Pablo Torre Finds Out - Steve Ballmer, the Other Cuban and the $118 Million Infusion: Kawhi-Gate, Part IV

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

As the NBA commissioner and the richest owner in sports dig in their heels, Pablo scoops up more Aspiration receipts — from Mark Cuban's tweets to the Clippers' C-suite and the cellphone of Uncle Dennis. Meanwhile, Dan Le Batard breaks character to look after a muckraker running on fumes.• Part III: The Mystery Investor, the No-Show Payday and the "Smoking Gun"• Part II: Team Ballmer vs. Team Sh*tting Bricks — an Argument with Mark Cuban• Part I: The Richest Owner in Sports, the Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree• Subscribe: Pablo's newsletter has exclusive access, documents and invites(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.

I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre finds out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738, Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly, because today we're going to find out what this sound is. They did that. So, I mean, he's right, but he's completely correct. That would be one of the avenues that you would use to circumvent the cap. Right after this ad. Dan, I got to admit, I was kind of hoping for a different Cuban in the screen that I'm looking at right now. You have an equally uninformed one, if you would like to start arguing.

I love arguing when I don't have any facts and just have my blow-hard opinion. So in that way, Cuban honors me as a fellow Cuban. That's right. I also want to honor you and your request for what this was going to be because you wanted to have a conversation I think with me, your friend, who we don't really see as often as either of us would like. But you wanted to have a conversation about journalism. And I wanted to honor that by forcing you to live it. If you're down for a bit of a ride that you definitely did not sign up for today.

No, not what I wanted to do. I know now that you've got a series of papers in front of me and you want to do this thing you now do where you surprise David Samson or Amino Hassan. and now I've got surprises here to look at. But I did want to, as preface, I did want to just simply talk to you because I have found the way journalists have reacted to your story to be super interesting in that it seems to me

like a whole lot of people don't want your reporting to be true when what I do know about your reporting is it's exhaustive and I want people to understand that you've got lawyers listening in on every kind of, that you're having these days because your standard is one that is much higher than the people who are denying the story. You have to prove something with a degree of difficulty that all the deniers don't have to have as they deny it. And I'm just curious why so many people don't want this story to be true. But go ahead. Your program, I'll sit back and wait to be surprised.

I have lawyers hearing all this stuff. I'm vetting this. And I guess when I'm When I say lawyers, I mean lawyer. We have our lawyer vetting this stuff. We have our producers vetting this stuff. And we have you vetting this stuff insofar as now you get to discover some new material developments in the story that no one else has heard publicly. By the way, we get these developments because we're spending your money to do this. Oh, I know that part.

So your fiduciary duty. And I thought the costs were lawyers because I've seen the costs. So I didn't think it was a single lawyer that was pocketing all of that. A lot of billable hours. Lots of hours. all of them billable, a lot of developments that are in front of you waiting to be discovered in some sort of a sequence here, because this is a breaking story, Dan. And I just need to catch everybody up as to why you are the Cuban in front of me instead of the most prominent critic

of the journalism you kindly describe and fund, who is, of course, billionaire Mavericks, minority owner, Mark Cuban, the guy from Shark Tank, who, by the way, emailed me last Thursday, after the Dennis Wong episode came out because he was still skeptical about what it meant that Clippers co-owner Dennis Wong, who was also, by the way, Steve Bomber's college roommate and had never invested in this so-called Green Bank before,

suddenly wired $1.99 million to aspiration. And this, despite the fact that he was explicitly informed in the signed purchase agreement we obtained, that aspiration was financially collapsing and already being probed by the SEC. The big-spoken detail, Dan, is that his investment company, Dennis Wong, put in that $1.99 million the week before Aspiration wired Kauai Leonard's company, the $1.75 million payment that

Aspiration was months late at this point in paying Kauai Leonard as per the secret no-show, $28 million endorsement deal at the core of this entire story. And so, according to Aspirations internal bank statements, 1.99 million comes in from that very rich investor affiliated directly personally with Steve Balmer and the Clippers. 1.75 million goes out nine days later, December 15th, 2020. And so I asked the guy I wanted to ask Mark Cuban, who had publicly aligned himself with what he calls, quote unquote, team balmer to come back on this show, to sit in that chair.

And that afternoon, Thursday, he told me that he is, quote, swamped right now, end quote, and could not do it. And he tweeted about it between Thursday and Monday. He tweeted nearly a hundred times about aspiration. And this is an affliction that plagues all the globe right now. he is so interested in his confirmation bias that he has arrived at a conclusion and it doesn't matter the facts that you present him,

he's going to continue to stay with what his conclusion was. This is a plague throughout discourse in this country and other countries where it doesn't matter the facts that you have. I can't believe that he's Team Balmer, Team Wong, and now Team Wrong. Well, he's also team going on someone else's podcast instead of this one

and team talking about this same topic at length with them. They didn't declare bankruptcy until March of 2025. And Kauai kept on getting paid after that 1.75 in 2022, right? So $7 million a year, $1.75 every three months. And so, yeah, he got his $1.75 out of the $1.99 that Dennis Wong put him. But what about next year and those next four $1.75s? So you're saying who you're saying who put that money in there to make sure.

Yeah, right, because they had to stay in business for another year and a half at least. And they weren't really... Yeah, I saw that. It has been a marvel to watch you so ahead of this story with so much more information and so many facts. You've birthed a series of gas bag opinions that aren't paying attention to all of the facts. And that's a nice soft spot for him to land to talk about this story when he's swamped. those particular people who can't question him on anything he's saying. But the question he raised in that clip we played very deliberately,

I think is actually the one that I want to take seriously because I think it's worth answering. What is funding this whole enterprise? How is this contract for Kauai Leonard continually getting paid? And what documentary evidence and credible primary sources exist that allow us to follow the money? the lens of salary cap circumvention. And so the understanding that I have, Dan, given all of this across four episodes now, is that two things can be true. It can totally be true that Clippers owner

Steve Balmer was in fact a victim of a massive scam, allegedly engineered by Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg, who pled guilty in federal court for wire fraud. But this could have been especially painful to Steve Balmer because Steve Balmer had also partnered with Joe Sanberg, and he was a lot of Danberg, through aspiration, in a secret plan to scam the NBA and also profit in the process, potentially funneling tens of millions of dollars to Kauai Leonard, his superstar, through a team sponsor right underneath the nose of Adam Silver and the NBA itself. Allegedly. Allegedly.

