun, ladies and gentlemen. Right after this ad. Hello, everyone. My name is Drew Sullivan. I'm a first-year MBA here at MIT Sloan. It's my pleasure to bring you our first edition of Pablo Tori. finds out live at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

Today we'll be joined by David Sampson, host of Nothing Personal with David Sampson. Amin al-Hassan, MBA analyst and commentator at Metal Arc Media and Sirius XM Radio, and of course Pablo Tori, the host of Pablo Tori finds out. This episode will run for 45 minutes. Please note that we will not have time for Q&A at the end of the episode. With that in mind, I'll turn it over to you, Pablo. Thank you. actual naval intelligence officer.

I've always wanted to have David and Amin do a live show with me in a room named after a guy who has blocked me on Twitter. Shout out to the godfather of Sabermotrix, Bill James, actually has blocked me on Twitter. What'd you do? That investigation is also ongoing. I don't know.

Maybe one of you guys can be a source for us on that. I have folders. I have folders for David and Amin. I want to be very clear about something to everybody who's in the audience here. Everyone who's watching live on YouTube, I am told. Put some hamburgers in the chat. If you're in the YouTube chat, Pablo Torre finds out. You guys know exactly as much as David and Amin about what's about to happen here.

And here are some folders that, as always, I will tell you to not open. David, do you have your little glasses? I do, Pablo. Thank you so much. Very good. David has eye problems because he's been reading so many documents. I'm just old. It's not a problem.

Well. It's a reality? It's a reality. With that attitude, I suppose. The only guy with 2.0s in the room. Give me a break. Sorry. He's in a bad mood.

I'm sorry. Shlep us up to Boston. I came here. You don't tell us what it's about. I wanted to come here and be Oprah, you know. And you got a secret document and you got a secret document. And David is just. Just.

He's over it, I think. Yeah, man. Just stedmining this thing. Oprah, deep cut. It is, it is, it is something that I want to take seriously here as you transition to actually doing a bit of reporting. There is new and extremely credible evidence that we're here to discuss, and I also need to disclose for the record that Darry,

who is the president of basketball operations of the Philadelphia 76ers and the co-founder of this conference, also has no idea what we're about to do here. He mentioned that prior to the show. Yes. He did not realize. So the point where he's not here, he's next door. He's going head to head with us,

which is for the best because we are doing part nine of our investigation into Steve Ballmer and the Clippers. And so a little less light in the applause the next time, but you guys are absolutely right there with us. This is the 20th anniversary of this conference, which is absurd, I mean, for people who've not been here who are just watching perhaps at home. Can you give a sense of the caliber of powerbroker

that we are actually in good company with? So I haven't been here since 2020. The last time I was here, they were telling us, hey, by the way, you might have to start shaking hands at your elbows. And that was for real. And we thought, like, oh, no, we'll be fine, just you got to elbow bump people and we'll be fine. Later that night, I went to Celtics Jazz,

and I dapped up Rudy Gobert. Like massive hug and everything. I swear to God. This all makes sense now in retrospect. I was patient zero. But never tested positive, though. That's my claim of fame. Great.

But, yeah, no, this thing began at MIT. I think, David, you were there in the early days when it was like in classrooms. And now it's this massive. I was in the convention center. When I was here, it was in the convention center, but you didn't have a problem with conflicts as much. You know, oh, I'll watch this panel,

and then I'll watch the next panel. And now there's like four or five things going on at the same time. It's huge. Barack Obama was here one year? Yes, he was. He might be here tonight as well. Is that right? Well, you know, I got to check with Sasha, Malia, Michelle.

It's just terrible. You're trying to do a show. Well, you know, I can do the show and do this voice at the same. and do this voice at the same time. It's very funny to me that on this same stage where Amin is doing terrible Barack Obama impressions, the commissioner of the NBA was holding court. It was the same man who has now spent six months

figuring out how to hold to account the richest owner in all of sports. Well, if you listen to him, he says he's not doing that. He's waiting for Wachtel Lipton to complete their investigation, and at that point he'll commence thinking about the punishment. And his spirit is inhabiting the man's, sitting in the chair. He was sitting in earlier. Yes, correct. David, Adam Silver, though, is not sticking around to watch us here today because why? Where is he? He scurried south

because of your show, or he's sitting in a room currently with the newly formed college committee. They're going to solve all the issues. Don't worry. Randy Levine is on the case. He is in charge of a committee and a picture came out already of them sitting in a table as though they're trying to solve other sort of peace crises. But apparently they're going to solve NIL, and that's where Adam had to go. Yes, he is with Donald Trump right now. Currently. Not the rabbit hole we're falling into somehow.

