Star Tribune
Timberwolves exec had hard drive stolen with ‘strategic NBA information’ on it copied, charge says
The head of the Minnesota Timberwolves’ analytics department had his work hard drive holding sensitive strategic team information stolen from his Target Center office and copied last month by a disgruntled underling, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday.
Sachin Gupta got the hard drive back a little more than a week later but not before roughly 5,700 files were copied that held employment and player contracts, “as well as strategic NBA information.” Also on the hard drive were Gupta’s tax returns and other financial information, and his login and passwords from a password management app, the complaint read.
As head of the analytics department, Gupta would have sensitive and proprietary data in his possession that the Wolves would conceal from other teams, like information about players and decision-making, contracts or trade negotiations. The dissemination of information of that nature to other teams could be damaging to the on-court success of the Wolves in the highly competitive NBA.
The team fired Somak Sarkar, 33, after learning of the hard drive’s disappearance. He was arrested Monday and charged in Hennepin County District Court with felony third-degree burglary. Sarkar remains jailed in lieu of $40,000 bail ahead of a court appearance Thursday afternoon. Court records do not yet list an attorney for him.
Questioned by police after his arrest, Sarkar said that as a member of the coaching staff he had Gupta’s hard drive to “put some stuff on it” but forgot to return it, according to the complaint.
The team released a statement to the Star Tribune that it’s “aware of these allegations and will have no further comment as it is an ongoing legal matter.”
Sarkar has been in NBA front offices since he interned with the Houston Rockets in 2012 while on his way to graduating in 2013 from Rice University, according to the Texas school’s Department of Sports Management. He landed his first permanent job in NBA with the New Orleans Pelicans later that year as a strategic analyst, a Rice online profile noted.
His online professional profile said he then spent a year with the New York Knicks before joining the Wolves in August 2021.
Details of the suspected theft are spelled out in the complaint and a search warrant affidavit filed by police seeking court permission to look for evidence in Sarkar’s apartment near Target Center, including the discovery of any “monies to show profit of the sale of the stolen financial information and proprietary Timberwolves information.”
A search of the apartment turned up several hard drives, a computer, three tablets and multiple USB drives, the complaint read. Police then determined that one of the devices “contained all the information from [Gupta’s] hard drive.”
According to the court documents, Gupta met with police on March 4 and said Sarkar had worked in analytics for the coaches until last summer but was reassigned after “butting heads” with his immediate superior, incorrectly entering computer coding and missing meetings.
Gupta told Sarkar of the transfer over a beer. Gupta said he thought the news went down well, but that Sarkar became standoffish from then on.
On Feb. 2, Gupta left his hard drive on his desk connected to one of his two laptops. Late in the afternoon of Feb. 3, a Saturday, security video captured Sarkar entering Gupta’s office. He then exited, looked around, went back into the office and left a minute later.
Gupta came back to work on Feb. 5 and saw his hard drive was missing.
On Feb. 9, Sarkar was fired without explanation and escorted by security from the building.
An analysis of Sarkar’s work computer found that he used his device to open Gupta’s hard drive.
On Feb. 12, a friend of Sarkar’s who is also a Wolves employee got the hard drive and brought it to Gupta. A forensic analysis revealed that 1,200 files were copied on Feb. 11 in one instance and another 4,500 later that same day.
“Gupta is concerned that Sarkar is going to disseminate the proprietary Timberwolves information and his private information,” one of the court documents reads.
Gupta came to the Wolves in 2019 when then-President Gersson Rosas brought him aboard as executive vice president, the front office’s No. 2 position. Rosas was hired in May 2019.
After the team fired Rosas in September 2021, Gupta became the interim head of basketball operations for the 2021-22 season.
The team did not hire Gupta for that role permanently and instead chose Tim Connelly from Denver in May 2022. Gupta has remained with the Wolves as executive president since then, leading the analytics department under Connelly.
Many residents in the apartments next to the proposed nightclub are visiting workers such as travel nurses or farm laborers, he said. “It makes no sense to have a nightclub that has concerts next to a place where people need to rest to work in the community,” Zuleger said.