Allegedly creating what would amount to the most elaborate salary caps or convention scheme in the history of professional sports. And so that is a lot of the end. denials, I think, are of course worth including here. The clippers deny it, bomber denies it, they deny that they circumvented the salary cap. They initially called any such assertion, quote, provably false. And then that phrase disappeared from the next statement. But to be even clearer about this, I think we're talking about the biggest scandal in the

history of the modern NBA. That's what it feels like to me, given the level of interest and attention from all of these power brokers and literal and figurative players. in the story. And so I want to take the advice of the other Cuban. My reporting's foremost public critic here today, Dan, because that good question of how did Kauai keep on getting paid, his $1.75 million installments, and who continued to put money in to the $28 million deal we've been arguing about this entire time in public, plus $20 million in equity in the company, a $48 million secret deal, it is bigger than anything else we've heard of in the history of caps or convention,

leads me to a money trail that we're about to follow. And I think people are treating this as Mark Cuban has been treating this, like kind of a true crime podcast. And the fact that there is no smoking definitive piece of paper that says, I'm doing the crimes, I'm doing cap circumvention with a signature on it. It allows people to fill in the blanks. What I'm doing is like providing a story and then releasing clips. And some people will only listen to the clips,

which means that they're missing the surrounding context, which is so essential that I care about it every time. And so it just feels like, frankly, I'm watching people get scammed by the people I'm investigating for scamming. I'm like seeing why they're falling for the thing that they engineered because they're not listening to the full story that I've reported about why this is, in fact, a scheme.

They're kind of, by, you. and biting the hook. It's just weird to me, though, in this age of conspiracy, Pablo, I do not see this kind of sports journalism being done by much of anybody in the modern age because people can't afford it, and furthermore, certainly not podcasters. It's super weird for me to see the amount of what feels like proof

or circumstantial evidence. Alleged, alleged proof. Yeah, but it feels, it feels, there's so much documentation that for people to ask you to do more in the way of documentation is weird because the amount of documentation you have doesn't have a lot of precedent and scandals that I'm used to seeing. I don't know how many more papers I can put on this goddamn desk. It's weird.

To make it clear that there's something here. But you know what? As always, all you got to do is stick around after the break. Dan has his glasses on. He has his little glasses, Samson style. And the first thing I need to do, Dan, is just be very clear about something, which is that inside of Aspiration, the $28 million contract with Kauai's company, KL2 Aspire LLC, was extremely weird from the start.

I was told that Aspiration's chief marketing officer at the time when he first heard about this deal did not even know who Kauai Leonard was. Like, that's the sort of dissonance in terms of climate change company going and given the biggest deal on the market to who, to that guy who's who was described by people that had the company as dull? Aspiration co-founder Andre Charny this week denied that it was a no-show job, correct? Denied that that was any such thing. Yeah, so, so this guy who signed the paperwork, yes, the former CEO, he emerged for the first time in public to dispute the reporting. He said, quote, the claim that the contract with Kwai Leonard was a no-show contract is false.

And then he proceeded to argue that the beliefs provision in the contract, the thing that our friend David Samson spotlighted for us in part one, in which Kauai didn't have to do anything if it didn't align with his small B beliefs. Andre Churny argued, actually, this is totally normal for celebrity endorsements. It's like Dan, if you're a vegetarian, Andre Cheney was saying, and you got asked to eat meat. Of course. And I suppose in this case, the equivalent would be that Kauai Leonard is whatever a vegetarian is for someone who doesn't do work. But most crucially, what Andre Tierney said on Twitter was, quote,

In the months of discussion among our executives before signing the sponsorship, I don't remember conversations about the NBA salary cap, end quote. And I just think that any time someone says, I don't remember instead of there were no, it's a bit of a red flag for me, just as a person who reads a lot of statements. Can we believe anything this person is saying? Like, what is the credibility of this person? The credibility is that Mark Cuban has then tweeted out, this is the guy to trust Joe Sandberg, don't trust him.

Andre Charnney is co-founder. This is the guy that Cuban says is not going to jail. And so trust him. And so what I did, of course, was I made some calls. And I got a joint statement signed on the record by three former executives at aspiration partners, all of whom directly reported to Andre Charnie at the time, that Charney signed the KL2 Aspired deal. They are the former chief financial officer.

Roger Avanizian, the former chief legal officer, Mike Shuckero, and the chief technology officer, Eric Anderson, and they write under their own names, among other things, quote, the Leonard deal was presented to the company as a completed arrangement and executed by Mr. Churney, despite significant objections from members of the senior management team. It did not reflect any strategy previously communicated to us, nor was it reviewed through aspirations investment committee process. The team expressed concerns at the time regarding the high cost of the agreement and its lack of alignment of aspirations brand and business strategy.

In our judgment, the Leonard deal was not in the company's best interest. It was strategically difficult to justify then, and it remains so today. End quote. So when I say the story is developing, Dan, people are now watching and saying, I've had enough from the people who are saying, this reporting is bullshit. Oh, and you've got the names. Like, that's not anonymous. You're not even doing these people, they're providing you the documentation that

saying, no, we sign off on Pablo Tori's reporting. And so this is where I just got to tell you that despite that statement and despite the fact that Kauai's endorsement deal was, as previously reported, more than four times bigger than every other celebrity endorsement deal aspiration had combined, Andre Charny does not sign off on our reporting here. We texted Andre for comment. The ex-CEO reiterated that this endorsement deal in which Kauai did literally nothing

was not a no-show contract. he again claimed that there were many months of internal discussion. And as for the statement by the CFO, CTO, and CLO, the general counsel, André said, quote, their advice at the time was contained in emails that were marked privileged, so I am not able to publicly comment on whether they did or did not support the siding of the contract at the time. End quote. And then we asked if Andre disputed the three execs who told us that he presented the deal to them as,

quote, a completed arrangement. And Andre replied that Aspirations General Counsel, Mike Shuckero, quote, drafted the contract and spent months going back and forth with Leonard's team. The negotiations happened with Joe Sandberg and our general counsel, as well as Leonard's team. I was not involved in those conversations, end quote. Then, Charney cited legal privilege about further details once again.

