Fired Timberwolves staffer is put on probation for stealing hard drive of team’s head of analytics

A fired Minnesota Timberwolves staffer has been put on probation for stealing the computer hard drive of a Minnesota Timberwolves executive’s Target Center office.

Somak Sarkar, 33, was sentenced Tuesday in Hennepin County District Court to two years’ probation after pleading guilty to a gross misdemeanor count of unauthorized computer access in connection with the Feb. 3 theft of the hard drive belonging to Sachin Gupta, who heads the NBA team’s analytics department. A felony burglary count was dismissed.

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.

Defense attorney Ryan Pacyga told the Star Tribune soon after sentencing that his client’s crime caused no harm to the team or to Gupta.

“Law enforcement collected all of [Sarkar’s] electronic devices,” Pacyga said. “There has been no other devices that the hard drive went to. The Timberwolves’ property and the executive’s property are secure.”

Pacyga added that “at the time that Mr. Sarkar took the team-issued external hard drive, he was completely unaware that it contained an executive’s personal information. … Mr. Sarkar meant no harm to the Timberwolves organization.”

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, who now lives in East Brunswick, N.J., after learning of the hard drive’s disappearance and the allegation that he copied the data.

Details of the theft were spelled out in the complaint and a search warrant affidavit filed by police seeking court permission to look for evidence in Sarkar’s Minneapolis apartment near Target Center, including the discovery of any “monies to show profit of the sale of the stolen financial information and proprietary Timberwolves information.”

The search turned up several hard drives, a computer, three tablets and multiple USB drives, the complaint read. Police then determined that one of the devices “contained all the information from [Gupta’s] hard drive.”

According to court documents, Gupta told police on March 4 that Sarkar had worked in analytics for the coaches until last summer but was reassigned after “butting heads” with his immediate superior.

On Feb. 2, Gupta left his hard drive on his desk connected to one of his two laptops. Late in the afternoon of Feb. 3, a Saturday, security video recorded Sarkar entering Gupta’s office. When Gupta returned to work Feb. 5, he saw that his hard drive was missing. On Feb. 9, Sarkar was fired.