What I did want to do, though, was acknowledge a critique that I have received as we get a little risque here. Because this ongoing investigation into a bankrupt tree-planked, it's just funny for me to continue to have to say, bankrupt tree-planting startup. a fintech company, this investigation continues to consume my life. It does. We're doing fucking part nine. In our episode last month, you owe me a dollar. In our episode last month, David, I reported something that I personally thought was fascinating, and I want to acknowledge the critique that we received. What I reported was that multiple aspiration employees have long believed that the entire federal investigation into aspiration was the direct result of a whistleblower

from inside the company reported Aspirations hidden fraud to the SEC, to the DOJ, to the CFTC, and this apparently led to all the arrests and convictions and bankruptcy filings we've been monitoring since. And given how important Steve Ballmer and the Clippers are to the story of aspiration, what I asked aloud in that last episode was whether this hypothetical whistleblower might have also named Steve Balmer and the Clippers in such a complaint to the government. And this led to responses, like the ones in David and Amin's folders, which I also want to show on the big screen behind us if our production values are as high as I think they are.

David, could you please open your folder? Oh, he gets to open it. That's right. The upside down? I don't know if it's backwards or not. So I'm going to take a very big chance here. Oh, I mean, really? No, backwards.

Other way around. Okay, here we go. I shall turn it over. That's why you got to rehearse. Listen, we're live, baby. Love it. Okay, what do you want me to do? I like you to read it. Okay. There's nothing there. A bunch of hyperbole in rehashing.

What if the whistleblower mentions the clippers, Womp, Womp? The only thing Pablo will find out is that his 15 minutes is over with this story. That's a tweet from David P. Sampson. Okay. I mean...

I love that that's his big moment. Quote, there's a whistleblower under oath. What if he mentions the Clippers, unquote? Oh, yeah. What if he mentions Pizza Gate or effing space aliens or the lizard people running the government? What are we doing here? Question mark, question mark.

And in the interest of transparency, I should probably just mention here that Darry's actual seduce. to me for this live show, was this text message in your folder? David. Reveal who killed Epstein in prison at the conference? Question mark? That investigation is also ongoing.

But the question I actually want to answer here today with all of you, and with all due respect to the lizard people, is a different question. The question is how exactly did tens of millions of dollars travel from the Clippers bank account to Aspirations bank account in order to pay Kauai Leonard. And there would seem, at first, to be an easy answer here if you've been paying attention since Steve Ballmer made an initial investment of $50 million into aspiration back in September of 2021. And the total value of Aspiration's secret no-show endorsement arrangement with Kauai Leonard was $48 million, $28 million in

promised cash 20 million in equity, but one key to understanding this entire alleged scheme, which nine aspiration sources have told me, was designed to circumvent the NBA salary cap, is that aspiration was spending all of its cash insanely quickly, right? So this is why it was so conspicuous that an LLC belonging to the Clippers-only co-owner, Dennis Wong, chose to invest $2 million into aspiration in December of 2022, when Wong had already been informed that the company was in default, only for aspiration, of course, to wire $1.75 million to an LLC belonging to Kauai Leonard just nine days later after months of delay. I'll point out that Amin al-Hasson is breaking fast. It is Ramadan. He was having, is that a Nature Valley bar?

I don't want to just close the brand. Well, they didn't pay. You and Kauai Leonard have something in common. But that is just $2 million, right? And so the question becomes, how does tens of millions of dollars travel from the actual Klipper's organization to aspiration? And for that, I mean, we need to rewind to the first actual document in your folder, which is what? This is the Kauai endorsement agreement. Yes. The no-show contract for Kauai's quote, organic marketing deal. And this was signed by who and on what date? Quai Leonard, April 4th, 2022. So what I need to point out here is that by April 4th, 2022,

Aspiration did not have enough money to pay Kauai Leonard. They'd already spent all of the money they got from Steve Balmer, actually. But that very same day, Los Angeles Clippers, David, agreed to do something very interesting. This now, according to the first document in your folder, which is what? This is Aspiration's April statement from Civil, Silicon Valley Bank. And how much did the LA Clippers wire into aspiration on April 4th, 2022? $32,42080.

