MINNEAPOLIS — Charges filed Wednesday accuse a Minnesota Timberwolves employee of stealing a team executive’s hard drive that contained, among other things, “strategic information about the NBA.”
Somak Sarkar faces one count of third-degree burglary, according to charges filed in Hennepin County.
The criminal complaint identifies the owner of the hard drive as “SG,” executive vice president of the Wolves. Sachin Gupta is the team’s senior vice president of basketball operations, according to a media guide posted on the team’s website.
The complaint says the executive vice president left a hard drive connected to his laptop in his downtown Minneapolis office on February 2. When he returned to work Monday, the hard drive was gone.
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Investigators said surveillance footage showed Sarkar entering the European vice president’s office on February 3. Sarkar was fired after the footage surfaced. He said he took the hard drive “to put stuff on it” but forgot to return it, according to the complaint.
Another employee retrieved Sarkar’s hard drive, and the Wolves sent Sarkar’s hard drive and laptop for analysis.
“They determined that defendant’s work laptop had been used to open certain files on the hard drive,” the complaint states. “They also discovered that more than 5,000 files had been accessed and downloaded to another device.”
On Monday, authorities searched Sarkar’s home and found a storage device containing all the information from the stolen hard drive. Police arrested Sarkar that day and he remains in custody.
Sarkar worked under the executive vice president, but was moved to the coaching staff in August 2023 “due to his job performance,” the complaint states.
In addition to basketball information, the hard drive also contained the executive vice president’s Social Security number, tax information and bank account information, investigators said.
