A former Timberwolves administration staffer has admitted to stealing a computer hard drive holding sensitive strategic team information from the Target Center office of the head of the analytics department.
Somak Sarkar, 33, agreed Wednesday to plead guilty in Hennepin County District Court in connection with the theft on Feb. 3 of the hard drive of Sachin Gupta. The hard drive contained roughly 5,700 files that held employment, player contracts and other strategic information.
Also on the hard drive were Gupta’s tax returns and other financial information, and his login and passwords from a password management app, the criminal complaint said.
Sarkar’s attorney Ryan Pacyga told the Star Tribune on Thursday that his client admitted to a gross misdemeanor count of unauthorized computer access in exchange for dismissal of the felony burglary charge. Pacyga said Sarkar, who now lives in East Brunswick, N.J., will be spared jail time upon sentencing on July 9.
As head of the analytics department, Gupta had sensitive proprietary data in his possession that the Wolves conceal from other teams, such as information about players and decisionmaking, contracts or trade negotiations.
The team fired Sarkar after learning of the hard drive’s disappearance and the allegation that he copied the data.
Team officials on Thursday declined to comment about their former employee’s admission. They also would not say whether any of the data that Sarkar allegedly copied harmed the franchise or Gupta personally.
Sarkar has been in NBA front offices since he interned with the Houston Rockets in 2012 while on his way to graduating in 2013 from Rice University, according to the Texas school’s Department of Sports Management. He landed his first permanent job in the NBA with the New Orleans Pelicans later that year as a strategic analyst, his Rice online profile said.