Coincidence. Now, maybe you guys also have a guess as to what exactly is happening here with the $32 million. But I think the best explanation actually comes from somebody else that I first encountered in person at this very conference back in the early days of Sloan. and this person happens to be Team Bombers' number one defender. During a 36-day stretch last year, Mark Cuban tweeted 17,053 words about this investigation. And, I mean, I would love for you now

to read just a few of them here in front of everybody assembled at home and in this room. Mark, I love you. And a final note, while Pablo is first, focusing on the $2 million and the $50 million from Wong slash Balmer, he didn't really get into the millions of dollars in carbon credits that were purchased by the clips and the arena. I bring this up because it would have been a lot easier and a lot safer

if he was trying to circumvent the CBA to just buy more carbon credits. They were almost all margin, as Pablo correctly pointed out, so they would have created the cash immediately to pay KL2, end quote. And this is a really, really, really smart point that Mark and or chat GPT raised. He loves it. He does. He loves LLMs. The standard approach, David, that environmentally conscious companies, sports teams, like the one you ran, the Miami Marlins,

the approach that they typically had towards buying carbon credits was just to buy them whenever they needed them because a carbon credit, if we've done nothing else in nine parts, I hope people know, a carbon credit is literally. What? It is literally for PR purposes. Okay. That is it. That is you're jumping ahead to our takeaway, but what is it in its physical for? It is the planting in theory. The promise. The, the, you say, you're told, hey, we're going to plant a bunch of trees, therefore you can keep flying privately. It's a tree. It's, well, it's a promise of a tree. It's the commodity known as we're going to plant this tree. We're promised to plant it. That's right. Yeah. Planting a tree, for the record, generally costs like 10 to 20 cents on the public carbon markets. Aspiration was charging a dollar, which is, as Mr. Shark Tank pointed out, an incredible margin.

And yet, what were the Clippers doing? Let's examine this question. The Clippers made the highly unusual decision to prepay $32 million worth of trees on April 4, 2022. As you can see here now on this handy timeline that we've made. So the tree money traveled into an escrow account with aspiration, as you'll see. Here we are, April 4, 2022. And this brings us to this master timeline, which in the defense of the clippers, they've previously denied, right?

They would have you believe that this timeline is actually two separate timelines. And therefore, of course, this is not caps or convention. This is passionate tree planting and some other stuff that was happening separately that they had no idea about. And so for the record, the Clippers, in response to detailed questions we sent them yesterday, declined to comment for this episode, as they, quote, unquote, fully cooperate with the NBA's ongoing internal inquiry. But you may recall that the team's original statement to us was this flat-out denial, and I'll just read it here for legal reasons and also general entertainment. Quote, neither Mr. Balmer nor the Clippers

circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to aspiration, any contrary assertion is provably false. Provably false is a very notable phrase because they stopped using it after September 2nd, 2025. But I will then point out that Balmer for his part has previously told ESPN, Ramona Shelburne on television that the clippers merely introduced Kauai to aspiration, and that quote, then they were off to the races on their own, end quote. So we're here to pressure test the defense of two totally separate timelines. And so we're of another stop on this road. According to the language of the no-show contract, David, the KL2 contract, which you have,

when was Kauai's very first quarterly payment actually due? Company will pay KL2 $28 million in cash during the term of this agreement. The payment shall be made quarterly in arrears in the amount of $1,750,000. The first payment shall be paid on June 30th, 2002. All payments will be wire transferred to KL2's account. So June 30th, 2022 is when aspiration needed to actually start wiring Kauai Leonard via KL2 Aspire LLC. His money to do again about as much as Amin was doing when he was not disclosing the brand of the bar he was just eating to break his fast. I think I did more for the bar because actually I held it and I took a bite.

You actually did. But, Amin, could you now please tell us what the next headline on this internal document is inside of your folder? Clippers and Aspiration, acknowledgement of carbon credit ownership transfer. This document, as you can also see, perhaps, is actually signed by the CFO of the Clippers and the CEO of Aspiration. And on what day, Amin, did this tree transfer happen? to take effect. The acknowledgement of carbon credit ownership transfers made effective as of June 30th,

2020. But surely, there must be some other time pressure that caused the clippers to want that tree money on June 30th, 2022, specifically, because maybe this is all just an end of Q2 sort of coincidence. You know, I'm not a business guy. I'm not a billionaire. I don't know.

