- Sam Trabucco, 31, was the co-CEO of Alameda Research, the firm which invested billions of dollars in FTX customer funds before the company imploded
- He quit in August 2022, months before Alameda and FTX collapsed following what prosecutors have alleged was one of the largest frauds in American history
- Trabucco was co-CEO while the alleged fraud was taking place – sharing the role with Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend – but has not been charged
A former CEO at Sam Bankman-Fried‘s failed crypto trading firm has avoided criminal charges and amassed a luxury property portfolio after earning at least $25 million during the massive alleged fraud at FTX, DailyMail.com can reveal.
Sam Trabucco, 31, was co-CEO of Alameda Research while the firm invested billions of dollars of FTX customer funds, which ultimately caused the collapse of both companies. Prosecutors described the scandal as one of the largest frauds in US history.
During his tenure, Trabucco was also involved in an alleged $150 million bribe to Chinese officials after the country froze $1 billion of Alameda’s assets. The bribe allegedly involved the use of accounts in the name of Thai prostitutes.
He shared the co-CEO role with Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend, for 10 months before resigning in August 2022. Ellison, who has pleaded guilty to fraud charges and is the star prosecution witness at Bankman-Fried’s trial, became sole CEO and FTX imploded two months later, leaving customers billions out of pocket.
Court records, bankruptcy filings and the testimony of insiders at FTX and Alameda, including Ellison, allege that fraud took place on a massive scale while Trabucco was co-CEO. He is also accused in a civil lawsuit of direct involvement in the scheme.
But despite his leadership role, which involved shaping Alameda’s investment strategy, he has not been charged by prosecutors who have relentlessly pursued the rest of Bankman-Fried’s inner circle.
Instead, Trabucco has remained a largely unknown figure in the scandal. He has not been seen or spoken publicly since FTX collapsed in November 2022.
Since joining Alameda, he bought multimillion dollar properties in San Francisco and New York City and also owns a boat named ‘Soak My Deck’ which was paid for with $2.5 million from the company.
Speculation is mounting he may have secured a deal with prosecutors to build their case against Bankman-Fried, who denies fraud, and he could deliver testimony at the disgraced FTX founder’s ongoing trial in exchange for immunity.
One legal source with knowledge of Trabucco’s role at Alameda said such a deal was likely given his top-level job during the fraud.
Trabucco did not respond to requests for comment. His sister, Kelsey, declined to reveal his whereabouts when approached by DailyMail.com and said she would instead pass a message to her brother. No response was forthcoming.
$12 MILLION PROPERTY SPREE
Bankruptcy filings show Trabucco was paid at least $25 million by Alameda, including several cash payments of between $4 million and $7 million during his time as co-CEO.
He joined the company as a trader in March 2019, while Bankman-Fried was CEO. Bankman-Fried stepped down to focus on FTX in October 2021, when Trabucco and Ellison were promoted to joint chief executives.
Property records reviewed by DailyMail.com reveal Trabucco has built an impressive portfolio of homes during his time at the company and since he stepped down.
In June 2021, he snapped up two neighboring penthouse apartments for $4.35 million each on the 36th floor of a luxury San Francisco building with views of the Bay Bridge.
The building has a gym, cinema and climbing wall, and one of the penthouses includes two balconies which overlook the bridge.
Pictures uploaded to Instagram earlier this month show a smiling Trabucco with a group of friends on a balcony with the sweeping view behind them.
Trabucco also bought a $2.5 million two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, New York City, in November 2022 – the same month that the scale of FTX’s collapse was unraveling, records show. His sister, Kelsey, has been registered as a resident of that apartment.
Two years earlier, in August 2020, he also spent around $500,000 on a four-bedroom, three-bathroom home in a leafy neighborhood in Wells, Maine. The property, on the edge of scenic woodland and close to an exclusive country club, is believed to be used by Trabucco’s parents.
Trabucco also bought a property in the Bahamas around the end of 2021, according to an online post by his father. FTX was based in the Bahamas, a tax-haven where Bankman-Fried and his inner circle lived together in a $40 million penthouse.
MATH WHIZZ WITH ‘PENCHANT FOR GAMBLING’
Trabucco, who was born John Samuel Trabucco, was a child ‘mathlete’ who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015 with a degree in mathematics with computer science.
He met Bankman-Fried at a five-week math camp at Mount Holyoke College in 2010 and the pair became friends. Bankman-Fried was also at MIT and graduated the year before Trabucco.
Like Bankman-Fried and others in his circle, including Ellison, he spent several years as a trader at an established financial firm before he joined Alameda. Trabucco was a trader at Susquehanna International Group from 2015 to 2017, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Outside of finance, Trabucco also turned his talent with numbers to another risky, and potentially highly profitable, pastime: gambling.
Trabucco has previously suggested he was banned from several casinos for card counting – a blackjack strategy which involves memorizing which cards have been dealt – and claimed he applied the same concepts to trading.
He also indicated his main reason for working in the crypto industry was money. He said in a 2021 interview: ‘I was really just … finding it irresponsible not to be focusing on [crypto] when I could be making more money doing that than anything else I was aware of.’
He is also fond of crosswords and has written dozens of puzzles for the New York Times.
CO-CEO DURING HUGE ALLEGED FRAUD
Prosecutors who have charged Ellison, Bankman-Fried and others claim that the fraud involving FTX and Alameda took place from ‘at least in or about 2019′ right through until the companies’ collapse.
Ellison also told a court hearing in December 2022, when she pleaded guilty to fraud, that she was aware ‘from 2019 through 2022’ that Alameda had an ‘unlimited line of credit’ from FTX which was backed by customer funds.
She said loans worth billions of dollars were taken out by Alameda while she was co-CEO and then CEO, and that she ‘agreed with others to borrow several billion dollars from FTX’ to repay the loans in June 2022.
Trabucco has not been charged by prosecutors over the FTX and Alameda fraud. But he is accused of direct involvement in a civil lawsuit filed in December 2022.
The suit describes Trabucco, Ellison, and two other FTX employees, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, as Bankman-Fried’s ‘Inner Circle’ and claims they were complicit in ‘one of the most spectacular financial frauds since Bernie Madoff’.
‘Throughout their time as executives of FTX and Alameda Research, SBF and the Inner Circle made regular and calculated misrepresentations about how FTX customer funds were used,’ according to the class action suit brought by an FTX customer who lost around $33,000.
The suit notes Trabucco’s ‘penchant for gambling’ and claims he ‘encouraged aggressive trading and embracing risk as co-CEO of Alameda’.
‘This risk-loving strategy ultimately led Alameda to make many bad investments that led to its downfall. In August 2022, Trabucco abruptly left Alameda, stepping down as ceo-CEO just before the house of cards collapsed,’ the suit said.
Trabucco ‘knew, or should have known’ that Alameda had accepted funds that were FTX customer deposits, it added.
His name has also been mentioned during Bankman-Fried’s trial, including during testimony from Ellison. She said that Trabucco was involved a bribe of $150 million to Chinese officials after the country froze $1 billion of Alameda assets.
The payment was allegedly a breach of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Bankman-Fried was previously charged over an alleged payment to Chinese officials but the count was later removed ahead of his trial.
