Anti-poverty activist Joseph Sanberg poured tens of thousands of dollars into Biden’s 2020 campaign and progressive PACs
A Democratic megadonor and cofounder of a “socially conscious” climate finance firm, Joseph Sanberg, was arrested Monday on federal charges of conspiring to defraud investment funds of at least $145 million.
The Department of Justice accused Sanberg—the cofounder and largest shareholder of Aspiration Partners Inc., a “climate-friendly banking alternative that’s good for your wallet and the planet”—of orchestrating a scheme with Ibrahim Ameen AlHusseini to mislead investors through falsified financial documents.
The pair hired a graphic designer from Lebanon to create fake brokerage accounts and bank statements that falsely inflated AlHusseini’s financial assets, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. Sanberg leveraged AlHusseini’s fabricated financial standing to secure $145 million in loans, prosecutors said.
AlHusseini pleaded guilty to wire fraud on Monday and admitted to pocketing $12.3 million from the scam. He and Sanberg each face up to 20 years in prison.
Since 2009, Sanberg has contributed more than $370,000 to Democratic campaigns and allied progressive committees, financial disclosures reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show. In 2020 alone, he shelled out over $50,000 to the Biden Victory Fund and another $10,000 for the progressive Justice Democrats PAC.
AlHusseini, who was a CodePink board member at the time of his October arrest, is a fellow Democratic megadonor who’s donated more than $200,000 since 2020 alone. A criminal complaint against him was dismissed in November in exchange for providing prosecutors with information on Sanberg and others, the Justice Department revealed Monday.
In addition to cofounding Aspiration, Sanberg also launched anti-poverty efforts, including the nonprofit Golden State Opportunity and CalEITC4Me, “one of the state’s largest anti-poverty programs.” He also founded Working Hero PAC, “a people-powered political organization focused on electing progressive candidates.” According to his website, Sanberg is a “prominent fighter” for raising the minimum wage, taxing the ultra-wealthy, canceling student debt, delivering Medicare for All, and passing a Green New Deal.
Aspiration, meanwhile, brands itself as a climate-conscious rival to conventional finance, with carbon offset efforts, such as planting trees, at the core of its business model. Superstar celebrities, including Robert Downey Jr., Orlando Bloom, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who joined Aspiration’s board of advisors in 2019, have endorsed the company.
“When it comes to climate change, your money is power. Every dollar you keep out of reach from oil, gas and fossil fuel companies helps defend earth,” Aspiration’s website reads. “By moving money to Aspiration, you’re giving the climate a fighting chance—and your deposits a cleaner, greener home.”
Another Aspiration cofounder, former CEO and failed Arizona congressional candidate Andrei Cherny, faced scrutiny in 2024 as federal investigators probed whether the company misled customers about its carbon offsets. In 2021, ProPublica reported that only 12 million of the 35 million trees Aspiration claimed it had planted were actually in the ground.
“Clean rich is the new filthy rich,” read Aspiration billboards in New York, Texas, and California, according to ProPublica.
In 2019, Sanberg flirted with the idea of running for president, telling the Los Angeles Times that “no one” was “running a campaign to end poverty.”
“I would uniquely talk about poverty,” he said. “About poverty every hour of every single day and in a different way, which is poverty [for] the eight out of 10 Americans [who] are living paycheck to paycheck.”
Sanberg did not respond to a request for comment.
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