Pablo Torre Finds Out - Exclusive: The Invisible NBA Owner and "Crimes Against Humanity"

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

A dunking tech bro in Memphis. A drone massacre in Ukraine. How did America's backyard beams end up in Putin's network of underground buyers? And how on Earth do Ja Morant, Justin Timberlake, Kevin Hart and "The Grindfather" get us to an illegal trade war? Hunterbrook Media's Sam Koppelman breaks down how his reporters investigated from a bird's-eye view, to a high-end Moscow dealer, to undercover calls back home — and asks what the hell Adam Silver's gonna do about another billionaire scandal hiding in plain sight.• Read the full investigation at Hunterbrook Media (Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and Hunterbrook Media and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. On this one, we actually got one of the craziest smoking guns I've ever seen. Right after this ad. Look, this is going to be an episode about weapons, about the NBA, about money, and the internet. And so I do feel obliged, Sam Copleman. Thank you for being here, as always. Honored.

We should start with John Moran. Start with the young star of the Memphis Grizzlies, who personally might be very interested in what we're going to talk about here today ahead of next week's trade deadline, because whether or not the Grizzlies find a stable alternative for his services, I do want to catch people up

on what he, in fact, has been going through. Yeah, it's been an interesting couple of years for John Morant. He was recently put on the trading block for the first time. Because for the first time since drafting him, number two overall in 2019, sources tell me the Grizzlies

are open and listening to offers on John Morant. And this comes after multiple NBA suspensions. Breaking news on Memphis star John Morant who will be suspended for gun-related incidents. Newly star John Morant has been suspended for a second

time after once again appearing to flash a gun on social media while he's riding in a friend's car. Yes. Which also led to him being fined for his signature celebration. He's fined $75,000 by the league for mimicking a shooting gun with his finger. pantomiming

shooting guns. Which then led to John Valen a new celebration, of course, in which he pantomimes, throwing a grenade. And then in another celebration this month. Yeah, this is new. Here's Moran. Line up a long-range tree. Jha pantomimes a rocket launch. And it goes on from there.

But while the rest of sports media wants to focus in on Jha, he is not the subject of our investigation, as much as he is thematically very essential to understanding the implications of it. Most sports fans know a lot about Jah Morant. He's a super polarizing player, and we're not going to retread any of that here today. Because, Sam, the main character of the report that you have done here with your investigative team

in Hunterbrook Media, which we are always glad, always honored to feature here, a Pulpatory finds out, is a guy that I think most fans could not pick out of a lineup, even though he happens to also be the billionaire deciding the entire question of whether the Grizzlies should actually pull the trigger, as we were, on a Jah Morant blockbuster trade.

And so this guy, this billionaire that no one else is talking about, this Mr. Invisible of the NBA, who is he? The owner of the Memphis Grizzlies is a man by the name of Robert Perra. He left Apple where he was an engineer to become the founder and CEO of a relatively obscure but very important company called ubiquity networks. And ubiquity, for those who are not familiar, as I imagine, almost all of our audience is not. What does ubiquity do? They promise to, quote, democratize the internet. They offer affordable, easy-to-use, high-quality Wi-Fi equipment. So we're talking like Wi-Fi routers.

Routers and switches and radios and antennae with full local control and privacy. More on why that matters in a minute. And basically what Perra did is he helped spread internet connectivity to remote areas around the globe. And so in the world of tech, what's his reputation? back in 2012 one former member of ubiquity's board of directors the legendary investor bill girly of benchmark capital he tweeted that robert pera is quote the most successful entrepreneur in silicon valley that you don't know right and so 2012 happens to be the same year when robert perra bought the memphis grizzlies at age 34 which made him and this was the thing that first put him on my radar

before he disappeared off of it entirely it made him the youngest controlling owner in the history of the nbats A kid owner. I'm an NBA super fan. I believe it's the greatest sport in the world. Just from a fan perspective, from players' perspective. Memphis, as a city, it's unbelievable. The people have been great. I can tell the community is really special.

And those two things combined, I consider myself very, very fortunate. Probably the luckiest man in the world right now. That's Robert Parrott doing a Lou Gehrig impression. By the way, super clean-shaven, boyish. He is this baby-faced billionaire. And so when Perra bought the Grizzlies alongside a group of minority owners,

including Memphis native and literal boy band superstar Justin Timberlake, who bought less than a 3% stake, Perra was less than four years older than Tony Allen, who was the team's best defender and also clearly just one of the most popular people in Memphis. The Grindfather. When I started talking to you, about the angle that you were reporting on this story, which we will get to.