I mean, could you please read the next line? Aspiration has secured 400,000 carbon credits on behalf of company to offset part of companies historical CO2 emissions. Historical emissions, David. What are those? So we didn't measure those in my 18 years

because I didn't really care. And it is shocking to me. Listen, it's a great thing if I could say to everybody in our market, you have no idea how worried we are about the environment. We're about to pay to make up for all the things we did wrong. It's like apologizing for all of the ills like 10, you know, affairs ago. You say, oh, I'm sorry for that one. No, no.

You were just talking about this latest one. But I appreciate that very specific comparison. No, I'm just saying I don't fully understand that why he would do it. I mean, there's really. Well, they care about the environment. Very much. I'm sorry. But the point being that by definition, these are the carbon emissions that the team had released in the past.

How did they keep track? Well, they can do analyses, you know, whatever. The point being that there was no present-day time pressure in June of 2022, by definition, at all. And so we first asked the Clippers about these carbon credits last year and what they said, referring to their sponsorship with aspiration at the Intuit Dome was, quote, our development agreements for the arena included mandates to buy carbon credits, but after studying the issue of neutrality, we went far beyond those requirements. David. Some of those commitments were built into the sponsorship deal with Aspiration, totally separate of the investment in the company.

We made payments to aspiration until the company was unable to fulfill their responsibilities, end quote. And so, David, just to close the loop here on Totally Separate, what is the next document that is in your folder, please? He's going to work out, putting his glasses on, taking off and all. Very efficient. Aspirations June statement from Silicon Valley Bank. And aspiration suddenly flushed with all of this tree money from the Clippers, decided to do what on June 30 at 2022? That's an outgoing wire of $1.75 million.

Huh. KL2. So they happen to wire out $1.75 million. Kauai's quarterly paycheck amount on June 30 at 2022. And so just going to recap here, the handy timeline that I showed you before. Kauai signed $28 million aspiration contract. Clippers prepay $32 million dollars in carbon credits. That's April 4, 2022.

June 30th, month later, Kauai receives his very first no-show paycheck from aspiration on the same exact day that the Clippers finally grant approval to aspiration to access the $32 million in that aforementioned escrow account and transfer those trees. Again, totally separate, as you can clearly see on this timeline. Maybe that was just the day they went to the bank. Yeah, that's how it works. They walked in with like $32 million. I'd like to deposit this, please.

But as for the remainder of the $32 million, because again, that's only $1.75 that they used, what Aspiration did with the rest of it, is extremely in line with the pattern we've been describing, because they, of course, burned through all of it. Okay? By November 18th, 2022, according to dozens of legal letters that I reviewed, the company was so broke that it set out to terminate its dozens of outstanding marketing agreements in order to save money, except for two. Two marketing agreements still remained,

and I'd like you guys to guess which two marketing agreements aspiration chose to preserve as they were cutting loose all of the other ones. Robert Downey Jr. No. Oh. That's a great guess, though. He was an aspiration endorser. I mean, thanks for the layup. I'll take it.

Kuai Leonard. That was my second guess. It was it. KL2 Aspire LLC, which was never announced publicly, was retained. The other one happens to be the $300 million Clippers founding sponsorship agreement, which had been very publicly announced for the entire world to see, because, again, That's the point of marketing, right? So you have the secret one, you have the one that is very, very announced everywhere.

That was the CNBC headline. In other words, aspiration wanted to keep sending money to Steve Balmer and Kauai Leonard in specific, which now brings me a mean... Sorry, it doesn't mean they wanted to keep sending money. It just means they didn't break those. So it doesn't mean they were going to pay them or actually do anything... Sorry. They wanted to remain obligated to those parties in specific.

I mean, this brings me to another bit of feedback that I have received on Twitter, unfortunately. This is a lot of just me airing personal grievances, by the way. So apologies. But I've been thinking about this one ever since, because I think there's a reasonable question that lots of people are asking. Will you accept the results of the NBA's investigation when they're released? Ooh, that is a good question. And, David, there's another message that echoes this concern. You can please read that.

