John Oliver did an episode on Pardon’s last night. Highly recommend. Link

And have tax payers make him whole!

Lol I hate how accurate this is. Dude probably already has his people scouting venues for the welcome back party.

He’s broke tho with what money

Another man sacrificed at the altar of Uncle Dennis

You don’t accumulate that much wealth with a conscience

I’m not a fan of billionaires but if not for the Ponzi scheme by Sanberg, Ballmer likely never gets found out to be circumventing the cap. Of course he doesn’t want leniency. Imagine you were using a person to launder real money and they wind up getting caught counterfeiting fake bills which blows the lid on your money laundering. Ballmer will ham it up as the victim in all this and use his financial might to escape punishment by the league as well

No honor among thieves

Not surprised, CEOs are cold blooded animals.

“I mean yeah, the guy stole 60 million from him!”

\(60 million to Ballmer’s net worth is the equivalent of \)41 to someone with a net worth of $100,000.

Savage 

Hopefully he treats Lawrence Frank the same way next

You can only steal from the poor in the USA, there’s a reason why Bernie Madoff is a recognizable name

“Remember it was me” - Ballmer

Just another Monday to a billionaire.

No shit. Especially since this is the guy who can burn him with the league….but the other owners are probably too scared to do much.

The billionaires and trillionaires think they are not the same species as millionaires and thousandaires. Ant-boot type shit.

Either that or everyone involved already knows Sanberg will get pardoned and it is for show.

But yeah, billionaires don’t become billionaires because they are smarter than everyone else, it is more for stuff like this.

The rich and powerful are always protected by layers that give them plausible deniability.  Unless the person at the top was stupid enough to state wrongdoing in plain English, other less well protected people will take the fall.

Unless we’re talking about the current US government.  In that case you can state wrongdoing in plain English and no one will take the fall.

Anyway, because of this privilege and because circumstantial evidence cannot prove guilt, it is unlikely that Ballmer will directly face consequences even if the allegations are true.  The Clippers franchise may get a slap on the wrist perhaps.

Genuine question, what did Ballmer get away with. My understanding was that Ballmer was involved with cap circumventing, which is more of a matter with the collective bargaining agreement. I thought this was about Samberg’s federal crime.

Bro do you guys even read the post or do you just comment? This is about the company Aspiration being a scam. This is not directed to the possible cap circumvention by the Clippers (which will 100% not lead to jailtime).

Got away from what? He wasn’t ever on trial here.

Just some hush money

Are you dumb? This isn’t about the Kawhi contract

When Paul Allen found out he had a blood cancer, Gates and Ballmer tried to get his shares before Microsoft was publicly traded.

Trust me bro

Why would he have his back? Are you surprised madoffs victims wanted him to never see the light of day?

OKC punching air rn

The wrist slap punishment coming from Silver is going to be both hilarious and sad.

lol imagine the league actually doing that, the memes would be legendary

They’re not taking away our picks, stop being delulu

There is literally no proof that Ballmer knew this was a ponzi scheme, otherwise, he probably would have paid Kawhi through a different business

Yes, actually.

The NBA-side of this is pretty much entirely separate from the part where it was a ponzi scheme.

In fact, the entire premise of how and why this whole thing fell apart DEPENDS on the fact that Ballmer is truly a victim of being scammed.

[deleted]

get your tin foil hats out boys.

u/EmperorUmi here must have some information that the feds don’t

Paying off fall guys is really easy when you’ve got billions

Except steal from other richer people

That’s really the only way rich people ever go to jail.

Seriously, he’s getting more prison time than outright murderers. I feel like half of that (7 years) would have been sufficient

The scope and scale of fraud is insane. It’s like madoff but much more money from much bigger people over a much shorter time.

The biggest crime in America is to injure money

Two things can be true at once. All evidence point to both these true statements:

1. Aspiration was a fraudulent company, and Ballmer was defrauded for hundreds of millions of dollars.

2. Ballmer created a scheme to use Aspiration to funnel tens of millions of dollars to Kawhi Lenonard to circumvent the salary cap.

Ballmer thought Aspiration was a real company that he could use to funnel money to Kawhi. He very likely did not know that he would stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars and end up tied up in a very public criminal conspiracy.

he was pretty demonstrably a victim in this case. The things we in this sub should remain mad about are really just separate from what this is

He was.

Ballmer escaping jail time is sending me.

Do you think violating the NBA salary cap is a crime? 