I just want to admit to everybody, like, I didn't know a ton about Robert Para either. And so I started making some calls. And pretty soon, four people around the Grizzlies told me the same story, which is that a very frustrated Robert Perra wanted to actually buy out his minority owners at one point because he had met a woman who thought that Justin Timberlake and not Robert Parra was the actual real owner of the Memphis Grizzlies. Yeah, Robert Parrot wanted to make it very clear that he was the one bringing sexy back

to Memphis, him and Jack Randolph. Yes, and so I should say that we hear Apolitory Fines out, did reach out to the Grizzlies about the more basketball-related stuff that'll be in today's episode, and they did not respond. Yeah, and this all tracks, because Mr. Invisible does not show up in public anymore, really.

He's not spotted at games. He's not holding pressers. And that is extremely different. You need to understand from how he started his tenure because there was this one day, he's September 2013, Sam, when the six-foot-three, to his credit, six-foot-three, Robert Paraa logged... Yeah, he's a strapping young owner, and he logs on to Twitter. And Robert Parra has since deleted these tweets,

but I want you to first examine a copy of his old Twitter avatar. Because I think it's important for people just to visually, if you're just listening to this, visually understand how he presents himself. So Robert Perra's Twitter avatar is a picture of Robert Perra shooting a basketball where I have to admit, his form is fucking incredible.

This guy's elbow couldn't be more in if he tried. He looks like Dirk Novitsky down to the shooting sleeve on his left arm showing he's not one of these nobs who thinks that you got to put the shooting sleeve on your shooting arm. No. I mean, he's mid-jumshot about to release.

Yeah, wearing, like, tactical sleeveless Nike gear as well. Yes, and you can see some biceps in the photo as well. And so here are the tweets that this avatar sent out. September 9th, 2013. Hey, Grindfather at AA-000 G9, presumably Tony Allen. How about we play one-on-one in Memphis before training camp start? I'll spot you a couple baskets to make it a game. And for people who just don't know the legend of Tony Allen,

the dude was the best perimeter defender in the NBA, one of the most terrifying people to encounter in sports. And so what the grindfather does is he replies in a tweet that has notably not yet been deleted, and he says this. That's free money, exclamation point, exclamation point, boss. But what everyone sort of realized pretty immediately in this exchange was that even though Robert Barra had never played college basketball,

this game, like that shooting sleeve, was not a bit. the Grizzlies front office, the coaching staff, the NBA league office, I am told, none of them wanted this to happen. According to another former Grizzlies employee who has played in pickup games against Para, quote, Robert kind of liked to swing his elbows in a way that could start fights, and Tony is the last person in the league you want to f*** with. I just think Robert had no idea how badly an NBA player would kick his ass. He really just didn't know, end quote. So, Parra had his increasingly panicked,

Imagine being the PR staff for the Grizzlies, and you got this new boss. And one of his first directives is, hey, not only make a press release, but make this. You're holding now, Sam, a printed out fight poster. Yeah, I mean, this looks like it's the thrill in Manila. Except you've got Perra in the identical outfit to his Twitter avatar. Also says that you, the viewer, can watch live on. Grizzlies.com or listen live on ESPN Radio 92.9 FM. And the $100,000, Tony Allen ultimately chose the charity, the Children's Research Hospital. Yes. And a fun detail on the bottom right

corner. There's a seal. Yes, a stamp that says special guest referee, Zach Randolph. What I was told is that Robert Para in advance of this event, actually consulted with a longtime NBA trainer named David Thorpe, who I talked to about this, to discuss conditioning and strategy. He was training to beat the grind father, his own employee. And by the way, on our YouTube channel, just so you get a sense of Robert Perra's actual basketball abilities and action, practicing on the Brisley's practice court. Also, again, as always, wearing that same shooting sleeve. Among the ranks of NBA owners who are not, not named Michael Jordan, Robert Pera is actually clearly pretty good at basketball.

For sure. And what happens about two hours before the battle on the bluff was set to start, as they were calling this, a one-on-one game. And Grizzly staffers, by the way, had set up chairs all around the practice facility. The team winds up posting a new and definitely sadder press release because the battle on the bluff gets canceled. Yeah, because the Grindfather would have definitely... Definitely played real defense on Perra. Yes. And it would have been a very awkward video to exist out in the world.

