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MtGox Finds 200,000 Bitcoins In Old Wallet
thesandbender writes: "Today brings news that MtGox has 'found' 200,000 Bitcoins in a 'forgotten' wallet that they thought was empty (PDF). The value of the coins is estimated to be $116 million USD, which happens to cover their $64 million USD in outstanding debts nicely and might offer them the chance to emerge from bankruptcy. There is no explanation yet of why the sneaky thieves that 'stole' the bitcoins used a MtGox wallet to hide them."
Probably... they were 'magically discovered' when it became clear to Mark that the authorities might be contemplating criminal charges against him.
The first half is strikingly close to what happened recently in the UK - John Darwin went missing while canoeing in the North Sea during 2002. His canoe was found, but his body was never recovered and he was declared dead in 2003.
In 2007 he returned to life, having lived in the intermediate years as John Jones, firstly in the UK (living in a bedsit next door to his old home, then living with his supposed widow wife, before they moved overseas, eventually ending up in Panama. The catalyst for his return was a change in Panamanian visa law, which required British police confirmation of his identity.
So he came back to the UK, claimed he had amnesia and didn't know what had happened after his disappearance, and his widow wife and children played their part in the fantastic return - but it soon all unravelled when it was discovered that his wife knew all along and had lived with him in Panama for several years.
They are both now serving jail sentences for insurance fraud.
Actually, I think there might be merit in your idea. We had a similar thing happen with one of our ticketing systems. Thousands of vanished tickets... They weren't even on the tables anymore! Oh no! Then we found them on some random table (there are thousands in the DB) and apparently, over 10 years ago, someone had conceived of the idea that something could go wrong, and instead of strait up deleting rows the system was throwing the deleted rows onto this "archive" table. The code that broke it was someone on another teams fault, but whomever wrote this way back in the day saved us a hell of a lot of trouble.
Of course, MtGox could just be a bunch of thieves as well.