All of which led me to obtain one new piece of evidence that I do think you should know about. Because I'm about to read to you the screenshot of a text message apparently sent from the cell phone number of Kauai's uncle, Dennis Robertson, and addressed to Joe Sandberg. And the Uncle Dennis number writes,

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

Mike Shuckero, Aspiration General Counsel, declined comment to us about this text message as the mic in question. Dennis Robertson did not respond. Neither did attorneys for Joe Sandberg. But I did, in fact, confirm that

Shuckero is that Mike. The mic who was, quote, dragging his feet on the contract for weeks. Heard the Uncle Dennis text. I further confirmed that this text refers to Kauai's additional $20 million equity deal in aspiration, and often overlooked part of the $48 million completed arrangement, which Joe Sandberg eventually resolved by offering those shares to Kauai Leonard through Sandberg's own personal LLC. And I'm learning this for the first time. I have not actually been involved in the innards of

this story. Pablo and his team inform me. largely after things are over, that yes, perhaps Balmer can bankrupt you if you get a thing wrong. Yes, they tell me afterward. That's the way everyone does good business, I'm sure. Which is why you're the perfect person actually short of the other Cuban in that chair today.

Because what the other Cuban urge me to investigate relates directly to this, right? So his whole thing was, why haven't you looked into how the money was flowing into the contract? Why haven't you taken the time, Pablo? The time. Why haven't you taken more time to talk to more people?

as Cuban just wanders around gasbagging to Kendrick Perkins. I unfortunately took that bait, and I proceeded to talk to more people. I proceeded to return, in fact, to anonymous source number one who had worked inside of Asperations Finance Department, who has fully cooperated with the federal investigation that led to the arrest of Joe Sandberg, even though source number one is also someone that Mark Cuban doesn't really appear to trust. So I hesitate, source number one,

to drag you into my ongoing Twitter beat. with Mark Cuban, but I do just want to read something that he wrote, effectively about you and a growing number of your colleagues who have been daring to speak to me because here's what he says. Quote, for all the information you have,

why didn't any of the people you have talked to while they worked there, uncover the fraud, question mark? Who's to say that they didn't? Right. Yeah, so around March or April, April of 2022, it was the Seattle fish market. It wasn't just smelling fishy. You couldn't escape it. And at that rate, many people within the finance department started to raise alarms and actually

address with executive leadership the problems that they were seeing to go so far as to say that a firm was hired in order to conduct an external investigation on the fischiness that was taking place within aspiration in regards to revenue, in regards to accounts receivable, in regards to accounts payable, the entire bucket that had occurred within 90 days of signing $300 million was already fishy enough for many of my old colleagues to go to executive leadership and raise the alarms. What was the shelf life like for an aspiration finance officer? shorter than milk, which is abnormal. I mean, put into context where this company is said to be going,

and they don't even have a full-time CFO. They don't even have a full-time controller. A two-point-something billion-dollar unicorn hadn't hired a full-time controller. Correct. They could not hire a full-time controller, and they could not hire a full-time CFO after Roje Avanesean. up to down. One of the executives, by the way, who signed under his own name, that statement, which we

referred to earlier, in which he rebuked the characterizations of Andre Charney, the co-founder and CEO of the company. But I digress. He stepped down, noticing that something was not right here. Right. Many of my colleagues actually quit due to their disappointment and discouragement and the response of the executive leadership team as a result of external investigations

into the concerns that they raised. So I think it's a vast mischaracterization on the team itself to say that we didn't uncover anything, which goes to show why many people in the finance team left as quickly as they got there. When am I going to get to start turning over papers here because I am really enjoying

that you are referring to. to another human being out loud as source number one. I don't think, I don't think a lot. Me and source number one, I've been spending so much time together. When Violet asks who you're talking to, I tell her I'm talking to source number one.

Why aren't you at bedtime? You're not allowed to reveal your sources. Violet, you'll go to jail willing to protect your sources. I don't want to do this to a young child, but Violet needs to learn early that she can't reveal who source number one is. But the thing about what source number one is telling us is pretty eye-opening for people who are just kind of paying attention. Because remember, aspiration raises like $300 million in fall 2021, Dan.

What source number one is saying is that all that shit is gone. It's gone so quickly. It's gone, in fact, before Kauai Leonard ever got paid. Yeah, so Balmer himself put in $50 million in September of 2021 as a part of an honest. ongoing fundraise effort that eventually brought in Oak Tree Capital Management on an additional 250 or so. And as quickly as it's wired in, it's committed elsewhere. There were extensive legal fees, professional services fees, marketing contracts,

sponsorships and endorsements, things that were promised that had to be paid. So as quickly as those funds come in, they're out the door. It's actually just spent on the other stuff that aspiration under the direction of Joe Sandberg, the co-founder has been spending. Joe Sandberg and Andre Jeremy. So Balmer's putting in money that's not going to Kauai Leonard. Yes, so they are spending it on all sorts of things.

They have a giant marketing budget. They have professional services budget. They're just spending money flagrously. And so the question then, of course, is like, so to Mark Cuban's point, how does Kauai Leonard then get paid if you're telling us that they're burning cash as soon as they get it?