Everybody knew that the Gridefather wasn't going to be one of the Russian goalies playing hockey against Vladimir Putin. It looks like that goalie literally takes a dive so that he doesn't save the goal against Vladimir Putin. It's harder to imagine a more stark example of someone not wanting to beat their boss at something. And so the aftermath of this in which the billionaire doesn't get the thing that he wants to happen, Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated reported this. The person Robert Pera apparently blamed

for the collapse of his duel with Tony Allen was the head coach of the Grizzlies who was a guy named Dave Yeager. Robert Pera, I am told, then tried to fire Dave Yeager after the first five games of that 2013 season. Jaeger bomb dropped. And the person he offered Yeager's job to

was the aforementioned would-be trainer David Thorpe. And so I'm further told that Thorpe decline the offer and that cooler heads prevailed. But a couple weeks later, in October 2013, in a series of yet more deleted tweets, Robert Perra logs back onto Twitter

and he turns his attention, Sam, to someone else. He says, What's with all the one-on-one with Mark Cuban talk? I'm in, but I would make quick work of him. And there's another Robert Perra tweet that same day in October 2013. If we're talking an owner game, get me MJ. I'll up the charity contribution to $1 million. Can you imagine the emotional journey

St. Jude's Children's Hospital is on? Suddenly, they went from 100K to zero, now millions on the line. I'm so mad that none of this happens because Michael Jordan's response to the Charlotte Observer, of course, is, quote, I think that's comical. It didn't make any sense. Why would I play one-on-one? So eventually, Robert Pera resorts to getting himself into the 2015 Celebrity All-Star game here in New York. and he leads his team to a win, but the MVP trophy goes. Apparently, I just think by NBA decree, it always must go to Kevin Hart. And so it does.

And then Perra ends up tweeting a two-second video of himself, dunking. Yes, sir. This is 2016. But at some point, in the decade since then, it just feels like Mystery Invisible, Sab, comes to this realization that he should focus on the arena where he might actually dominate. And this happens to make,

Robert Pera, in retreat, one of the five richest owners in American sports with a net worth now of more than $30 billion. And ubiquity, which most listeners probably haven't heard of, is a $34 billion American tech company hiding in plain sight. They don't take earnings calls or have bank coverage. And yet ubiquity's devices are truly ubiquitous. They can be spotted in garages and broom closets and backyards. across the world. And so you talk about the routers, the dishes, the antenna. It's just funny because everybody I've talked to who worked for the Grizzlies, they have like various criticisms of Robert Perra, but they just love ubiquity's technology because Perra at one point gave his employees

as a gift these devices, which work phenomenally well, it seems. There's like ubiquity super fans out there. Today we're going to be having a look at what is in this box who are making YouTube videos where They don't just plug these in and show you how to work them. These are what you get in the box. This one here is a little bit more like getting a Lego kit, so we'll show you how to put it all together as well. Just watch this YouTube video from influencer at MyMateVince.

Hi there, my name's Vince from MymateVins.com. Almost a million subscribers called, quote, trying long-distance Wi-Fi in London using ubiquity light beams. Around Richard's house, he has really good internet access. My brother's house, unfortunately, signal is absolutely awful. They try to jerry-rig ubiquity devices to their. their homes to various areas where they live because they just like these devices so much. So that's it up on a pole and plugged in.

You can see the little blue light. So now we're going to go to Paul's house and we're going to be putting the dish on his side pointing in this direction. And I just want people to understand what this specific light beam, ubiquity light beam device looks like, Sam, because how would you describe? Yeah, it's basically like a flat rectangle reflector with a small cylinder sticking out front. Yeah, I would say imagine there's like a dish that's kind of like flat, and then there's this dildo just coming out of the center of it. A dildo in a dish. Yeah, with the ubiquity you, the logo, the you right at the tip facing outwards. Yes, and this is where the radio lives and where the signal is sent and received.

