Fired Timberwolves analyst charged with stealing ‘strategic NBA data’

A Minnesota Timberwolves worker was fired, arrested and charged with felony third-degree housebreaking for allegedly stealing hundreds of inside recordsdata, together with “strategic NBA data,” from a workforce govt, in keeping with a legal grievance filed Wednesday and obtained by ESPN.

Somak Sarkar, 33, who beforehand served as a training analyst for the Timberwolves, is in custody and faces a courtroom listening to Thursday afternoon in Minnesota. An lawyer wasn’t listed for him as of Wednesday afternoon.

The Timberwolves advised ESPN that they have been conscious of the allegations and had no additional remark right now. A supply advised ESPN that the workforce wouldn’t pursue legal fees.

On Feb. 2, the grievance says, Sachin Gupta, a Timberwolves govt vp who oversees the workforce’s analytics division, left a tough drive related to a laptop computer in his workplace on the Goal Heart in downtown Minneapolis.

That drive contained Gupta’s private monetary data in addition to personal data for the workforce, together with employment and participant contracts.

When Gupta returned to work on Feb. 5, the arduous drive was lacking, and subsequent surveillance reviewed by safety revealed that Sarkar had twice entered Gupta’s workplace on Feb. 3 “after seeking to see if anybody may see him,” the grievance says. “He then left.”

Sarkar was fired instantly, the grievance says.

One other worker was in a position to recuperate the arduous drive from Sarkar, and the workforce decided, after a forensic evaluation, that he had accessed greater than 5,000 recordsdata and downloaded them onto one other system.

Sarkar was arrested Monday, and police executed a search warrant at his dwelling, the place they discovered a number of arduous drives, a pc and three tablets. A second warrant revealed that one of many gadgets contained data from Gupta’s arduous drive.

When questioned by police, Sarkar mentioned that, as a member of the teaching employees, he had the arduous drive “to place some stuff on it,” however he forgot to return it.

The grievance famous Sarkar had been transferred out of Gupta’s division in August 2023 and to the teaching employees due to poor job efficiency.

In keeping with his LinkedIn profile, Sarkar joined the Timberwolves in August 2021 and beforehand labored in analytics-related roles on the New York Knicks and the New Orleans Pelicans. He additionally labored as a basketball operations intern for the Houston Rockets from October 2012 to June 2013.