Joe Sanberg has agreed to plead guilty to a US$248 million scheme to defraud investors. Sanberg was co-founder of the fintech and carbon trading company Aspiration Partners.
Sanberg is charged with two counts of wire fraud, both of which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. He has agreed to plead guilty to both counts.
“Joe Sanberg accepts responsibility and looks forward to bringing this matter to a swift and just resolution,” Sanberg’s defence attorney, Marc Mukasey, said.
On his website, Sanberg described himself as “a progressive business leader and anti-poverty advocate”. Sanberg’s website is currently down.
In a press release, Acting US Attorney Bill Essyli said,
“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. 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 October 2024, Ibrahim AlHusseini, an ex-board member and investor in Aspiration was arrested. He was accused of securities fraud. The criminal complaint stated that “AlHusseini personally received more than $12 million in ill-gotten gains.”
In February 2025, AlHusseini signed a plea agreement in which he admitted to receiving about US$12.3 million in payments from the scheme. He is scheduled to be sentenced on 29 September 2025.
“I hate you and I hate this company”
Court documents state that Sanberg came up with a scheme to defraud lenders and investors to Aspiration. Between 2020 and 2021, Sanberg and AlHusseini fraudulently obtained US$145 million in loans from two lenders. They pledged shares in Aspiration as collateral.
On 29 November 2020, Sanberg texted Andrei Cherny, Aspiration’s co-founder and CEO:
Figure out how to get me the money tomorrow or I’ll be in default. It’s your turn to do what needs to be done. . . . But if you don’t get me the money tomorrow we are all f…ed. Get me the money. Your turn to figure it out like I have for so long. Wire it to the [Sanberg-entity] account. If you don’t then [the lender] will foreclose. This will give you a good taste of what I have to experience every day. I hate you and I hate this company and I don’t want to work anymore with you [ ]. You are so oblivious to what you’ve forced me to have to do.
Sanberg and AlHusseini fraudulently inflated AlHusseini’s assets by tens of millions of dollars by falsifying his bank and brokerage statements. Starting in 2021, Sanberg also defrauded Aspiration’s investors by concealing that the money behind various deals with Aspiration actually came from him.
In July 2024, Bloomberg reported that, “the explosive growth in Aspiration’s new business was driven in part by dubious deals that inflated the company’s revenue”.
A US Attorney’s Office Central District of California press release states that,
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 to conceal his scheme.
Aspiration received revenue from these companies and individuals from March 2021 to November 2022. Sanberg did not reveal that it was his money.
Fake “letters of intent”
To give the impression that Aspiration’s business was growing, Sanberg convinced 27 people to sign “letters of intent” to pay monthly or quarterly fees of between US$25,000 and US$750,000 to Aspiration.
These people included an actor, several retired footballers, and a model — all from Colombia — who signed deals to pay Aspiration for tree planting.
For example, Elizabeth Loaiza, a Colombian model signed an agreement in February 2021 which stated that her non-profit foundation would pay Aspiration US$50,000 per month. The foundation could then claim to have planted 50,000 trees.
A second agreement with Apogee Pacific, a company controlled by Sanberg, signed on the same day. Under this contract, Loaiza would receive US$55,000 per month for “marketing and branding services”.
She did not make any payments to Aspiration, and received no money from Apogee Pacific.
As a result of these fake deals, Aspiration’s financial statements vastly exaggerated how much the company was actually receiving. Sanberg continued to solicit investors to invest in Aspiration into 2025.
Sanberg told investors that Aspiration’s customers were “recurring, sticky, and value-add”. But the reality was that the customers had no intention of paying Aspiration anything.
In 2021, the revenue from these letter of intent customers increased Aspiration’s revenue by about US$44 million. In fact about US$34 million was uncollected by 31 December 2021 — and Sanberg had paid the rest.
Sanberg used a fabricated letter from Aspiration’s audit committee that claimed that Aspiration had US$250 million in available cash and equivalents. At the time Aspiration had less than US$1 million in available cash.
“Sanberg’s victims sustained more than US$248 million in losses,” states the US Attorney’s Office Central District of California press release.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said,
“For years, Joseph Sanberg used his position at Aspiration to deceive investors and lenders for his own benefit, causing his victims over $248 million in losses. The Criminal Division is committed to pursuing, charging, and convicting fraudsters like Sanberg, who cause significant harm to their victims and undermine our financial institutions.”
The US Postal Inspection Service and the FBI are investigating the case.
Securities and Exchange Commission
Sanberg also faces a complaint from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC complaint states that “Sanberg raised more than US$300 million from investors who falsely believed Aspiration had a thriving environmental sustainability services business.”
Between September and December 2021, one investor bought more than US$50 million in Aspiration shares.
In December 2021, another investor bought US$250 million in Aspiration shares. Before the investment, Sanberg told the investor about one of Aspiration’s letter of intent customers. Sanberg explained that it was “carbon neutral through Aspiration”.