And I need to acknowledge something, else, Dan, because Mark Cuban tweeted another thing that is worthy of inclusion in our discussion. And I have not brought this up yet in any of the episodes we've done to date. And so, Dan, can you just read Mark Cuban's tweet? You were not on Twitter. You missed this. But on Friday, he said this. While Pablo is focusing on the $2 million and $50 million from Wong 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's 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. And so what Mark Cuban is saying there does actually make a ton of sense. I must admit, because aspiration, for those not familiar,

was functioning as a broker for carbon credits at this point in their company's history. Anybody who has been following the life cycle of the apple tree that proudly stands still outside of Intuit Dome at the end of our first episode? They know this. Carbon credits are there to offset the real-life emissions of businesses like meta and celebrities, by the way, like Drake and other clients of aspiration, such as the Clippers, as Steve Balmer explained himself on ESPN. This is a company that I got to know, frankly, through them approaching us about a sponsorship deal. my family and I were super keen to do work to stem climate change we think that's an important thing I was in the process of even changing the design of Intuit Dome so that we could be carbon neutral and then we meet this company that focuses in on an aspect of carbon neutrality to me it seemed

like a match kind of made in heaven if you will and so this is a match made in heaven for aspiration on their end because according to my sources they were charging a dollar or tree. That's five to ten times what it costs to plant a tree, the 10 to 20 cents reportedly. And so that is the margin that Mark Cuban is referring to in his tweet. Just get more carbon credits. All that margin is what you'll use to pay Kawhi Leonard. And so the piece of paper, Dan, that I would like you to turn over, which nobody else has reported yet, has something that I need you to read out loud, actually just describe what you see at the top of the page. At the top of the page, I see the Clippers logo. And it says East-West Bank, and it says payment to aspiration, Sustainable Impact Services, LLC.

Please allow this letter to confirm approval by LA Clippers LLC of a withdrawal of 20,961,382 from escrow account number blank. The withdrawn amount will be used to fund the following carbon projects. What is the date, Dan, of that letter that you're holding? June 14th, 2022. June 14th, 2022 is when this letter is sent. This letter that you just read says that they're withdrawing $21 million to fund carbon projects. It names a reforestation project, some nature-based credits, and then it is signed at the bottom, Dan, for the record here, by who? Is that the chief financial officer?

That is the chief financial officer of the Clippers. On June 14th, 2022, aspiration is informed. that it is receiving $21 million in this letter you're holding from the LA Clippers signed by the CFO. And this, I'm told, was enough to not only pay Kauai Leonard, obviously, it was enough to hit its fundraising target. It was enough to keep the company afloat two weeks, two weeks, Dan, before Kauai's initial no-show payment was due on June 30th, 2022. And so according to two sources that I spoke to, who had direct familiarity with this $21 million, carbon credit deal with the Clippers, it was agreed to and put into motion very promptly. I am told that Steve Ballmer and the Clippers, their executive team, had heard Aspirations

sales pitch for the $21 million purchase, just, quote, a couple weeks before the June 14th, 2022 letter came in as you're holding it in your hands, and my sources found this very memorable for a contract of that size in particular, because it's an enormous deal. And to quote one of them, the money came in quickly. They didn't sit on it or anything. And so instead of us connecting the dots here, I'd like to ask source number two, former senior executive in Aspirations Finance Department,

to come to the stage and explain what might be the missing piece here. Violet, protect source number two with your life. So what did you think, source number two, when you saw what Mark Cuban had been tweeting about how, if you were to circumvent the salary cap and you were a carbon credits company, you would do this. They did that.

I mean, literally, he described one of the few ways that the clippers and bomber got money into aspiration. He literally described exactly what they did. So, I mean, he's right, that he's completely correct. That would be one of the avenues that you would use to certain bet the cap. I don't know what Mark Cuban wants in terms of a paper trail, but something. with the Clippers logo signed off by the CFO of the

company, like, that's pretty strong documentation. In the way that he literally said it would have happened if this was Capsar Convention, in a way that I'd never said before in public. And so this is where I just need to say that the Clippers, when presented with a

detailed list of questions, reiterated Steve Bomber's commitment to sustainability and that he was duped. And they also told us this. 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, exploring ways to address emissions from our fans and contracting with aspiration to directly purchase

carbon offsets, as well as broker the acquisition of additional offsets. Some of those commitments were built into the sponsorship deal with aspiration, totally separate of the investment in the company, and we made payments to aspiration until the company was unable to fulfill their responsibilities. End quote. And if you are now wondering if Mark Cuban has anything else to say on this same topic, you should know that he remains so, quote, swamped that he tweeted thousands upon thousands of words about this story and our reporting on Tuesday night alone, as one Twitter user at MKEbucks 11 put it. Quote, I'm starting to think at M Cuban is Balmer's burner human.

end quote But the thing that Cuban wrote to his 9 million followers that I just quickly want to cite here is this If I had to point to the things that the NBA should look at It's going to start with whether Dennis and Steve Were the only outside investors When the company needed money so badly Could they not find anyone else?

Why? The second thing I would look at Was the $50 million deal the Clippers had for carbon credits carbon credits are a dicey business, to put it mildly. I know I've loved and lost here. Great concept, but it isn't something that is simple, not by a long shot. Did the clippers pay the money up front or not? That would be a red flag if they did specifically because it's a dicey business. So we'll get to the first thing Cuban wrote there about outside investors in a minute,

but that second thing, I do want to clarify that not only did the clippers withdraw that $21 million in carbon credit. And not only did the acknowledgement of carbon credit ownership transfer document, which I've also acquired, have an effective date of June 30th, 2022, which is the literal day that Kauai's first payment was due, with signatures also from both the CFO of the Clippers and Andre Cherney. But also, according to Aspiration Bank statements obtained by Pablo Torre finds out, the Clippers, less than three months before they prepaid that $21 million on those carbon credits, had already prepaid $3 million on April 1st, and then on April 4th, the literal day that Kauai signed the $28 million KL to aspire contract, the Clippers also wired aspiration $32 million, meaning that the Los Angeles Clippers prepaid a grand total

of at least $56,403,462 on carbon credits, from Aspiration in the spring of 2022 alone, tracking alongside Kauai Leonard's payments as Aspiration was burning money to answer Mark's question. And so you may recall in that clip of Steve Bomber, he was talking about how they were designing the Intuit Dome, his baby, for carbon neutrality, right?

A good guy move. He was trying to do that. But the thing about the Intuit Dome at this time, as they're buying carbon credits for this. project is that it wasn't open yet. It's still two years. The problem is, my energy, I want the thing here now, but it's still two more years. The Intuit Dome wouldn't be open until August 24.