Ballmer was never facing jail time.  This was never a criminal investigation for him.  You guys don’t understand this scandal at all.  The allegation is that he broke nba rules. There remains lots of fishy details but no actual proof and a law firm is still investigating.  

You guys understand the Sanberg thing was going on well before any of this Kawhi story, right? Sanberg got charged in March of 2025…

These are two completely separate stories, kawhi and ballmer/clippers are being investigated by the NBA for breaking league rules (not for crimes) while Sandberg was being investigated for a crime well the NBA related story broke or became relevant

Didn’t people say there would be penalties on clippers during the all star week? And what now?

I don’t think you understand the situation? Balmer has nothing to do with anything illegal, if anything he is a victim lol.

Wait, you think this trial was about the NBA cap circumvention thing…???

What are you talking about lmao. “Escaping jail time?” That’s never been on the table. This isn’t the NBA investigation and the feds weren’t investigating salary cap circumvention lol

Ballmer escaping jail time lmao. Y’all are wild.

Why would Balmer go to jail for circumventing the salary cap lol? The Clippers should just lose picks or something similar

Jail time? Lmao

Are people in this thread morons? Really, I mean truly.

This court result has nothing to do with cap circumvention.

What does this have to do with Silver? This is a federal court. They aren’t concerned with the NBA salary cap.

We still don’t know if there was cap circumvention.  the results of the investigation haven’t been made public yet.  Could be waiting for the offseason to make a decision 

The best we can do is offer you a Jared McCain to save costs unfortunately

I agree. I think it’s unbelievable that Ballmer spent 60M just to pay Kawhi 2? 4? Million. The timing makes no sense as a cap scheme, it’s incredibly obvious he was seriously defrauded. I think Pablo’s reporting was just insanely shitty and absolutely rife with errors because he went to print long before he understood the story, and was then fully committed to a narrative that simply is not true. He fully failed to understand the motivations for sandberg to give Kawhi a big contract, the amount of money paid out, the amount of money he promised to pay Ballmer, the amount of goods he promised to deliver Ballmer, and the total amount of money he received. For example, if I was to buy 50M in stock of your company, it would make no sense for you to give 50M in cash to my friend. That is a wholly preposterous idea. And I find it unreasonable to think he paid 50M for 5M. So imo he had to view the company as a real investment, and if he saw it as a real investment, he wouldn’t expect his purchase of stock and commodities would translate to equal amount of money to Kawhi on his behalf.

I fully believe Ballmer would have wanted Kawhi to get the sponsorship, and for him to be happy he got it, and that aspiration paid Kawhi a small amount of money to gain favor with Ballmer. But that’s no the same thing as money laundering.

Even if you think Ballmer used aspiration to circumvent the cap, the scheme failed miserably because aspiration was a fraudulent company and Kawhi despite signing a brand ambassador deal to pay him 7 mil per year for 4 years, only was ever paid 3.5 million.  Meanwhile Ballmer and the clippers invested 118 million into aspiration and never got the 300 mil that Aspiration had agreed to pay them. 

On the surface, the idea of aspiration paying hundreds of millions to the clippers in a sponsorship and then separately paying Kawhi as a brand ambassador wasn’t all that different than a company like Rakuten paying the warriors and Steph separately.  So I still think it will be interesting if the independent investigation just shrugs all of this off.  

Probably nothing. As far as we know, Kawhi didn’t do anything illegal in this whole affair.

There are a number of factors that go into sentencing. People who know the Defendant can write letters to give the judge a more three dimensional picture of who the Defendant is as a person (their history, their good/bad acts, their connection to the community) beyond the crime they’ve been charged with. This picture can persuade the judge to give either a harsher or more lenient sentence.

Victims are able to say they forgive a person who committed criminal act against them and request leniency. Victims are also allowed to give statements to the court to request a harsh punishment. The judge typically has some latitude in the severity of the punishment they give, and victims have the ability to make statements in favor of one way or the other.

It’s amazing how little this sub actually understands the aspiration situation.   They think they do. But they don’t.  

Ballmer had nothing to do with why Sanberg is in prison.  The separate podcaster conspiracy theory that Ballmer had used aspiration for cap circumvention remains very much unproven with no concrete evidence.  

You might be regarded. He is out 60 million, he’s not walking away unscathed lol.

I mean Ballmer’s definitely got the money to make problems disappear, but let’s not act like Sanberg was some innocent pawn here. Dude was literally running the scheme day to day.