So it's kind of like a radio and antenna combined. But the big, important takeaway here is that these things apparently are very effective. Although what's so weird is that when we asked one NBA, owner about Robert Perra. We didn't even ask about ubiquity. He said to us, unprompted, quote, no one knows where their sales come from. Which is a great premise for an episode

and also a good reason to come back around to the incredible athlete we mentioned before who loves increasingly sophisticated weapons. Vladimir Putin, whose military, it turns out, happens to be ubiquity's biggest fan. I actually want to start the story of your investigation here

with another video from a Russian state-run media network, which also happens to broadcasts sports like hockey and soccer, but in this specific case is showing what? So this is a news segment from October 10, 2025, and what you see standing amid the ruins of an abandoned plant in the occupied Ukrainian territory of Donbos. Which is a long way from Memphis. Is a Russian soldier, a signalman.

And on his vest is a chevron. Which is like a badge of sort. Yes, of a Russian special forces unit. Their elite military intelligence agency, the GRU. And this soldier in an interview is describing the importance of their job, quote, a break in communications means total loss of control over combat operations. And the reporter is saying what? The reporter agrees.

They say, quote, no communication, no front. But what I want to draw your attention to is look at this other shot of an antenna a bit later in the news segment. It's on this tower. and Pablo, if you look closely at it, what do you see? Yeah, you see the signature ubiquity you on the tip of this dildo-shaped device as we're watching this soldier climb up this tower. This is the popular antenna that helps Robert Perra make his fortune.

The technology that made him his billions, that made him the youngest owner in NBA history. And it also, we have figured out, is the choice wireless antenna for the Russian military. These products are allegedly being used to do what by Russia in Ukraine? This is the question we spent six months investigating. And what we found is that the ubiquity radio bridge antenna serve critical communications needs for the Russian military. It's basically like a long, invisible Ethernet cable between two places. And it actually works up to 18 miles apart, which is clutch in a war zone, particularly a war. Particularly a war zone where you need Wi-Fi to do things like fly drones. And what ubiquity this American

company is doing is its helping power Russia's communications grid. And what experts told us is that this enables precision drone attacks against Ukrainian civilians, the types of massacres of innocent people that the UN has called crimes against humanity. And so what I'm imagining as I hear you explain this is something that is familiar to anybody who's been like, I guess out in the woods, and your cell phone reception is bad, your signal is shty, and you wish you had like a Wi-Fi connectivity because that is what ubiquity's devices are enabling

in this drone war in Ukraine. Yeah, that's kind of exactly what's going on here. This is how drones called first-person view drones work. They stream real-time video of where the drone is going over a radio link so that you can pilot the drone over long distance. And where ubiquity's radio bridges come in is that they allow the pilot to share that video to headquarters and to other people in the military so that they can coordinate attacks, do reconnaissance, and avoid enemy fire. We actually spoke to a Ukrainian soldier currently in the war zone, who told us at Hunterbrook that without ubiquity, these drones from Russia, the ones leading to these massacres, they would not work. Quote, they'd be flying blind.

And the issue of drones is not just something that you're taking interest in. Here is President Zelensky of Ukraine warning. But weapons are evolving faster than our ability to defend ourselves. Now there are tens of thousands of people who know how to professionally kill using drones. We actually interviewed a woman who lived in a Ukrainian city bordering occupied Crimea, where drone attacks on residents have been so frequent. they've earned the gruesome moniker, human safari. More than 3,000 civilians in that city

have been struck by Russian drones since December 2023. And this Ukrainian woman told us, quote, They just mercilessly shell this poor city and poor people. No one is protected from this. And so the next video that we've got to play here to fully understand what modern warfare is like is a clip that's not from, a Russian drone, but from a Ukrainian drone? Because Sam, what we're seeing through this camera

here as this Ukrainian drone flies through the air to a soundtrack, incidentally, that I think Americans might find familiar is what? It turns out the Ukrainian military has similar taste in music to someone else known for taking on the Russians, Rocky Balboa. And it's a video of a drone approaching a church steeple, which our team geolocated and identified as the church of Elijah the Prophet near the contested border between Ukraine and Russia. And this church steeple is housing what looks like more than a dozen ubiquity antennas. Yeah, it looks like an infestation of these devices, like a bunch of my mate Vince's jerry-rig this thing together. Yes, and a close-up of one of the antenna looks pretty identical to a by now

familiar ubiquity radio bridge antenna model. The ubiquity light beam is very clearly visible in this video. Yes, right down to the mounting hardware. How omnipresent are they compared to other technologies like I'm thinking of Starlink, made by Elon Musk, which offers satellite internet, which would seem to be even stronger than Wi-Fi. Yeah, so one Ukrainian communications officer we spoke to who uses the call name Django, which really just shows Tarantino's influence, knows no bounds. He told Hunterbrook, quote, there is simply no alternative. And he estimated that about 80% of Russian radio bridge antennae observed on the front line