And so the whole rush of like, we got to get these $20 million in carbon credits in because we're the building didn't exist. I prefer the idea that the rush should be because the world is burning. and Earth is going to be destroyed, but that's not the rush. It's the good Uncle Dennis is on the phone and we're late with their payments, allegedly. And so to recap in that context, we have millions more dollars coming into just broke-ass aspiration at this point from people affiliated clearly with actual, quote-unquote, team bomber almost exactly again when Kauai Leonard contractually needed to get paid by aspiration.

And it happened around, yeah, Kauai's slightly late first payment in mid-2020, with the Clippers paid $21 million for those carbon offsets. And it happened again around Kauai's extremely late second payment in late 2022 when the company had already gone into default. And the investment firm for the Clippers' one and only co-owner Dennis Wong, aka Steve Balmer's college rubate, wired in personally $2 million, his first ever investment in the company. And so I'm just saying you might notice a bit of a cycle repeating itself and revealing itself here.

Because according to my sources, what happens here is that, It is paramount. It is so important. It was something that had to be done, and it was crucial to our relationships with Balmer and the Clippers. To Aspirations' relationship to Steve Balmer, that Kauai Leonard gets paid. Bored man must get paid on time for doing nothing. But Balmer also, in this same cycle, hypothetically, he needed to keep the Cardinal Sin of this NBA scheme completely secret. Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg has declined to comment through an attorney, but what Sandberg appeared to need over and over again, of course, was more money.

And what my reporting indicates is that it can still be true that through KL2 Aspire LLC and this potential caps or convention scheme involving Steve Balmer, Joe Sandberg realized he had a bit of leverage here in the power dynamic with the richest owner in sports who had lots and lots and lots of money to spend. Dan, I just feel like I'm living inside. of the game clue, where we have the Clippers CFO with the $21 million carbon credit deal

in the conservatory, and we have Dennis Wong with the $1.99 million wire transfer in what's called the billiard room. Those would be, in this tap circumvention mystery, the accusations for a payment one, for a payment two,

which brings us finally, finally, to 2023. And right back. to Mr. Balmer in what I can only presume would be the ballroom, and I would argue another dagger. So put on your glasses and wait till after the break. Good tease. Dan, to recap, we're still using your money to follow Steve Balmer's money, and Kauai Leonard was due another quarterly payment of $1.75 million in March 2020.

Before we get to that point in time, that very crucial point in the timeline, you should have now another piece of paper in front of you. Can you just read what that one in your hands now says across the top? It begins with the word that Pablo loves to see when he's not supposed to see papers. It says right on it, confidential. Confidential Joseph Sandberg Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, videotape deposition of Joseph Sandberg Tuesday, October 16th, 2024. So in October of 2024, it turns out, Aspiration co-founder Joseph Sandberg, who would ultimately

be indicted for wire fraud, was being personally sued by a direct lending fund named Clover private credit and the hedge fund that managed it known as UBS O'Connor. And we do not, I hate this part, we do not have the videotape of Sandberg's deposition. play on it so quickly. But thanks to the filings in this case, the case I've since settled, by the way, with the judgment against Joe Sandberg and his affiliates of more than $278 million, what I have is the transcript. And so I just need to ask you, Dan, to do a bit of a table read with me. And in this deposition, which took place again, October 16th, 2024 in New York, New York, you will be playing the role of Joseph Sandberg, the co-founder of Aspiration, and I will be playing the

role of the attorney asking him questions if you are ready to act a little bit. I am ready. Let's do it. All right. Aspiration, very publicly and promptly, had a number of celebrity investors. Is that correct? Yes. Including Drake, the rapper? Yes. Leonardo DiCaprio? Yes. Steve Balmer? Yes. Former CEO of Microsoft, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, correct? That's correct. In fact, at one point, Aspiration had a deal with the Clippers, did they not? I assert my Fifth Amendment rights.

So I just need to break character for a second. No, no, stay in character, Daniel Day-Lewis. Come on. He said, yes, yes, yes, that's correct, and all of a sudden Fifth Amendment. Yeah, that's right. No problem acknowledging Drake DiCaprio, when we got to the whole deal with the Clippers,

Joe Sandberg pleads the fifth, but I want to stay in character. We proceed. Have you met Leonardo DiCaprio? No. Have you met Drake? No. Have you met Steve Balmer?

Yes. Were you involved in securing their investment in aspiration? I assert my Fifth Amendment rights. Oh, Mr. Sandberg. This is now me, just as me. You've got to get better at this staying in character thing. You stink at staying in character. This is me just as me.

Stink. as a transition, this is me, just as me, is not helpful to anybody. Either stay in character or don't stay in character. But when he says repeatedly, I assert my Fifth Amendment rights, I just need to let everybody know that I did this same exercise

with source number two. Well, I think that tells you everything you need to know about whether Joe thought that the deal he had with the Clippers was potentially illicit. And so again, Dan, Joe Sandberg, had declined to comment through his attorney. But there was another exchange in the deposition that we need to read here. And for this part, I need to call upon the theatrical talents of Roy Bellamy, your producer from the Dan Levitard show sitting across the glass from you, I believe, if we've done this right, in Miami. Roy, are you there? Yes, sir. Are you yourself or are you in

character. I can't tell. The acting is so magnificent. Which one are you? Which one? Roy will be playing. Roy, do you know who you're going to be playing here? I am playing Mr. Bernstein. That's right. Mr. Burstein? Joe Sandberg's lawyer, who plays a key role in this part of the play. During the period November 22 to May 23, you were trying to raise money to pay off the loan, correct? vigorously. Did you manage to get any new investors into aspiration at the end of 2022 and the start of 2023? Yes.

Who? Oh, Steve Balmer. Don't look at me. I wasn't looking at you to answer. Sorry. Let's see, Steve Balmer, Dennis Wong versus his entity. I can't recall the name of his entity. Roy was terrible.