He has said that the company also partners with addiction centers and women’s shelters to house Willmar’s most vulnerable residents, and some of these tenants would be too close for comfort to the new nightclub.
Instead of a nightclub, the site should be used for a Somali community center where children from the nearby apartments can play, Zuleger said. Willmar, a city of about 21,000 people, is about 24% Hispanic and 11% Black, with 16% of the city born overseas, double the average rate in the rest of Minnesota. About 43% of the company’s tenants are Somali, and Zuleger called them his “best-paying renters.”
But Doug Fenstra, the real estate agent helping sell the property at 951 High Av., said he had never heard about the possibility of a Somali community center before Zuleger brought up the idea at an October planning commission meeting.
On Wednesday, the planning commission deliberated whether a nightclub would fit the character of the neighborhood. They noted that there was already a brewery in the area.
They passed a motion granting the conditional-use permit.
“DHS and our state and federal partners have seen evidence that kickbacks are happening in Minnesota,” Inspector General Kulani Moti said in a statement. “That’s why we brought an anti-kickback proposal to the Minnesota Legislature last session. We will continue to work with the Legislature next session on ways to strengthen the integrity of our public programs.”
Nuway Alliance, one of the state’s largest nonprofit substance use disorder treatment providers, pays up to $700 a month for someone’s housing while they are in intensive outpatient treatment, the organization’s website states. The site lists dozens of sober housing programs clients can choose from.
Nuway leaders said they got an inquiry from the government about two and a half years ago indicating they are conducting a civil investigation into the housing model.
But officials with the nonprofit said in an email they believe what they are doing is legal and clients need it. More than 600 people are using their assistance to stay in recovery residences, Nuway officials stated. They said having a safe, supportive place to stay is particularly important for the vulnerable people they serve, more than half of whom reported being homeless in the six months before they started treatment.
Health plans knew about, approved and even lauded their program, Nuway leaders said, noting that health insurer UCare even gave it an award.
“The state of Minnesota has been fully aware of our program for a decade,” the organization said. “Since payors are fully aware of, and support the program, we struggle to see how anyone could argue it is improper, let alone fraudulent.”
Mounds View, the first Minnesota city to require homeowners to discharge racist language buried in deeds before they sell their homes, is celebrating a milestone: at least 100 homeowners have completed the process.
Officials say discharging the language is a symbolic step, but an important one.
“How could we call ourselves an inclusive community with the words ‘This home shall not be sold to a non-white person’ buried in the deeds?” Mayor Zach Lindstrom said at the state of the city address Monday.
Racially restrictive covenants, found in deeds around the Twin Cities and Minnesota, were legally enforceable tools of racial segregation for the first half of the 20th century. They barred homes’ sale to, and sometimes even occupancy by, anyone who wasn’t white until 1948, when they became unenforceable. Mapping Prejudice, a University of Minnesota research project uncovering these covenants, has found more than 33,000 of them in Minnesota, including more than 500 in Mounds View.
Many local cities have partnered with Just Deeds, a coalition that helps cities and their residents learn about and discharge covenants. In 2019, the Legislature passed a law allowing homeowners to add language to their deeds that discharges racist covenants but doesn’t erase them from the record. Earlier this year, Mounds View was the first to pass an ordinance requiring it. The city is also helping residents navigate the process.
Just because these covenants are no longer enforceable doesn’t mean they haven’t had long-lasting consequences, Kirsten Delegard, Mapping Prejudice project director, said at a Mounds View City Council meeting this summer: Minneapolis homes with racial covenants are worth 15% more than those without, she said. And neighborhoods with covenants remain the whitest parts of the Twin Cities.
Mounds View residents Rene and Steven Johnson were troubled to learn from Mapping Prejudice that their house, and many homes in their neighborhood, had racially restrictive covenants on them. It took some effort, including a trip to the Ramsey County Recorder’s Office, to find the document, which not only contained race restrictions but barred unmarried couples from owning the home.
The couple got their covenant discharged, and educated the city about the process, Rene Johnson said. That helped lead to the ordinance requiring covenants to be discharged before sale.
