4 ms·

What about the previous CEO of Alameda, Sam Trabucco? Caroline only took over recently, I haven't heard anything about his legal standing at this point.

mlla 4y ago
I was wondering about Trabucco as well. His name is nowhere to be seen, but he was leading Alameda together with Caroline up until last summer. If SBF is also going for plea bargain, will various government institutions ask from him to get some dirt on Tether (and on Binance)? Might be that they are more interested in campaign financing.
- greenyoda 4y ago
  > he was leading Alameda together with Caroline up until last summer In the last paragraph on page 3 of the plea letter, we see that most of the counts cover the period from 2019-2022 (2020 for the money laundering). Thus, the crimes that Ellison is pleading guilty to were going on while Trabucco was the co-CEO. According to Wikipedia, he "officially became the co-CEO in October 2021", and resigned in August 2022.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Trabucco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Trabucco
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > but he was leading Alameda together with Caroline up until last summer. According to the SEC civil lawsuit against SBF, SBF was running Alameda the whole time, including when Ellison and Trabucco were nominally the co-CEOs. The CFTC lawsuit against SBF, FTX, Aand Alameda asserts the same, and that SBFs resignation as CEO of Alameda was done to create the false image of strong separation between Alameda and FTX. Ellison apparently had a real role in the fraud, but I don’t know that it’s clear that Trabucco was anything other than a face set up as a distraction, in terms of substantive role.
- danielfoster 4y ago
  An important component of accepting a plea bargain is telling the truth. I was also wondering if SBF might be used as a witness for other cases. I think his reliability is a major concern for any testimony.
- eigenvalue 4y ago
  I don't think SBF is going to be given the chance to plea down-- that's the whole point of getting Ellison and Wang to cooperated, to construct an ironclad case against SBF so that they don't need him to cooperate in any way, and can still likely convict him of enough crimes to put him in prison for 30+ years.
bigtones 4y ago
I think Sam Trabucco of FTX is going to be like Lou Pai of Enron. If you resign at exactly the right time and put some distance between you and the fraud, you can get away with it and ride off into the sunset. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5411422 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=541142...
- jcampbell1 4y ago
  Nice comparison. Trabucco resigned in August but Caroline was on record saying he hadn’t been around for months. Some Alameda loans were called in May, and that is when SBF and Caroline did some obviously shady stuff. I think that is when he walked, as that is when the trading strategy became limited to just propping up FTT to fake the balance sheet. He seemed like a legit trader based on his Twitter. It takes about $3 million in legal bills to defend against the feds, and he easily has that kind of money. He is going to be hard to prosecute.
  - hnews_account_1 4y ago
    He made several stupid claims on his twitter about trading that anyone in the industry would immediately infer was a complete misunderstanding of the basics of finance. As did SBF and Caroline. Nothing about them was smart. It was a lot of jargon thrown into their talk that should tickle most people’s spidey senses.
    - qeternity 4y ago
      Exactly this. All of their "What happened?" threads were hot air, sprinkled with some instances of "ev+" that cryptotwitter quant wannabes latched on to.
shapefrog 4y ago
I wonder why all the citizen jornalists havent been doing their digging and discovered the co-CEO
danielfoster 4y ago
I’m sure there will be other charges coming as more information is gleaned. I’m very curious to see if the parents are charged.

mlla 4y ago

I was wondering about Trabucco as well. His name is nowhere to be seen, but he was leading Alameda together with Caroline up until last summer. If SBF is also going for plea bargain, will various government institutions ask from him to get some dirt on Tether (and on Binance)? Might be that they are more interested in campaign financing.

greenyoda 4y ago
> he was leading Alameda together with Caroline up until last summer In the last paragraph on page 3 of the plea letter, we see that most of the counts cover the period from 2019-2022 (2020 for the money laundering). Thus, the crimes that Ellison is pleading guilty to were going on while Trabucco was the co-CEO. According to Wikipedia, he "officially became the co-CEO in October 2021", and resigned in August 2022.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Trabucco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Trabucco
dragonwriter 4y ago
> but he was leading Alameda together with Caroline up until last summer. According to the SEC civil lawsuit against SBF, SBF was running Alameda the whole time, including when Ellison and Trabucco were nominally the co-CEOs. The CFTC lawsuit against SBF, FTX, Aand Alameda asserts the same, and that SBFs resignation as CEO of Alameda was done to create the false image of strong separation between Alameda and FTX. Ellison apparently had a real role in the fraud, but I don’t know that it’s clear that Trabucco was anything other than a face set up as a distraction, in terms of substantive role.
danielfoster 4y ago
An important component of accepting a plea bargain is telling the truth. I was also wondering if SBF might be used as a witness for other cases. I think his reliability is a major concern for any testimony.
eigenvalue 4y ago
I don't think SBF is going to be given the chance to plea down-- that's the whole point of getting Ellison and Wang to cooperated, to construct an ironclad case against SBF so that they don't need him to cooperate in any way, and can still likely convict him of enough crimes to put him in prison for 30+ years.

bigtones 4y ago

I think Sam Trabucco of FTX is going to be like Lou Pai of Enron. If you resign at exactly the right time and put some distance between you and the fraud, you can get away with it and ride off into the sunset. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5411422 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=541142...

jcampbell1 4y ago
Nice comparison. Trabucco resigned in August but Caroline was on record saying he hadn’t been around for months. Some Alameda loans were called in May, and that is when SBF and Caroline did some obviously shady stuff. I think that is when he walked, as that is when the trading strategy became limited to just propping up FTT to fake the balance sheet. He seemed like a legit trader based on his Twitter. It takes about $3 million in legal bills to defend against the feds, and he easily has that kind of money. He is going to be hard to prosecute.
- hnews_account_1 4y ago
  He made several stupid claims on his twitter about trading that anyone in the industry would immediately infer was a complete misunderstanding of the basics of finance. As did SBF and Caroline. Nothing about them was smart. It was a lot of jargon thrown into their talk that should tickle most people’s spidey senses.
  - qeternity 4y ago
    Exactly this. All of their "What happened?" threads were hot air, sprinkled with some instances of "ev+" that cryptotwitter quant wannabes latched on to.

shapefrog 4y ago

I wonder why all the citizen jornalists havent been doing their digging and discovered the co-CEO

danielfoster 4y ago

I’m sure there will be other charges coming as more information is gleaned. I’m very curious to see if the parents are charged.