Sam Trabucco Cuts Deal With FTX Debtors, Giving Up Apartments and Yacht

Two luxury apartments in San Francisco and a 53-foot yacht: That is part of the price Sam Trabucco, Alameda Research’s former co-CEO, will pay FTX to settle his debts with the ill-fated crypto exchange per legal filings published Monday. 

Trabucco will transfer the legal titles to both apartments, collectively worth $8.7 million, to FTX’s debtors. He will also hand over an HCB Suenos yacht that he purchased in March 2022, at the peak of that year’s crypto bull run. 

Additionally, the former crypto executive will hand FTX’s debtors all rights to the $70 million worth of claims on FTX customer deposits made under his name. 

The deal between Trabucco and the FTX estate is not final; a federal judge in Delaware will have to approve the agreement during a hearing on December 12. If the settlement is approved, then Trabucco would avoid any incoming suits from FTX’s debtors.

“The debtors maintain that they have meritorious claims and would prevail against Trabucco in an adversary proceeding,” attorneys for the FTX estate said in Monday’s filing. “However, the debtors would need to spend significant time and resources proving their claims and obtaining a favorable judgment against Trabucco.”

The lawyers went on to assert that even a successful lawsuit against Alameda’s one-time leader might ultimately recover less money than the settlement agreement stands to collect.

If the deal is approved next month, then it would likely mean that Trabucco, once a member of Sam Bankman-Fried’s inner circle, successfully avoided any significant criminal or civil litigation in the aftermath from FTX’s collapse—even as his former colleagues racked up prison sentences and faced intensive public scrutiny.

A key distinction in Trabucco’s arc is his decision in August 2022—just months before FTX’s collapse—to resign from Alameda, the exchange’s sister trading firm, and step down from his leadership role. At the time, the executive said he made the decision to “work on” himself.

“I bought a boat, that's been cool,” Trabucco said at the time. “I needed to relax, and I'm really, really happy.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward