On an April morning in 2013, Vadim Trincher was asleep in his sprawling three-bedroom on the 63rd floor of Trump Tower when federal agents bolted in to arrest him. After searching the apartment, they found $75,000 in cash and $2 million in poker chips from the Bellagio. Trincher was a poker pro at the top of his game, winning $731,079 in the 2009 World Poker Tournament, but prosecutors said he had been making more on the side, helping run a $100 million gambling ring described by a prosecutor as “the world’s largest sports book” with a client list of “oligarchs residing in the former Soviet Union and throughout the world.”
Trincher’s apartment at Trump Tower, 63AB, was the scene of his high-stakes poker games and, as revealed by a wiretap, where he made his business calls — threatening players who didn’t pay. It was also, after he made bail, where Trincher was put on house arrest, turning what was then a $5 million apartment into a gilded cage. The indictment laid out plans to seize the place, but instead Trincher handed over $20 million in cash and other property and served a five-year sentence.
Now, the Trinchers are cutting ties, listing the apartment this week for $9.7 million, with photos that show a palatial spread done up in Trump’s signature style: gilded, gaudy furniture with velvet tufts pushed against walls of 1980s glass. Fur throws adorn the beds. The bathrooms are finished in onyx, lapis lazuli, alabaster and “rare amethyst sourced from Tanzania,” according to a listing that praises them as “breathtaking.”
And there are four walk-in closets — which may explain why it took a maid weeks to open one and uncover three inches of standing water, according to a 2012 lawsuit over mold. The garish decor is apparently the work of designer Kenneth Bordewick, who may be best known as the guy who was considering buying Michael Jackson’s couch for Mariah Carey, and is now trying to brand himself as the “the billion dollar designer.” (He told The Daily Mail that he has 114 Rolls Royces and is worth $6 billion, which he says he made in part through work “for the royal family of the United Arab Emirates” plus “palatial residences both in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.”)
Trincher’s broker seems to have timed this listing to capitalize on a Trump bump, but there are still seven other apartments listed for sale right now at Trump Tower, and one had its price slashed last summer. So his broker is bringing in the big guns; on Instagram, he shared the decision to stage the unit with a grand piano from 1885, saying the place “needed a statement piece.”