Timberwolves analyst fired for stealing ‘strategic information’

A Timberwolves employee was fired, arrested, and charged with theft for stealing “strategic information from the NBA.”

A Minnesota Timberwolves employee was fired, arrested and charged with stealing thousands of internal files, including “NBA strategic information,” from a team executive, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday and obtained by ESPN. He was charged with third-degree theft.

Somak Sarkar, 33, who previously worked as a technical analyst for the Timberwolves, remains 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 are aware of the allegations and have no further comment at this time. A source told ESPN the team will not pursue criminal charges.

The complaint says that on Feb. 2, Timberwolves executive vice president Sachin Gupta, who oversees the team’s analytics department, left a hard drive attached 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 later surveillance conducted by security revealed that the government had entered Gupta’s office twice on February 3 “to see if anyone could find him.” Can see,” the report said. Complaint. “Then he left.”

According to the complaint, Sarkar was immediately dismissed.

Another employee was able to recover the government’s hard drive and the team determined after forensic analysis that he had accessed over five thousand files and downloaded them to another device.

Sarkar was arrested on Monday and police served a search warrant at his home, where they found several hard drives, a computer and three tablets. A second warrant revealed that one device 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 states that Sarkar was removed from Gupta’s department in August 2023 and transferred to 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.