Roy was truly terrible as an actor there. I felt like I was pretty bad, but Roy didn't do it. anything in terms of range. You were Mr. Burstein, Roy. Well, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, literally delivered it. I think there are two ways you could read it, or perform it. One is, don't look at me. That's right. That would have been the way, that would have been, that's what we were looking for. We were looking for Sandberg's attorney saying, don't

look at me. Don't, don't, don't bring me in your mess. Yeah, this is, this is, this is, this is, Burstein the lawyer is not like, uh, Mariah Carey carey saying, saying no eye contact. Am I reading up the deposition? Joe Sandberg, upon saying the name Steve Balmer again, looks over at his attorney, and the attorney says, Don't look at me.

Don't look at me. Roy? Jazz hands. That's it. The jazz hands are part of the theatrical direction that we're not included in the transcript. Can we just do this again so that people can get the courtroom reenactment?

I want this all the air as it is, but let's just do it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's get, we're going to insert at this. at this point the lawn order sound effect here did you manage to get any new investors into aspiration at the end of 2022 and the start of 2023 yes who oh steve balmer don't look at me oh i wasn't looking at you to answer sorry let's see uh steve balmer denis wong versus his entity i can't recall the name of his entity And scene. I want to thank Roy for his services.

This is a non-guild job. Excellent. Excellent work, Roy. I'm sorry. You will be paid nothing for this. This is a job where you show up. It's the opposite of the Kauai Leonard job. You show up and you do a thing and we don't pay you for it.

I'm pro-union. The thing about this deposition transcript, which I love, beyond the fact that Joe Sandberg's attorney is on the record telling him, as he's pondering what he should say about Steve bomber. Don't look at me. Don't look at me. Either way, you pronounce it. It's just pretty funny.

But that part, the whole actual question and answer hidden there is a timeline, right? It brings us back to December 2022. He's talking about, did you raise money at the end of 2022 and the start of 2023? And so this brings us back to when Dennis Wong, again, put in $2 million into aspirin. And I just need to reiterate here that the one and only new investor coming into aspiration during this round of fundraising was Dennis Wong, who has not responded to multiple requests for comment about his investment. But this was especially glaring because one reason I suspect Joe Sandberg referred to this round of fundraising as vigorous as you performed it was because everybody else that he asked outside pretty much kept saying no. In the court documents in the Clover case, what I proceeded to find out was that Sandberg contacted at least 19 outside investment firms from fall 2022 to spring 2023, and all of them, Dan,

all of them turned aspiration down. But Steve Balmer, as Joe Sandberg, as you read in that deposition, did not. Which is now strange for another reason, because you may recall, Dan, that the comment the clippers gave, Pablo Tori finds out before episode one was published, was kind of bold if you could read that for us right now. Just remind us what they said. The team ended its relationship with Aspiration years ago during the 2022-2020 season when Aspiration defaulted on its obligations.

Neither the Clippers nor Mr. Balmer was aware of any improper activity by Aspiration or its co-founder until after the government instituted its investigation. The team and Mr. Balmer, stand ready to assist law enforcement in any way they can. Right. So let's now line up the timeline. So March 9th, 2023,

when Steve Balmer put in $10 million through his personal LLC, first reported by the athletic. In the NBA context, there were only 14 games left in the Clippers' 2022-23 regular season. Okay? So Steve Balmer, at that point, did the opposite of end, his own personal relationship with aspiration, he put in $10 million dollars. And look, that, of course,

combined with the initial $50 million, takes us to $60 million. And this, according to nine sources with direct knowledge of the deal, as well as court filings, in other words, Dan, the opposite happened from what the Clipper's statement tried to convey before they knew we had mountains of documents. It's going to be hard for them to wiggle around some of this documentation. I don't know how much more NBA is going to do in the way of investigating beyond this, but it seems like every time you investigate a little more of this, more money starts appearing because we started at a $7 million a year arrangement, and it seems like there is more and more money happening here that's now doubling what your initial reporting is,

more than doubling your initial reporting. Aspiration keeps on raising money from quote-unquote team bomber along the direct point in the timeline at which Kauai Leonard is due his quarterly payments. Again, we saw it with payment one, we saw it with payment two. Now we see it in March 2023. And my second source, again, the former finance executive high up inside aspiration, observe something even more eye-opening given personal context. Next. Come March, March 23, I was still with the firm, even though a lot of executives had left.

You know, a majority of them were let go. Some of them left because they realized that there were some untort activities taking place at the board level. Certainly, we inside of aspiration knew that federal agencies were starting to look into aspiration. and in fact, Forbes published a article in early March about the fact that there's a new CEO. I'm just looking at the Forbes headline and the headline from March 6th, 2023, was, quote, a floundering fintech's risky reboot. Yeah, yes. But just to say that at this point, like, people are noticing that things are not going close to good at aspiration. Absolutely.

I'm looking at the California State database now. This is for the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, the Warren Act, in which you got to disclose in advance ahead of a mass layoff. And when I look at the Warren report for March of 23, I'm just pulling it up now, and I search for aspiration, on March 24th, 2023, aspiration laid off permanently,

it says, another 180 employees. Yeah, that's when I really went bare bones. We were constantly in awe and it shocked that Balmer would invest in the company again. And I have text messages between myself and colleagues

where we're wondering why Balmer put money in to the extent where how do you want me to read these? I would like to, I'd like you to show it to me. And then I'd like you to just read out both sides of that conversation so we could understand it for the audio audience. Okay.

So this is a text message I got from a colleague. In all caps, Balmer put money in, question mark, exclamation point, question mark. To which I responded, it's just honestly so insane. This whole thing is just so insane. So in other words, smelled fishy at the time. Seattle Fishmarker. The smell in that place is pungent,

and I couldn't have thought of a better place to identify. I don't know. Perhaps there are places in Japan where they're slaughtering whales and dolphins. But they're throwing fish at people, and people are loving it. That's how fishy the Seattle Fishmark. Pike Place is, by the way, geographically also quite relevant to the origin of Steve Ballmer, but I digress. Look, according to court documents in the aforementioned Clover lawsuit, which we've been digging into here, Aspiration reported, Dan, these are the net losses for the company between 2019 and 2022.

