As many as a dozen letters — including one from the NBA — were submitted by the attorney for Aspiration Partners co-founder Joe Sanberg ahead of his sentencing Monday in an effort to persuade the judge to trim the 17 years prosecutors have requested for each of the two counts of fraud.
Sanberg pleaded guilty in October to the federal charges of conspiring to bilk investors out of $248 million for portraying the now-defunct Aspiration as a “socially-conscious and sustainable banking services and investment products” firm.
Another letter was also submitted, however, and it wasn’t intended to assist Sanberg.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer’s attorney David N. Kelley of O’Melveny and Myers wrote that Ballmer was defrauded of a $60-million investment in Aspiration and that the harm to his reputation is “immeasurable.”
The five-page Victim Impact Statement concludes: “Mr. Ballmer’s losses are not measured solely, or even primarily, on a balance sheet. They are measured in the reputational damage that will take years to remediate, and in the chilling effect on future endeavors intended to do good at scale.
“We ask the court to impose a sentence that accounts for those harms, promotes respect for the law, and deters those who would seek to appropriate the reputations of others to advance fraudulent aims.”
The letter states that the Clippers lost out on a $300 million sponsorship agreement with Sanberg in exchange for the team to wear Aspiration jerseys patches. Also lost was about $20 million the Clippers paid for carbon offset purchases and the $60 million Ballmer invested in the company.
Ballmer, a former long-time CEO of Microsoft, accused Sanberg of targeting him for his well-known interest in environmental sustainability and exaggerating their relationship to convince others to invest in the fraudulent company. In the letter, Ballmer says he met Sanberg only once.
Ballmer was added in November as a defendant in an existing civil lawsuit against Sanberg and several others associated with Aspiration. Ballmer and the other defendants are accused by 11 investors in Aspiration of fraud and aiding and abetting fraud, with the plaintiffs seeking at least $50 million in damages.
The letter dismisses the allegations in the lawsuit as “nonsense,” stating Ballmer was added as a defendant because of his “visibility and resources,” and reiterates that Ballmer himself is a victim of fraud. The action has damaged his reputation, the letter states, “and has further linked Mr. Ballmer to Sanberg’s fraud in the eyes of the public.”
The letter to the court, however, makes no mention of the $28-million contract Clippers star Kawhi Leonard signed with Aspiration for endorsement and marketing work. Players are allowed to have separate endorsement and other business deals, but at issue is whether the Clippers participated in arranging the side deal beyond simply introducing Aspiration executives to Leonard.
Leonard has addressed the accusations only once, denying wrongdoing and saying, “I understand the full contract and services that I had to do. Like I said, I don’t deal with conspiracies or the click-bait analysts or journalism that’s going on.”
The arrangement could be considered circumventing the NBA salary cap, a serious violation of league rules. Ballmer steadfastly denies arranging the deal between Aspiration and Leonard, who by all accounts performed no duties for Aspiration.
The NBA is investigating the complicated relationships between Ballmer, Leonard and Aspiration. One of the letters submitted by Sanberg’s attorney to the judge is from the law firm conducting the probe, and it states that the disgraced executive provided documentation and information helpful to the NBA investigation during two in-person interviews.
“In all our dealings with Mr. Sanberg, both directly and through his counsel, he provided information that was consistent with our review of contemporaneous documents and other evidence,” wrote Dave Anders of Wachtell Lipton. “Mr. Sanberg’s cooperation substantially assisted our investigation, including our ability to develop a more complete understanding of key events.”
Eventually the ledger will include the results of the NBA investigation into the allegations against Ballmer and Leonard. And that finding might impact the reputation of both more than Sanberg’s fraudulent dealings.