is ubiquity. 80% is staggering. These signalmen in Ukraine explained to us that most Western competitor brands are either too complicated to use, as you've seen, ubiquity very easy to set up. Or like Starlink, Elon Musk's company, those devices can be disabled remotely. And what Django told us was, quote, ubiquity is made for regular people, basically plug and play. He said there were tons of tutorials on YouTube. Which we have obviously found. But inside Russia these days, YouTube tutorials aren't the way, you know, YouTube tutorials aren't the way, you know,

young men communicate because the Russian backyard is a f***ing battlefield. And so instead, they make telegram videos. And we found example after example of Russian military units begging for donations so they could buy more $65 ubiquity products. Yeah, look, I love an unboxing video. This seems like a different kind of variation on the genre. Different vibe, yeah. Yeah, these are guys in a bunker holding these boxes.

They're saying, quote, we thank the people's militia assistance group for providing communications equipment in the form of ubiquity antenna. And in fact, let's just play that for a second. You can hear him say ubiquity. Ubiquity. Umbiquity. The soldier goes on to say, quote, reliable communications are the key to success. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours.

Not super subtle in terms of the importance of the product as described. No, they pretty clearly just explain what's going on. And the thing that I just want to explain here is, isn't Vladimir Putin, isn't the government itself actually supposed to pay for all this? Yeah, like, why are their crowdfunding campaigns? Yes. It's because Russia's actually kind of broke right now. And so military units, even the top ones,

they're saving Putin and the oligarchs funding the war money by begging for help to procure their own supplies. And based on our review of these telegram accounts, ones like the video you just saw, we found that nine of the military units that received ubiquity gear, or individuals associated with those units, have been accused by human rights groups of having committed war crimes. And so this is where I just need to acknowledge

that by any objective measure, we have buried the lead of this story. We wanted to start with this as a sports story, and it still is, but just to be very clear, isn't it illegal in America to sell American devices exactly like this to the Russian military? Yeah, man, there are rules called sanctions, which are a way that the United States can try to stop its adversaries

from getting access to technology that they might want to use in a war. And Russia has been sanctioned since before invading Ukraine, but especially since there are very tight export controls on what you're allowed to send to Russia. And they, of course, include the types of dual-use devices like ubiquities that the military might need to go do horrible shit.

And so how aware is ubiquity with this entire issue? Yeah, ubiquity should definitely know about sanctions because they've actually had issues with them, where in 2014, federal regulators find ubiquity for, quote, reckless disregard, end quote, of its compliant obligations, when its products ended up in Iran. And at the time, ubiquity was let off fairly easy.

U.S. authorities slapped them with just a $560,250 fine. Yeah, that's like vanishingly small to Robert Perra, or to, quote, Tony Allen, as he described their one-on-one game that never happened, free money, boss. But it kind of made sense at the time because it was ubiquity's first violation, and the company took, quote, remedial action, according to the government. And what ubiquity said back then to investors was that if violations should occur in the future, the response of regulators may be more severe in light of prior compliance concerns. And so I think the question now that we have to begin to answer is just how directly responsible ubiquity is. So if you're a big company, normally you have a massive team of compliance people who are in charge of making sure that your products don't violate export bans. But one of the weird things about ubiquity is how small the entire company is. They actually make more money per employee than like invidia.

And we spoke to a former employee of ubiquities who told us that almost no one worked in compliance there. The employee said, quote, all those processes you would see at large-scale businesses, they don't really solve the problem. And this former employee added of Robert Pera, quote, the CEO of Ubiquity recognizes that and just doesn't care about all the extra garbage. And so what does Robert Pera recognize about what their products are being used to do? We reached out to Ubiquity with detailed questions on their compliance practices, and they didn't respond.

