Bloomberg Law reported Joseph Sanberg has been charged with conspiracy to defraud two investors of $145 million. Sanberg co-founded Aspiration Partners, a climate finance startup, as well as Pt Capital, an Arctic focused private equity underwriter (PEU).
...created fake brokerage account and bank account statements that falsely inflated AlHusseini’s financial assets by between approximately $80 million and $200 million.That fraudulent documentation was used to assure lenders of a payout if Aspiration defaulted on the loans, which it did. Investors received no payout after the Spring 2023 default.
Sanberg is also a team member for the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization dedicated to forming a more dynamic and inclusive American economy. Remarkably, the Economic Innovation Group still has his name and bio on their website.
Bipartisan, as in politicians Red and Blue love PEU and increasingly, more are one. Pt Capital had two Rubensteins as founders. Alice Rogoff Rubenstein, the former wife of Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein started Pt Capital alongside their daughter Elle, then 25 years old.
Craig Medred reported:
A one-time best bud of Alaskan Gabrielle “Ellie” Rubenstein, a member of the Permanent Fund Corporation’s board of directors up until last summer, now has a $145 million problem.
Sanberg is a hard guy to forget if you met him back in the early 2010s when he was selling do-good capitalism, which is what he was doing when I encountered him at the Campbell Lake home of Alice Rogoff, then majority owner of the Alaska Dispatch, an online news operation.
Sanberg was at Rogoff’s lakeside home with Elle Rubenstein with whom he shared a connection to Harvard University, which both had attended. Rogoff was at the time the estranged wife of David Rubenstein.
That's enough interesting PEU history. Sandberg's trial will have an outcome, which remains to be seen.
Fabricating fictional documents in the manner Sandberg and AlHusseini is brash and ballsy. It would be hard to believe that something this extreme could be widespread, but is it?
My wise friend wrote:
How many of these pyramid frauds are out there? Meanwhile, all the key players are running similar books.
People want to go after the weakest as an excuse to rid the system of the fat, but they don't wanna take a look at what's going on behind the curtain with the Masters of the PEUniverse. All these private companies with sky high valuations and private documentation regarding their debts and investors involved with private marks. Same playbook, one team, two uniforms, threaded with corruption and fraud. Cookie Cutter Operation, difference is scale.
If you don't think Tesla is playing similar games you have to be out of your mind. Will the domino's fall? And isn't it funny how all the money and all the high financiers end up near Saudi Arabia?
Trump and Musk hollowed out the IRS, FBI, SEC and stacked the "Just Us" Department. Add the push for private markets and private credit, how will any of these misallocations ever be revealed?
What really gets my GOAD is how people view these scenarios as victimless crimes, where a narrative change like the one with SBF currently fomenting which allows his malicious intent and malfeasance to be recreated as the regulator's fault.
It seems all the people on top are willing to watch people on the bottom suffer with a shrug of their shoulders. The indifference to other peoples problems says a lot about our society.. I think this is what Warren was referring to in his annual meeting with his sentiments on kindness.Filthy rich is mostly filthy, even when promoted as clean. It's Sandberg's law of Aspiration....