Losses of $772.5 million. Okay? So as we just get a sense of what was obvious inside the company, and in fact, because of the Forbes article, outside the company, before Balmer decided, I'm back in. in for 10, we should point out here that there's another glaring revelation in these documents, which is that in December 2022, this is less than a week after Kauai Lenter got paid, the $1.75 million. The public company aspiration was supposed to merge with and therefore deliver this massive windfall to its investors, including Steve Balmer, who was trying to profit off of his investment

and aspiration. This company, this public company held a special meeting. The public company's name is Interprivate Three Financial Partners, And according to court documents, 90% of interprivate's shareholders effectively bailed on the premise of aspiration. They redeemed their shares at roughly $10.10 per share, tanking the company, hollowing out the entire financial proposition of it. And it helped explain, by the way, why on the outside, they couldn't get anybody else to put in money. But on March 9th, 2023, about 18 months after Balmer put in $50 million at $11 per share, $11 per share was his original investment.

That was the share price. The owner of the Clippers didn't just go back for more. Bomber invested $10 million more at a $23 share price, over $23, just over $23. So more than double what he invested in as a share price in 2021 when the company was actually publicly in a good financial state. Even if you were to believe that there was no diligence done, March 2023, not only was this publicly known and it was all over the media and all that, we had to give disclosures as part of that investment round. And in those disclosures, the actual financial state of the company at that point were disclosed. So that should tell you a lot. This is lunacy.

It really, it really is. I'm trying to think of what is the item here that is most damning. The dollar amounts obviously. But we've also now got another Clipper official inserted in the middle of these transactions. And he happens to be their chief financial officer. I mean, what Steve Bomber, Dan, as you. you try to power rank how is this, how is this escapable? What Steve Balmer has admitted on ESPN is that he, or at least his staff, reviewed what he

called, quote, primarily fraudulent financials, even though, of course, we say that there are disclosures that we have vetted that indicate in so many key ways, truly detailed ways, how the company was obviously f***. Meanwhile, though, as we talk, Steve Balmer on Tuesday, went. on stage for a panel hosted by Sports Business Journal. And I know that you've had a lot going on, including allegations against the team

about the partnership with aspiration and I don't know if you want to address it right off. Sure. We're not this is not a fun thing to be through. I was personally defrauded

through our interactions with the company and some of the staff. The fraud sort of extended broadly through that. We had many relationships with the company sponsor,

activation was through carbon credits, all a bunch of complicated stuff. But the important thing is our relationship with the company and our players' relationship with the company were independent, which is important under the rules of the

NBA. I feel quite confident in that that we abided the rules. And so I welcome the investigation that the NBA is doing. It's a great way from our perspective to get the facts out there. And as I say, there's nothing fun about being highlighted in this way. It's a whole lot more fun to be highlighted for building a great arena. but this two shall pass. Pablo, you're not going to let them get away with the complicated stuff, are you?

I mean, I want to make it simple, actually. Let's just recap it. September 2021 to March 2023, quote-unquote, team bomber, meaning Steve Balmer, the governor of the Clippers, Dennis Wong, the alternate governor of the Clippers, the CFO of the Clippers, and also the Clippers themselves via the letterhead with these weird carbon credits,

they proceed to give a grand total of $118 million to aspiration. In 18 months, each new payment, I would argue, less defensible than the last, which reminds me, by the way, of something another billionaire owner had told me, like a couple episodes ago. Because if Steve knew,

and the minute he found out that this shit was falling apart and these guys were a scam, he'd say, let me invest some more money, so you can pay off Kauai so this whole thing goes away and there's no evidence of it any longer and let's just erase all this from the books. You don't leave this outstanding debt out there. If Bomber was involved

and he just immediately square the circle to use your term, the minute things went sour, he's a fucking moron. You're saying save aspiration personally to prevent bankruptcy to prevent all of this stuff. That's one option or invest more money, right? and just tell them to pay off Kauai. Because it would have made no sense to do this on an annual basis. It would have made a lot more sense to pay it off, put it away, nobody knows any better.

And so weeks after Steve Bomber's March 2020 investment, I am told, after the round of fundraising is completed, this is the spring of 2023, another thing worth noting here is that that's about when federal agencies start interviewing dozens of aspiration employees. just two of which, by the way, you've already heard from in this episode today. In fact, March 20203 happens to be when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency, had opened its investigation into Aspirations carbon credit business, I am told, which had been a real source of frustration for the aspiration employees who actually got into this whole business to, you know, help the planet. And so there's a lot of complicated stuff here. There's also a lot of simple.

And to me, the binary that Mark Cuban posed to us, are you team bomber or, as I called it, team bribes, the bricks are bigger than I thought. Yeah, I've got a text here from an NBA owner, and it says some of how it is the mood has changed since that Board of Governors' meetings where Balmer was running around. and telling everybody he'd been conned.

One of the things this owner says is the difference between this and prior situations is that Balmer is highly respected. He has done a great job as audit committee chair. The impression from the Board of Governors meeting was that most owners hoped he didn't do it, but these last pieces of information are huge. You've got other details involving Clipper. by name. It's not just Balmer. You've got paperwork here that is awfully damning here attached to people in important roles. I don't know how the clippers are going to be able to slither around some of this.

Just one last thing, Dan, before we let everybody finally go and see their families, I was listening back to Adam Silver and his remarks after the NBA's Board of Governors meeting on September 10th, 2025 as we contemplate what does he do, what does he allow, how can the slithering allegedly happen? And the commissioner said this. When the podcast came out, it was news to me. I frankly never heard of the company aspiration before and I'd never heard a whiff of anything around an endorsement deal with Kauai or anything around engagement with the Los Angeles Clippers. So it was all new to me. I heard it. I saw some of the follow-up information. So I obtained another document, Dan, which is, I believe, in front of you.

It's a copy of Aspirations $300 million founding sponsorship agreement, which was scheduled, by the way, to give Aspiration, the Clippers jersey patch in July 2023. And if you could read the clause that I hope is in front of you, this section 15.16 of this massive contract. it says what? Section 15.16A, this is NBA rules and regulations, special remedy for adverse change in NBA rules and regulations.

