Joseph Sanberg was sentenced Monday to 14 years in federal prison, closing one chapter of the Aspiration fraud case with a punishment that matches the scale of the losses prosecutors laid out. The federal judge also set a restitution hearing for July 20, leaving the final dollar amount Sanberg may owe unresolved for now.
Sanberg, who pleaded guilty last year to two counts of wire fraud, admitted to a case that prosecutors said helped drive at least $248 million in losses. He apologized at sentencing and told victims, “Since the day I was arrested, I started the process of atonement.”
The sentencing matters because it lands after months of testimony from people who said the fraud wrecked their finances. One victim told the court they lost 50 percent of their net worth. Another said a $90,000 loss wiped out a retirement account. A third man said he and his wife put in all of their available capital and ended up with an estimated $685,000 in losses.
Prosecutors said Sanberg took out $145 million in loans in 2021 with the cooperation of another member of Aspiration’s board of directors and created fake customers and false revenue to dupe investors. Aspiration, the company Sanberg helped start more than a decade ago, later sat at the center of allegations that the LA Clippers used it to circumvent the NBA salary cap and reward Kawhi Leonard beyond the league’s rules. Prosecutors said Leonard received a four-year, $28 million marketing deal at Sanberg’s direction and another $20 million in Aspiration equity.
The one part of the case that has not sat neatly beside the fraud conviction is Sanberg’s usefulness to investigators. David Anders wrote to the judge in April that Sanberg had substantially assisted the NBA investigation, a claim Clippers owner Steve Ballmer’s lawyer countered by saying Sanberg’s reliability is suspect because he has pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges. The NBA launched its own investigation into the matter in September, and the competing views of Sanberg’s cooperation now sit alongside the prison sentence itself.
Sanberg did not hold a formal executive title at Aspiration, but prosecutors said he played an influential role. Monday’s sentence of 168 months makes clear the court treated him as a central figure in a broad fraud that touched investors, victims and a separate sports scandal. The next date that matters is July 20, when the restitution hearing will determine how the financial damage is ultimately measured.
