Timberwolves employee fired, arrested for allegedly stealing hard drive from team executive
The Minnesota Timberwolves have fired a basketball operations employee who was later arrested for allegedly stealing a hard drive from a team executive that contained confidential team and personnel information, according to a new report.
Mike Vorkunov at The Athletic broke down a bizarre story.
Somak Sarkar was terminated as a coaching analyst by the Timberwolves last month after he was found to have taken an external hard drive that belonged to another Timberwolves employee. The alleged victim of the theft was identified by the initials "S.G." in the complaint and named as the team's executive vice president. That person is believed to be Sachin Gupta, an executive vice president of basketball operations with the organization.
According to a complaint filed at the Hennepin County District Court, Gupta had left an external hard drive connected to a computer in his office at the team's headquarters on Feb. 2. When he returned to work Feb. 5, Gupta found that the hard drive was gone. The drive contained personal and work information, including employee and player contracts. The complaint said it also included "strategic NBA information," but did not elaborate on what that information was.
The team was able to determine that Sarkar had taken the hard drive by checking badge use data and video feeds, according to the complaint. Sarkar entered the team's facility on Feb. 3 when no one else was around and went into Gupta's office. Sarkar "entered the office twice after looking to see if anyone could see him" and then left, the complaint said. Sarkar was fired immediately, according to the complaint.
The Timberwolves not only recovered the missing hard drive but, using computer florensics, saw that around 5,000 files had been transferred to another device, so that device was confiscated as well. When arrested, Sarkar reportedly told police he was allowed to have the data as part of the team's coaching staff but he just forgot to return the hard drive.
Sarkar reported to Gupta until last summer, when he was transferred because he was not doing his job, according to the complaint the Timberwolves filed.
Sarkar has been released on bail and has an attorney, who said he was waiting for more evidence to complete the story before he wanted to detail things in public.
It's going to be interesting to see how this story plays out.
