Joseph Sanberg, the man who co-founded and served as board member of a company with former Democratic Party Chair Andrei Cherny, formerly known as Aspiration Partners, has agreed to plead guilty this month to defrauding multiple investors and lenders.
“In late 2020, Aspiration began offering environmental sustainability services directly to individual and corporate customers under a wholly owned subsidiary called Aspiration Sustainable Impact Services,” according to court documents. “This new line of business offered carbon offsets and reforestation services, i.e., tree-planting, where customers would pay Aspiration, which in turn would pay a third party to plant trees.”
The anti-poverty pro-climate panic scheme cost investors and lenders over $248 million in losses, according to Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
“This so-called ‘anti-poverty’ activist has admitted to being nothing more than a self-serving fraudster, by seeking to enrich himself by defrauding lenders and investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California. “I commend our law enforcement partners for their efforts in this case, and I urge the investing public to use caution and beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
In early 2024, Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts wrote that Cherny, then a candidate in the Democratic Primary for Congressional District 1, just became the “Democrats’ worst nightmare in their push to unseat U.S. Rep. David Schweikert.”
At the time, Roberts wrote that Cherny, who was endorsed by Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, was “one of the Democrats’ top prospects to replace Republican U.S. Rep. David Schweikert.”
By February 2024, the investigation was widely reported, but Cherney told AZFamily reporter Dennis Welch that the investigation was nothing more than an examination that all companies of the Aspiration-type undergo. He claimed that the investigation itself did not mean any wrongdoing had occurred.
Despite the negative headlines, Cherny stayed in the race, and ended up losing the primary election to Dr. Amish Shah.
In October 2022, Aspiration, “a global business leader in climate solutions,” announced the appointment of Olivia Albrecht as the company’s new Chief Executive Officer, replacing Cherny, who, according to the company would “retain his position on the board and remain on as an advisor for Aspiration during the transition period, following nine years spearheading the company from its infancy to its current market leading position.”
According to court documents, beginning in 2020 and continuing into 2025, Sanberg, 46, of Orange, California, devised a scheme to use his role as a co-founder and board member of Aspiration, as well as his shares of company stock, to defraud various lenders and investors. Between 2020 and 2021, Sanberg and Ibrahim AlHusseini, both members of Aspiration’s board of directors, fraudulently obtained $145 million in loans from two lenders by pledging shares of Sanberg’s Aspiration stock. Sanberg and AlHusseini also falsified AlHusseini’s bank and brokerage statements to fraudulently inflate AlHusseini’s assets by tens of millions of dollars to secure the loans. Beginning in 2021, Sanberg also defrauded Aspiration’s investors by concealing that he was the source of certain revenue recognized by the company.
Court documents also state that Sanberg personally recruited companies and individuals to sign letters of intent with Aspiration in which they committed to pay tens of thousands of dollars per month for tree planting services. Sanberg used legal entities under his control to conceal that these payments came from Sanberg rather than from the customers. Sanberg instructed Aspiration employees not to contact the customers that he had recruited in order to conceal his scheme.
Aspiration booked revenue from these customers between March 2021 and November 2022, but Sanberg did not disclose that he was the source of the payments. As a result, Aspiration’s financial statements were inaccurate and reflected much higher revenue than the company in fact received. Sanberg continued to solicit investors to invest in Aspiration securities into 2025.
According to the documents, Sanberg also defrauded other lenders and investors with fraudulent materials describing Aspiration’s financial condition, including a fabricated letter from Aspiration’s audit committee that falsely stated that Aspiration had $250 million in available cash and equivalents at a time that Aspiration had less than $1 million in available cash. Sanberg used these fraudulent financial materials to obtain millions of dollars in additional loans and investments in Aspiration securities. Sanberg’s victims sustained more than $248 million in losses.
Sanberg has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of wire fraud and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison per count. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Global ̶C̶o̶o̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶W̶a̶r̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ Climate Change has been a scam from day one, the scammers are just getting bolder.
Is this why Tucson mayor is pouring millions of dollars out of the City to plant one million trees? Has Grijalva Realty and Property Management been investigated for money laundering?
I would like to know more about this.
Giffords rental of land to the city.. for decades gone by? Good ol rent
Senator Adam Schiff, and POP KORN company – Schiffty the “D” of D’s Kalifornicator.. que milagro – what ever happen to the real Arizona C-C-C-C-C’s became a wasteland of political effluent again – the McCain effect