You are so sensitive. Can you imagine making policy based on Twitter? You have to be ironic. Never. God. Never go to war or anything. Would you admit nothing nefarious happened if that's the conclusion the NBA reaches? Just curious.

And I just need to say that in all sincerity, right, part of me cannot wait to find out what the NBA's internal investigator is at the Whitechew Law from Wachtel Lippton say they found out. I genuinely want to know what they return with. Isn't it weird, though? Typically when Wachtell Lipton goes in, they investigate an organization, they come out with the findings. They are the authority. They've got all the information

and all the news stories and all the reactions are based off of what comes out in that report. But they're in a weird situation where you're kind of one step ahead releasing stuff. So can they ever say our investigation is concluded if we keep coming out with new stuff?

Well, I think that. this raises the fundamental question of what questions are they asking? What are they trying to find out? Because I am happy to take lots of credit for what's been reported, but I also think that this is all due to these sources and the evidence that I have come in contact with. And so something I read recently, I mean, was an article reported by Joe Vard and Mike Vorkanov in the athletic last month. And I'd like you to actually read this excerpt from the article that's the next thing in your folder. Joe, Mike, I love you guys too. Some interviewed by WalkTel

during its investigations have questioned what the firm's parameters are and if the NBA set them. One former aspiration employee interviewed by Wachtel and granted anonymity by the athletic to protect their privacy said the questions in the interview were two pointed.

The former aspiration employees said that they were asked about Leonard, his uncle and business manager Dennis Robertson, asked and its internal dynamics and the Clippers organization. The employee, however, said he was not asked about Balmer,

end quote. And I found this very eye-opening for obvious reasons, perhaps. For months, I've been talking to multiple NBA owners and coaches and general managers and scouts who believe that the NBA does not want to punish its richest owner. Because Steve Balmer's $140 billion may be too critical

to Adam Silver's ambitions at a time when money for growth for global expansion, which he was talking about on this stage earlier today in those chairs, and all that money is in flux, right? It's an uncertain time economically. Everybody knows that. And this guy has, in Mr. Balmer, a ton of it. And what one MBA head coach told me was, quote, the aspiration situation deserved an immediate response that affects the integrity of the league as well as competitive balance right now, end quote. You're not going to get an immediate response. That's unrealistic. You have to do the investigation And you have to pick a day, by the way.

You're right about that because it could be, they're not happy that you are leaking it this way, like one episode at a time, like a drip. Publishing, as I can confirm things on the record. He's being responsible. That's how journalism works, David. You don't just run the Twitter and start talking about it. And to that point, I should say also, the NBA League office did not respond to our request for comment before our deadline. Right. So all of that is in order.

But what I started doing after reading the athletics independent reporting was, polling sources. I pulled five former aspiration employees who had previously told me that they communicated and or participated in meetings with Balmer through aspiration, including on the subject of carbon credits. And what all five of these aspiration employees told me is that when they sat down with the MBA's investigators from Wachtel, the investigators in question did not ask them about Steve Balmer either, which raises a question, I think, among those employees about the NBA desired scope of this investigation, David, and how independent an independent investigation might really be.

You know what I bet he did at the end, the investigators. When you're interviewed by someone in the media, you're investigated, it's always, hey, did I not ask anything? Or am I leaving anything out? I don't know if you do that as a reporter or as a journalist. I love to ask a question along the lines of what should I have asked you if I didn't know? What should I have asked you?

And whenever I'm interviewing, I'm like, all right, I'm leaving now. You never, when you're being cross-examined or anything like that in a deposition, you never add anything. That's a quick word of advice of me for the next time you're sued. So I wonder whether or not that Wachtel ended with those aspiration employees. I don't know if you asked them. Hey, did they say at the end anything else you want to mention? Like, the responsibility is theirs. Did Amin just check his phone to see if you got sued in the last?

No, I just wrote the note down. It's coming. I should clarify that Wachtel Lipton's lead investigator, whom David Sampson and I previously met with in an earlier episode was not available for comment. So good questions raised, but I have no insight for that on the record. But I did interview one high-powered lawyer at a different firm who does outside investigation work for leaks. And what they said was, quote, you want to signal to not only your client, but to other clients, that you will provide the outcome that they want.

and I am trying to calibrate my cynicism, right, around the outside investigation. But, David, you were the president of a major league baseball team that had been investigated. Okay. What's your sense of how leagues operate in relation to the outside counsel that they hire and pay money to? With all due respect to Adam Silver and to leagues, there is not a commissioner who opens the investigation, the report, and reads it, and says, oh, I didn't know that. Or, oh, that's interesting.