But we should note, I think that in their SEC filings, Ubycuity was very careful to say this, quote, we do not have any visibility on the location or extent of purchases of our products by individual network operators and service providers from our distributors. And quote, and Hunterbrook can report that according to trade records, ubiquity did halt direct shipments to Russia following the invasion without ever acknowledging that change. But their products still flowed into Russia, obviously, through dozens of intermediaries, according to that Hunterbrook analysis of trade data. And over 10 legal and sanctions experts we talked to

said that pleading ignorance, it's not a defensible argument. Especially because, as we mentioned, this is not the first time ubiquity devices ended up where they shouldn't. Right. They got fined half a million dollars, or again, about what half of what Robert Pera was supposed to pay Michael Jordan

if they had played one-on-one and lost. They got fined that much because the products ended up that time in Iran. Yeah, so 2011. Yeah, and then U.S. officials found out that ubiquity had sold products to a distributor who ended up sending them to Iran. And after that debacle, Robert Pera acknowledged that this was a huge problem and did a rare interview with Forbes. He said, quote, this can't happen again. If it happens again, I'll be in trouble. And so now the question for us comes, how do you prove that this is, in fact, happening again?

Obviously, we have the video that we played that clearly shows ubiquities devices on the front lines, and we have trade data that shows millions and millions and millions of dollars of ubiquity equipment ending up in Russia. But we wanted to see exactly how this happens. How, if you're a Russian soldier, and you're raising money on telegram, and you're desperate for that Wi-Fi connection, how easy is it to get a ubiquity device? And so we went under cover. So we mentioned earlier, Sam, that an NBA owner had told us of Robert Perez company Ubiquity. Quote, no one knows where their sales come from.

And so in our effort to actually solve this mystery and find out where they're coming from, I do want to acknowledge that, like, ubiquity's sales team is now of interest to me. I know they're a lean company by design, but how does sales work? Yeah, so it's important to know that it's not just their compliance department. Ubyquity also barely has a sales team, and they rely on third-party vendors to sell their devices. Which means that if you were to, say, order, I don't know, a dozen ubiquity lightbeam devices to, I don't know, say the Church of Elijah the Prophet, you don't go directly to Robert Perra or to ubiquity. No, you go to one of their third-party vendors that actually do a lot of their

e-commerce sales for them. Which is to say, like, not grizzlies.com to get your official Jamaran jersey, but Grizzlies.RU. Exactly. Ubiquity.RU is one of the places from which we ordered ubiquity devices when, in October of 2025, after about a month of reporting on ubiquity, one of our reporters went undercover. He signed up for a Russian email account, used a VPN, posed as a Russian military officer, who is ostensibly procuring goods to fight Ukraine. And he visited all of these third-party websites, websites like Ubiquity.com.

are you? And just to be very clear from an ethics perspective, in case it's not obvious, I consider personally this kind of undercover journalism really important because I don't know of another way to pressure test the hypothesis of this is how these products are getting from America to Russia under life and death circumstances. Correct. Hunter Brooks reporter, who is staying anonymous for obvious reasons. Right. Contacted a dozen Russian e-commerce sites, openly selling ubiquity items. And one of the first vendors we reached in our undercover reporting

was a woman named Nina Kuznetsuva. So here's the deal with Nina. She operates multiple Russian storefronts with domain names like ubiquity.ru, and she openly sells ubiquity products that have been banned from export to Russia since the war began. And we're looking at the website now,

and it is covered in ubiquity's logo. I mean, there's the big U that we've seen over and over again. There is again the dildo-shaped antenna. these are her official ubiquity products. And when you click on the English translation on the website, you even get a contact page with an office in Moscow. Yeah, Nina isn't operating in the shadows here. We didn't have to go sign up for some secret group chat

to be able to contact her. We were able to actually do open source intelligence on her, and she appears to be doing quite well. She lives in an apartment on Leninsky Avenue in Moscow, not going to be more specific, but it's one of the most iconic streets in the city. And then we actually found social media pages belonging, presumably, to her son and business partner, André, who's been posting photos from trips to Bali and Istanbul. When you check the timeline here, it's important to point out that these trips appear to be taken during the war, living a pretty comfortable life, while the technology, the American technology from Robert Para that they're selling is being linked to what the UN has been calling, again, crimes against humanity.

Yeah, and Nina was eager to help our undercover reporter and to prove her bona fides to show that her products were the real deal and actually reaching the front lines. Nina was basically sending us evidence that her shit was good, like a weed dealer who comes over with the briefcase, except she's not slinging purple haze. The Alaskan thunder f***. Sure, she's slinging Wi-Fi antennae to be specific.