This agreement in all of sponsors' rights and the team party's obligations herein are subject to NBA rules and regulations. This agreement and any amendment here to must be submitted prior to his execution for NBA's approval and shall not be effective or enforceable until it is expressly approved by the NBA. So that is the on the books publicized, big founding partner sponsorship agreement, the one that Adam Silver apparently suggested he had never heard of before. It says in that deal that it must be submitted before execution, shall not be effective or enforceable until it is expressly approved by the league Adam Silver runs.

And I also want to point something else out. During the first two seasons of that deal, which is where we've been living in this episode, by the way, 2021, 22, and then 2022, 23, the NBA seasons, aspiration as it was burning cash immediately, as quickly as it was getting it, was putting $7.5 million, according to this agreement,

into the Clippers annually. Team Balmer, meanwhile, was putting money into aspiration, which had to pay a $7 million annual salary for Kawhi Leonard that nobody ever spoke publicly about. So just doing the math here, pretty good deal. Team Balmer still coming out ahead about a half million dollars a year,

despite the $28 million thing that we've been focusing on in this particular episode. And so when Adam Silver says after the board of governors, right, that he'd never heard a whiff of anything around an endorsement deal with Kauai or anything around engagement with the Los Angeles Clippers, what I want to know, Dan, is if the aspiration deal was, in fact, submitted and expressly approved by the NBA. And so what I decided to do was tweet all of this out again, almost word for word, as I just said it to you. And on Tuesday afternoon, in a live streamed on the record conversation at front office sports tuned in conference,

Adam Silver got asked about this by the interviewer, Daniel Roberts. Almost all the investigations we've done since I've been at the NBA, certainly the bigger ones, the media plays a large part in them. as we are seeing in this investigation here, it began with Pablo and his podcast. This was not something that was on our radar to even be thinking about. I think what's hard for people to understand in all this, and, you know, Bomber has said, basically, I was hoodwinked.

You know, it was a fraudulent company, and this company, you know, had executives that have been prosecuted and it went bankrupt. He has said that. You have said you hadn't heard of aspiration before, but a $300 million deal with the team, you know, the team was going to be like a Jersey patch sponsor. They had aspiration on the back of the court side seats.

I think Pablo... Just to be clear, I'm not sure if I said I never... If I said I never heard of it, I meant in the context of the accusations here. I mean, I certainly was aware of the brand, but I didn't know anything about it. Got it, yes, because I think just earlier today, Pablo tweeted, he said that because it was a $300 million deal,

it was a founding sponsorship agreement. And those, as I would expect, have to be approved at the league level. Yes, you know, there's a league approval process, but it goes, it doesn't go deep into, you know, interviewing executives for every deal that comes through the league office. Does it need to? Well, I think that's a fair question. And maybe at a certain level they do, I think we'll have a better sense of when we understand what happened here. Look, I accept my responsibility ultimately is the integrity of this league. And especially when it's a competitive issue. I mean, we've had other

larger investigations, but be honest, even when it involves misconduct of owners, it doesn't get fans attention of 30 teams in the way something does where there's a suggestion there's an unlevel playing field, that somebody has a greater advantage because they have deeper

pockets or they have a relationship or a connection. And I think from a fan standpoint, look, I'm never going to be in a position where I can sit here and say, I can promise nothing untoward's going to happen in the league, but what we do want to pledge to our fans is that from a league office standpoint, we treat everybody the same. As I said, we respect due process. We're going to be fair to involve, everyone involved with

that, to team executive, an owner, or a player, but that we care deeply about competitive fairness in this league. And that's what this issue potentially touches on, which is, I think, why in part it's getting so much attention. I don't know what Adam Silver is supposed to do here, either publicly or private. I feel like he's a bit boxed in and it sort of reminds me a little bit of what recently happened here with John Gruden where people who adjudicate these things

are saying it's ridiculous that the arbitration that involves Roger Goodell would be heard by Roger Goodell. What an awkward position for Adam Silver to be in given everything he's done publicly that he's not actually the boss of Steve Balmer. That Steve Balmer is the boss of Adam Silver, and now he's got to figure out how to be a commissioner the way that he showed us with Donald Sterling.

When the only reason Donald Sterling happened, Pablo, is because all of the other owners wanted it to happen. I'm not sure what they want to happen here, but I don't think it's that they want bomber gone or that they want Balmer disgraced when Balmer's really useful to them. And you know how these people admire money? So, of course, they're going to admire the person who has more money than any of them. Yes. There is a very strange dynamic where Steve Bomber is, as you put it useful, he set a record for NBA team sales when he bought the clippers from Donald Sterling. He is a guy who has all of the money, I mean, frankly, to buy out everybody else if he wanted to. And the question that the owners have to ask themselves, I think, that Adam presumably would be asking himself is, no, there's no equivalent documentary smoking gun like Donald Sterling, same. on tape the most unsayable thing you can probably say as an NBA owner specifically. But when does the mountain of what you might deem quote unquote circumstantial, which may simply be

the best possible evidence accumulating in the absence, deliberate absence of writing down on a piece of paper that confession? When does that also seem embarrassing to you? I have only one piece of paper left here that I have not looked at. Are you going to let me turn over this last piece of paper? to have the punctuation on the episode? So please turn that piece of paper over because this is a tweet, of course it is,

from the billionaire MBA owner that I started this episode complaining that you were not. Because when it comes to how he sees this story and why he's continued to devote so many hours of his free time to it, despite having billions of dollars, the thing he says in response to a follower complaining that, quote, I wish he would use this time on health care, and quote, is this.

This is my diversion. sometimes I need a break. And on that point, Mark Cuban, my wife and child, my boss, my staff, and me,

in my heart of hearts, I think we all probably do agree on that. Violet, you've got to be willing to go to jail to protect your sources, Violet. You've got to be willing to do that.

Dan, my friend and employer, and truly my favorite Cuban, let the record show. Thank you for, thank you for supporting our journalism. Your credibility is shot, my friend. Everyone knows that your favorite Cuban is poppy.

You are a liar in public. I've caught you. Dan Lepitart finds out. This has been Pablo Torre finds out. A Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.