I had no idea. Oh, oh, you just released that publicly, and I'm reading it now? Give me a break. The way it works is that you have access to the report prior to it being released. The way it works is you are the client. And I don't know if you're in the service industry,

but the way it works is you work for your client. Lawyers work for their clients. and your source from whatever firm, but you can fill in the blank. Every firm is that way that I've ever worked with in all of my years. They want to know what do you want? Because how else do they deliver it? And then how else do you get what's the most important, which is repeat business? So on the notion of repeat business and the finances of an investigation,

something that I think is very interesting is who ultimately pays the bill for the investigation. So in this case, David, who pays the bill for the Wachtel investigation into the Los Angeles Clivers? Steve Balmer. Little known fact there is that when you become an organization, when you become a franchise, you abide team. You have to sign a document and agreement with the league. And one of the provisions is, should you ever be investigated, you will pay for it. It is one of those things. If you're a team owner, you know, that is real.

It's not talked about a lot, but you're. Yes, Steve Balmer is paying. But Steve Balmer is, I wonder whether he's going through the hourlys of Wachtel. Well, they accumulate. Yes, they do. And so something that I want to point out as a result of this dynamic is that, as for my other aspiration sources that I've been talking to for, I started this investigation in February of 25, it's been more than a year,

there are several key sources who say they have refused to talk to the MBA's investigators because they essentially see those investigators as working for the 140. billion who's ostensibly being investigated. And when these sources tell me that it feels like the NBA is, quote, paying to borrow someone else's letterhead, it is hard to ignore what the NBA's high-powered law firm of choice has not been asking about, which they are all talking about amongst themselves.

But this is what's especially crazy I mean about not asking about the team's owner in particular, right? As much as I want to take credit for the novelty of this whole investigation, this is not the first time that former Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, has been investigated for alleged cap circumvention.

Do you remember the other instances that Steve was involved with? The other repeat offenses? Well, I would say there was the DeAndre Jordan, Lexus deal? Yep. So $250,000 as a fine in 2015. They had offered DeAndre Jordan

in the pitch meeting a deal through another team sponsor, Lexus, in that case. That was the first one in 2015. And then the second one was, oh, was that Kwai? Yeah, it was Kwai when he came to sign. It was the first time that they investigated Kawhi Leonard and capser convention and all that stuff in 2019. Well, that one didn't have a, there was no tidy bow at the end of that.

In fact, the league apparently found nothing. Yeah. Right? And that was after the Lakers and the Raptors complained to the NBA about Uncle Dennis Robertson, his unlicensed representative, and Kawhi Leonard himself. And that's also when it's... addition to three different civil lawsuits we've covered in this series before, each of them having to do with the Clippers recruitment of Kauai. So that's the backdrop on all of this. And so my basic

presumption was simply that Wachtel might want to ensure that they found out what all of these employees may have known, David, about Steve Baller, just as a pure CYA strategy. But the scope, as they strategized around it, was not that. It's much easier if you don't ask the question, to say that it was not part of the investigation, than to ask it, get an answer, and then not have it in the report, and say, hey, we didn't deem it report worthy. It's easier to say it on the front end than the back end.

It's kind of like when COVID first started blowing up and Donald Trump said, hey, we should not test. That way our positive results will go down. If you never test, if you never ask for it, they'll never find out. There's some strange symmetry in all of this happening today as Adam is meeting with that man at the moment. So look, the thing I'm left thinking about more than anything is just this question.

What information would the league's investigators have been told if they had been very explicitly directed by their client to dig deeper into Steve Balmer, their client's richest boss? Because something I've been spending these last several months doing is not simply talking to former aspiration employees. I've also been talking to a range of former federal employees. And I've been surveying the, again, to take it back to politics for a bit, I've been surveying the staggering amount of turnover at the Securities and Exchange Commission

and the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and again, I just cannot help but wonder what other evidence, Adam Silver's NBA, may be sitting up. And I actually happen to mean that last part quite literally. David and Amin... This guy, hold on, man.

I would love for you now to put your folders aside. And please look underneath your chairs. I knew when he did the Oprah thing. I was like, that's a weird reference from... Cameras are there, so don't do that. Thank you. This, you go behind. Are you really something?