But just what was she sending you? So you remember that video that we started this whole conversation with? from Russian state media showing the GRU soldier. That actually came to us from Nina. She wanted us to see this is legitimate military equipment. This is what troops are actually using. And when we asked about alternatives, she was blunt. She said, quote,

there are no stable, inexpensive alternatives to this manufacturer. Which is an incredible review for the product, much to the disappointment on some level to Elon Musk. And they specified, quote, 95% of shipments to the SVs, are ubiquity. And the SVO, just to clarify here, is... Yeah, that's the Russian euphemism for the war against Ukraine.

Special military operation. But even after Nina gave us that 95% number, we kind of just wanted to see what she'd tell us if we kept pushing. Right. If we really leaned into quality control. Yeah, what would happen if you didn't take yes for an answer? Exactly. So once our undercover reporter had this tech gear saleswoman

in the upscale Moscow apartment, showing us how much Putin's special ops guys loved using it, We ended up asking if she had any other evidence that these devices were safely being delivered to Russian soldiers. You mean something clearer than the video that seems pretty clear of these Russian soldiers using these devices. Yeah, and you know Pablo how when you're reporting a story, you hope there's going to be a true smoking gun? Yes. Like if you had that picture of Steve Balmer handing Kauai check. A giant novelty check.

Yeah, saying like, do not do work for aspiration. They must pay you to not show up. On this one, we actually got one of the craziest smoking guns I've ever seen. So what qualifies as a true smoking gun in this story? Nina sent us thank you letters, thanking her for providing equipment to troops fighting in Ukraine. And so right now on our YouTube channel,

you can see the thank you letter that Nina received from these are Russian soldiers who wanted to make this very official looking insofar as this thing has a crown and a crest. and I think that's a tiny dragon holding a sword. It looks medieval in how official it is. And it's a letter specifically from Russia's 623rd interspecific regional training center. It's addressed to Nina thanking her for providing, quote,

wireless bridges for Russian servicemen in Ukraine, which is exactly what ubiquity sells. It seems clear. And there's another one. This is a letter from a Russian company called VALTEC. And this one is far more corporate. It has VALTEC's letterhead across the top, and it has, you know, like a letter of recommendation

that you would hope that your boss writes for you. Confirming that the radio bridges Nina transferred to them were, quote, sent to the combat zone and were, quote, ensuring reliable communications in critical situations. And I just need to keep on stressing this. You guys refuse to stop finding out about this. Yeah, we like wanted to make triple, quadruple, quintuple, sure.

That ubiquity was really selling these devices. So Nina wasn't the only vendor we contacted. We actually reached out to a dozen Russian e-commerce sites. Many had ubiquity right in the domain name. UBNT.RUUBQI-RUBQA-RSA.com RU-Dash UBiquity.RU. We gave each one the same proposition. A Russian military unit needs prohibited ubiquity equipment

for operations in occupied Ukrainian territories. And what was their response like? Almost all of them confirmed our shopping list and promised delivery to the war zone in as little as a week. Amazon Prime level, expediency. Yeah, I will note that one vendor actually set a condition. They said, we will only do it if you give us an order of over $100,000.

And why did they set that standard, that minimum? It's funny, because this is a direct translation. They said, quote, you're asking for sanctioned equipment. We carry orders starting at $100,000. And so given that this is an admission of sanctions evasion, essentially, and given that this is not the only example of written acknowledgement of what this is all about here, Does Robert Para, the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies, know that this is happening?

Our team at Hunterbrook reached out to Robert Parr's company with detailed questions, and they didn't respond. Look, we have a relatively small newsroom, small but mighty, but we've figured this out with a team of a few incredible reporters. You'd think that a 35 or so billion-dollar company could trace its own devices if they wanted to figure out where they were going. Yeah, the thing I've learned about finding out is that you need to want to find out.

You can't just put on earmuffs and figure out what's happening, but these guys should know this. And that's true in part, because Pablo, it's not just the Russian distributors selling these devices to Russian soldiers. And this is the other important part of this chain of custody, which is, if you're a Russian soldier at the warfront, can you order these devices from a major?

American ubiquity suppliers. So we actually called up one ubiquity distributor in America. Thank you for reaching Multilink Solutions, Inc. Multi-link Solutions. It's an Ohio-based official ubiquity reseller. And so what's happening here? What are we hearing? Hello, good morning.

