The Minnesota Timberwolves employee who was arrested and charged with felony third-degree burglary for allegedly stealing thousands of internal files has been granted a supervised release, according to a court filing obtained by ESPN's Baxter Holmes.
Somak Sarkar was released following an initial hearing on Thursday in Minnesota.
"There's more to the story here," Sarkar's attorney, Ryan M. Pacyga, told ESPN on Thursday. "I'm not ready to put that out there yet, but we're gathering more information and more will come out soon when it's the appropriate time."
The 33-year-old was arrested on Monday after allegedly stealing thousands of files from Timberwolves executive Sachin Gupta, including "strategic NBA information." According to the criminal complaint obtained by ESPN, he was fired by the team in February after taking a hard drive from Gupta's Target Center office.
Gupta oversees Minnesota's analytics department, and the hard drive contained his personal financial information, in addition to information on employment and player contracts.
Another Timberwolves employee retrieved the hard drive from Sakar, and the team had determined he had accessed more than 5,000 files and downloaded them onto another device.
Police executed a search warrant at Sakar's home and said they found a number of hard drives, a computer and three tablets, per ESPN. With another warrant, they said they found that one of the devices had the information from Gupta's hard drive on it.
Sakar told police he had access to the hard drive because he was a member of the coaching staff. He said he needed "to put some stuff" on the hard drive and forgot to return it.
According to the complaint, Sakar was transferred to the coaching staff from Gupta's department due to poor job performance.
Sakar joined the Timberwolves in August 2021, his LinkedIn profile says, per Holmes. He previously worked for the New York Knicks and New Orleans Pelicans in analytics-related roles.
