October 20, local time
American e-banking Aspiration
Co-founder Joe Thunberg
In Los Angeles federal court
He admitted to participating in a $2.8 billion investment.
(approximately 1.77 billion yuan)
investment fraud case
He is accused of two telecom fraud charges.
The maximum sentence for both of these crimes is 40 years in prison, the court is scheduled to deliver a sentence on February 23, 2026.
The company, headquartered in Maryland, California, claims to be an “social-responsible” online bank focusing on climate crisis issues and focusing on environmental investment. The company also generated and sold carbon credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions.
Has attracted many celebrity investors
Los Angeles Rapid Fleet owner involved in controversy
NBA is investigating
According to court documents, This environmental concept once attracted many celebrities to invest.Including the familiar “Iron Man” little Robert Downey, “Little Lion” Leonardo DiCaprio, Orlando Bloom, as well as the former CEO of Microsoft, Los Angeles fast fleet owner Steve Ballmer, and so on.
However, The company went bankrupt in March this year, and Joe Sandberg began planning the scam in early 2020, using his executive status and holdings to deceive lenders and investors.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Sandberg and Ibrahim Al-Husseini, a member of the board of directors of the company, had pledged shares under the name of Sandberg as a mortgage and fraudulently borrowed $1.4 billion from the two lending agencies. The two also falsified bank and securities accounts, adding tens of millions of dollars to Al-Husseini’s assets in order to obtain loans.
In addition, the relationship between Los Angeles Rapid Fleet owner Steve Ballmer and the bank has triggered another wave of turmoil. Steve Ballmer and the team arely under investigation by the NBA over the alleged acceptance of the $28 million representative contract offered by the company, allegedly violating the ceiling of the league's salary.
At the time, Leonard was in long-term retirement because of his ligament injury and barely appeared. Industry insiders said: “This is completely uncommon for business.” But despite the continued questioning, Sandberg continued to push forward. Today, the contract has become one of the most controversial financial events in the sporting world in recent years. Leonard has barely fulfilled any representative obligations, and the NBA has begun an investigation to find out whether the billionaire owner of the Rapid Ship, former Microsoft CEO and the bank’s major investor, Ballmer, has paid Leonard in any other way.
In this regard, Ballmer denied knowledge or had instructed the company to sign the contract, although he had previously invested about $50 million in the bank.At the same time, the Los Angeles Rapids also denied any involvement in the arrangement, stressing that the team and two-time champion and two-time MVP final winner Leonard did not have any misconduct.
False accounts and false financial reports
Thunberg fraud details exposed
The prosecution said that Thunberg had invested in Blue Apron, a catering delivery platform in the United States, in his early years. While he was running an online bank, From March 2021 to November 2022, he forged customer payment records and passed off the funds he injected as customer income, but did not disclose this fact to the outside world.。 This has led to inaccurate financial statements of the company, showing revenue much higher than actual revenue. Court documents show that Thunberg continued to sell the company's securities to investors even this year.
The U.S. Department of Justice said that Sandberg provided counterfeit documents to lenders and investors lying about the company’s good financial condition, including counterfeit audit committee letters that falsely claimed the company had $250 million in cash and equivalent assets, but that the actual cash was less than $1 million at the time.
The Ministry of Justice added that Thunberg used these forged financial information to further obtain millions of dollars in loans and investment funds, resulting in losses of more than 248 million dollars for investors and lenders.
(Source: News Square, Look at the News, Red Star News)