CEO of the Hacked Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox Was not Found Guilty of Embezzlement
According to a recent report, the CEO of the hacked bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, Mark Karpeles, has been found guilty of record tampering by the Tokyo District Court. Contrary to popular opinion, the CEO was not found guilty of embezzlement. As a result of this, Mark has been sentenced to a suspended jail sentence of two and a half years.
Karpeles Didn’t Embezzle
According to the court document, the way Karpeles “ran Mt. Gox was a total mess and that he tampered w/ records to hide the fact it was missing a lot of bitcoin, but he did not do it for personal gain or have ill intent.”
It is important to note that the court actually suspended the sentence for four years, and he will be jailed for 2.5 years if he does anything bad in those four years.
A recent report explaining this wrote:
“The court convicted Mark Karpeles, a 33-year-old Frenchman, for falsifying computer data but acquitted him over charges of embezzling millions from client accounts. Tokyo-based tech reporter for Bloomberg, Yuji Nakamura, translated the verdict in a series of tweets. “We’re calling it that he’s not actually going to prison,” he wrote. “In plain English: he’s guilty of record tampering, but not guilty of embezzlement. He is ‘suspended’ for 4 years, during which time if he does anything bad he’ll be jailed for 2.5 years.”
The hacking of Karpeles’ Mt. Gox in 2014, saw about 850,000 bitcoins lost. Of this, 850,000 stolen bitcoins, about 200,000 of the coins were later found, although victims have not been paid yet. This is despite the fact that the recovered coin, have been sold by the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee with plans in place to disburse them. A $16million lawsuit by a former business partner has been pointed at, to be responsible for the delay in disbursing the funds.
Court Found a Total Mess According to the verdict which Nakamura translated, the Tokyo District Court found that the way Karpeles
“ran Mt. Gox was a total mess and that he tampered w/ records to hide the fact it was missing a lot of bitcoin, but he did not do it for personal gain or have ill intent.” The court document also details.
