Wait, Sam Trabucco isn't dead?

The jackpot lottery winner of the FTX saga has decided to stop laying low a year and half after the untimely collapse and ultimate bottom of the 2022 bear market. For those who are unaware, Sam Trabucco was the FTX executive who left just months before the entire scam imploded, making off with millions upon million of dollars worth of loot on his way out, presumably at the expense of FTX customers. The debtors have been looking for this guy for a long time and intend to sue if legally possible (which it may or may not be).

In the 90 days prior to FTX implosion he spent over $50M on:

• A boat
• Real estate
• A marina slip

Soak my Deck? Really?

Yeah he named his yacht Soak My Deck.
What an asshole, lol.

So why is this all so contentious?

Well it's very obvious that Tabasco knew that FTX was a ticking time bomb and decided to get out when the getting was good. Documents have surfaced that show he knew about the dependence of FTT as far back as 2019. When asked about this he acts like he had no idea and that he was just "burnt out". He makes no admission of any wrongdoing. He doesn't acknowledge the fact that being coincidentally burnt out right before the collapse is suspicious to the point of unbelievable (a complete and deliberate lack of self-awareness). On paper he got what was owed to him and feels as though none of his money should be paid back to the users that were stolen from.

Of course the problem with all this is that FTX's books were so cooked that all the money hemorrhaging from the platform was just straight up stolen money. FTX had ZERO Bitcoin within their vault even though they owned their customers mountains of Bitcoin. FTX just sold it all and used their FTT shitcoin to leverage debt. These debts looked fine on the surface but were not backed by any actual liquidity. This is the problem with assuming a market cap has actual money behind it to back up the number.

Is Trabucco a snitch?

The situation is also highly suspicious because it's extremely unclear how willing he was to work with law enforcement on this case. He was never named in any of the depositions, which in itself was very strange. To be fair his testimony would have been highly redundant and his official stance is that he knew nothing so maybe he really did just exit at the perfect time unlike everyone else that went down with the ship. Not to worry: the Soak My Deck lives on.

So where is he?

We actually still don't know. That yacht may have been a pretty wise investment as it seems he can just travel around where ever he wants unabated. The debtors want to sue him but he's been accused of no wrongdoing by actual law enforcement. At worst he'd have to pay some kind of fine even given a loss in civil court, so we'll see how that goes.

Conclusion

I really thought this kid had died in some terrible boating accident considering the circumstances. How was he able to walk away from an explosion that big without incurring any type of collateral damage whatsoever. He very much committed the exact same crimes as everyone else in the company and anyone can see that this is the case. Did he make some kind of backdoor deal? We'll probably never know.