I don't want to touch on. First of all, it's disgusting. Did you look under the chair? I did not. Am I sitting in the right chair? Is it under the cushion? Oh, thank God I didn't touch the under chair. It's taped to the floor.

I feel way better about myself. It fell off the bottom of your chair. I'm super happy about that. I mean... So it is okay. I just say that earlier this morning before the 20th anniversary Sloan Sports Conference kicked off, the Pablo Torre finds out staff went around this room

and taped a very important document to those chairs, the same chairs that Adam Silver was sitting on. Was this here when Adam was here? It was there before he was scheduled to go meet Donald Trump at the White House. And the document you'll find there, it turns out, as you continue to open it, is not about Pizza Gate or space aliens or the lizard people running the government. Who killed Epstein? And unfortunately, it's also not that.

What you are holding in your hands is an authenticated copy of a government whistleblower complaint. This is, at long last... Do we have security? This is the whistleblower complaint that directly led to the federal investigation into aspiration, and the subsequent convictions of Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg and another one of its board members, both of whom have since pleaded guilty to wire fraud. And in fact, this whistleblower complaint is the exact document that multiple former aspiration employees had told me they believed existed. And David, what is the date at the top of this document,

and to whom was it submitted? March 2, 2003, via SEC Whistleblower Portal. Can I... Please continue? The lawyer look at this? I can read that. Yeah. Why? There's a name here.

Yeah. Okay. This is new for us. We don't get to read names usually. Nicole Criola Kelly, Chief Office of the Whistleblower, Securities and Exchange Commission, 100 F Street Northeast, mail stop 5631, Washington, D.C. 20549. Rate.

TCR 1665-765-865-147. The audio listeners will thank you for that. March 2nd, 2023, was multiple years before my reporting began, for the record. And that TCR number I need to explain to you guys, because this is completely new. It stands for tip, complaint, or referral number. It is a unique registration number. It's what you get when a whistleblower signs a government form that declares under penalty of perjury that the information provided is, quote, true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief.

that government form also stipulates that this whistleblower may be prosecuted if, quote, in my submission of information, my other dealings with the SEC, or my dealings with another authority in connection with a related action, I knowingly and willfully make any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements, or representations, end quote. And this TCR number, which David very helpfully read out, it can be verified as real with the federal government if anybody has questions about the authenticity of the document. So David, can you please continue reading what else this says? Dear Ms. Kelly, this submission supplements TCR 16765-765-147 that he bought with two zoosium.

Submit, thank you, by the way. So don't indulge him. Thank you. All right, sir. This submission supplements the TCR number. Submitted on February 15, 2023 by whistleblower redacted, is joined in. in submission by a second whistleblower who will remain anonymous. Aspiration Partners, Inc.

Aspiration was founded in 2013 by Joseph Sandberg and Andre Cherney. The company promotes itself as a global leader in sustainability as a service solutions for consumers and... It goes on for a while. It's like cut off after that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to point out a couple things. Joseph Sandberg and Andre Chariney.

to fellow Harvard grads alongside Steve Balmer and Dennis Wong. And Pablo Torre. Allegedly. Can't do the show without St. Harvard. Can't do it. This complaint is several pages long, okay? That's why we cut it off there. It was submitted by not one but two aspiration employees through their attorneys,

and those attorneys that are listed on this document, declined to comment to PTFO. But one thing that people often ask about in this nine-part investigation is, where's the smoking gun? Where is that thing? Where is the legally vetted document that proves in writing that we have, here at Pablo Tori finds out,

you know, not simply invented some wild story about how the Los Angeles Clippers used tree money to flagrantly circumvent the NBA salary cap. And so, I mean, I would now like you to please read

this next excerpt from the document. Read the whole thing, right? Yes. All right. Other examples of aspirations fraud. A, Los Angeles Clippers $32 million escrow account. In June 2022, Aspiration reached a $32 million agreement with the Los Angeles Clippers to create an escrow account and draw on the funds to purchase specific carbon offsets from specific projects on behalf of the

clippers to offset their emissions. Aspiration used only $1.4 million to purchase carbon credits pursuant to the agreement. Of the $20 million that Aspiration drew from the escrow account, account. Most was used to pay for carbon credits to satisfy other agreements, either for past agreements with the Clippers or to satisfy agreements with other customers, and to pay for aspirations operating costs, and even to pay Clippers forward Quay Leonard and incentivized bonus to circumvent the NBA salary cap, disguised as an organic marketing sponsorship agreement. That's a smoking gun, ladies and gentlemen. That's emphasis added. I was clapping.