I'm going for multi-link solutions. We missed to call from this number. You need to speak about ubiquity devices. Is that correct? A Hunterbrook reporter posing as a Russian customer is asking about 450 ubiquity devices. Not much of a difference, but we are authorized and directly partnered with ubiquity. We only carry U.S. version, so I believe that's already provided to you that information.

So once payment is received, we will proceed with shipping out the order. And initially, the Multilink rep says that they can deliver these to Russia. Yeah, I mean, you can use your own carrier if you want, and yeah, we can ship to Moscow, no problem. Which is an incredible thing to say to a... stated Russian customer for all the sanctions reasons. So I want to be clear that they followed up saying they couldn't ship directly to Russia. So I'm honestly saying that we have not exported before to Russia. So I am not sure if there will be any delays or any expected problems with the delivery.

It's not like FedEx was going to agree to that shipment. But there was some wiggle room. Yeah, so let's figure out. the best shipping method over there and make sure, like, you know, all the products that you're looking for everything. Where they could send these products to the Russian end customers through an intermediary third country. Is there anything else I can help you? Right. So here's the email from Sales Multilink to your undercover Hunterbrook reporter. And it reads, quote, we may be able to use the alternative countries provided.

Please provide the full address to provide shipping estimate. So we provided an address in Turkey, and Multilink sent an invoice confirming delivery. And this is an invoice for 450 devices that you ordered at the grand total of $79,98 American dollars. Again, to be very explicit here, they still thought we were Russian. And they know that you're not allowed to sell these devices to Russia. So instead, they sell them to us as Russians through an intermediary address in Turkey. And this is bread and butter sanctions evasion. This is literally in the guidance on sanction evasion red flags.

Right. Just like, what if, instead of giving you the money directly, we funneled it through another entity? Which is to say that in this case, what you're reporting is that an American company, an official ubiquity reseller, actually agreed to help circumvent. U.S. sanctions. Yes. And to make this all now, again, a sports story, it brings us back to that NBA owner who told us, quote, no one knows where their sales are from.

Yeah, I told that owner, Pablo, that we now know where at least some of those sales are coming from. And the answer is Russia. Which raises a question, which is, what is the NBA now going to do about any of this? Full disclosure, as we mentioned, every time I'm on this show, Hunterbrook has a fun business model that sometimes involves taking positions long or short in the companies we report on. You can see our disclosures about all of that on our website, hunterbrook.com,

where you can also subscribe to our, I'll just say, pretty awesome investigative reporting. So the one thing that I find myself thinking about a lot in reporting this show is the notion of consequences. The fucking around and then the finding out. Yes. It's the question of if you're the billionaire owner of an NBA team whose boss is actually your employee, meaning the commissioner of the league, Adam Silver, for instance, what kind of accountability is even possible in the event that wrongdoing is reported and established? What happens to you when you have more money and more power in some cases,

such as, I don't know, one of the top five richest owners in all the sports, Robert Pere, then nations themselves? And I think it's interesting to compare the accountability that owners face to the accountability reserved for players. Take, for instance, Grizzly's star, Ja, Moran. Yeah, the issue here for Jai is just that flexing, his recidivism in said flexing, cost him about $8 million in salary on account of those suspensions. And also, by the way, he was forced to apologize, including in a very memorable ESPN interview. Who's gun were you holding? Well, the gun wasn't mine.

It's not who I am. I don't condone in any type of violence. But I take full responsibility from my actions. Made a bad mistake. And so what we returned to after seeing that video is the problem of violence in the NBA. And here's the question, Sam. Will Robert Perra, who employs the guy,

who had to apologize for waving around guns, will that billionaire owner be forced to answer for your reporting? And here, the government might really do something. They did last time when ubiquity's devices started showing up in Iran. And the reason the penalty was soft back then was because it was a first offense. As Paris said at the time, if this happens again, I'm in trouble. And it happened again.

The thing I've been finding out in my other reporting on various NBA scandals, from gambling to alleged capser convention, is that the thing the league office is most afraid of, it seems, is whether the U.S. government might make them look stupid depending on how they choose to punish or not punish. And this raises another question. It's the question that I came here to talk to you about

the reason I wanted to work on this story with you. And it's this. Does the NBA commissioner care more about a player brandishing a gun on Instagram, or if one of his billionaire bosses is enabling Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine. To return to how we started this whole episode, is Adam Silver going to accept this challenge

like Tony Allen or like a diving goalie? This has been Pablo Torre finds out, a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time. I do the