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Baxter Holmes, ESPN senior writer
A Minnesota Timberwolves employee was fired, arrested and charged with felony third-degree theft for allegedly stealing thousands of internal files, including “NBA strategic information,” from a team executive, according to a criminal complaint filed on Wednesday and obtained by ESPN.
Somak Sarkar, 33, who previously worked as a technical analyst for the Timberwolves, is in custody and faces a court hearing Thursday afternoon in Minnesota. As of Wednesday afternoon, no attorney was listed for him.
The Timberwolves told ESPN they were aware of the allegations and had no further comment at this time. A source told ESPN that the team would not pursue criminal charges.
On Feb. 2, the complaint says, Sachin Gupta, the Timberwolves’ executive vice president who oversees the team’s analytics department, left a hard drive connected to a laptop in his office at the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis.
That drive contained Gupta’s personal financial information as well as private team information, including players’ employment and contracts.
When Gupta returned to work on February 5, the hard drive was missing, and subsequent surveillance reviewed by security revealed that Sarkar had entered Gupta’s office twice on February 3 “after seeing if anyone could see him,” the report says. complaint. “He then left.”
Sarkar was fired immediately, according to the complaint.
Another employee was able to recover Sarkar’s hard drive and the team determined, after forensic analysis, that he had accessed more than 5,000 files and downloaded them to another device.
Sarkar was arrested on Monday and police executed a search warrant at his home, where they found several hard drives, a computer and three tablets. A second warrant revealed that one of the devices contained information from Gupta’s hard drive.
When questioned by police, Sarkar said that as a member of the coaching staff, he had the hard drive “to put some things on it,” but he forgot to return it.
The complaint stated that Sarkar had been transferred out of Gupta’s department in August 2023 and into the coaching staff due to his poor work performance.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Sarkar joined the Timberwolves in August 2021 and previously worked in analytics-related roles at the New York Knicks and New Orleans Pelicans. He also worked as a basketball operations intern for the Houston Rockets from October 2012 to June 2013.