I mean, play for the crowd. I mean, look. So you were given a... Look, I want to pause for a second, right? The big question we gathered here to answer was how in the fuck did tens of millions of dollars travel from the Clippers bank account to Aspirations Bank account in order to pay Kauai Leonard? And this, after a year of reporting, is the documented answer. Okay? It's corroborating everything else we've previously reported.

And the irony, in a sense, is that the smoking gun was the starting gun. It was the thing that kicked off everything we've been trying to piece together in the months since. Is this what you're saying started the federal government investigation of aspiration that has led to the conviction of Sandberg? They're not interested in salary cap circumvention of the government. Well, this is the beauty and the frustration of the story. is that this document is the document that gave a roadmap of alleged wrongdoing to the federal authorities. But it's worth noting that circumventing the NBA salary cap is not illegal on its face, right? Which may explain why the DOJ and the SEC and the CFTC.

It's why they did not prioritize, perhaps, an investigation of what the ringer has already said might be, quote, the biggest and most audacious case of salary caps or convention in NBA history. It's at the top of the sheet. Other examples of Asperations fraud. That means they got through all the other fraud, and now they got to the clippers. And like, yeah, by the way, the last line, they're even paying Quiet Leonard under the table. Part C, by the way. Like, C, part A, right?

This document, I hesitate to say, goes on. And I am told, importantly, by multiple sources with direct knowledge that the federal government is not done. The SEC's investigation into aspiration is actually. active and ongoing as we speak. And I'm also told that the federal government continues to find these aspiration whistleblowers credible. And personally, this is just me talking now, I do think these whistleblowers did something

that the sports world, as embodied in this room at this conference, should know about, right? I mean, this speaks to the question of competitive integrity in sports. It speaks to the question of what accountability for the richest people on earth even requires anymore at a time when those. concepts have never been more fragile. That's the context for all of this reporting. That's why I continue to focus in the way that I have. And so David is ruefully shaking his head. I'm just frustrated

because if this salary cap circumvention is happening, then, and there's no punishment that comes, you're going to have other teams and other owners who are just despondent because they're going to either have to start circumventing it if they so choose to spend their money that way. But why would you. The whole purpose of getting a cap, which is what you work so hard to get from a union, is to not do this. But I digress. The purpose of the cap is to make sure that when I have a good player, he stays with me. But if there's somewhere else, I can still get him. That's the whole thing. Everyone always wants the rules to apply to everybody else except for themselves. And so much in the same way that people say, well, 30 years ago, players played 82 games. And I said,

you know what, if Michael Jordan had discovered that by playing 70 games, I'd be even more amazing in the playoffs, he would have done it. And then everyone would have followed suit. They're all just keeping up at the same rules that everyone else is doing. The question, though, is who cares, right? Like, does the USDA care? Does our audience care? Do the people at home care? And so towards this goal out in the audience, I also have a surprise for you. If you reach under your chairs, come on. Two of you will find out that in fact, you get some something to take home with you tax-free. Is it a tree?

Please tell me it's a tree. There are two of you. And I want to congratulate those sitting in the 11th and 12th rows in the center here. Okay. These are rows K and Rose L. If you're in seat number two.

Get it? K-L. If you're in seat number two, have you found it? Oh, there's one right there. I see it on the right. Yes. There you go. There's one.

And you get a secret document. And you get a secret document right behind. This is, yes, you got it? I don't know if this is the end of what we've been doing here reporting on this story. I just know that if you open those envelopes, you will find what feels like all the proof that anybody needs to know that the story is real.

And I perhaps think it's fitting that I want to end this by thanking David Samson and Amina Al-Hasson for, showing up to work. Thank. Well, some folks across the aisle, they don't want us to be finding out whether aspiration pay Qua Leonard.

Can I go back to the airport? We can now end the show. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. What's in the envelope? Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Averrova,

Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Loman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumenello. Our studio engineering is by RG Systems.

Our sound designed by Andrew Bursick and NGW Post, Digital Strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, and our theme song, as always, by John Bravo. We'll talk to you next time.